Bookworm (Me) (Kid)

Here's an innocuous, simple tale of absent fathers and alienation from the Shaky Isles. Nell Fisher plays Mildred, a young clever clogs who is suddenly motherless for a time. From the other side of the world comes the father she's never met, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood). Things are frosty for a while until he agrees to go camping with her to find the mysterious, and probably bollocks, Canterbury Panther. Video evidence of the big cat is worth $50,000 NZD, which Mildred and her mum could dearly use, because of handy plot contrivances.

The main draw of this film (for adults, at least) is the wonderful NZ scenery. The mountains and lakes, shot by cinematographer Daniel Katz, look fantastic. But is this enough to sustain a feelgood family comedy/drama? Well, it depends who you speak to, but for me, the answer is no. Wood is charming as the comically unsure dad, though it's still very hard to see past his Frodo face, especially as, once you mentally exchange the panther for a certain gold ring, that's all you can think about. Fisher is precocious and a little irritating as Mildred, but she's supposed to be slightly unlikeable as the titular bookworm.

In general, the writing is sloppy - there's the old cliche where one character absolutely swears blind something will not happen, and after the next cut, of course, it's happening. There is at least one continuity issue, specifically a 'socks on and then off' situation. Also, the forced menace, apart from the wobbly CGI panther, feels very unlikely and not a little out of kilter in this type of film, like it's verging towards the great Kiwi thriller Coming Home in the Dark.

There are a couple of funny moments, one including a kiwi bug called a weta (coincidentally or not, the name of a digital VFX company founded by Peter Jackson). The scene where Strawn tells a campfire story to Mildred about how he fell out with David Blaine almost salvages the whole package - it's madly surreal and shows that the writers, Toby Harvard and director Ant Timpson have it in them. If only they could sustain it.

Bookworm opens at the Luna and Palace cinemas on August 29th.

See also:

Michael Smiley cameos in this and he's also the legendary Tyres in Edgar Wright's brilliant TV series Spaced (1999-2001). Elijah Wood plays against type in Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005).

Gremlins (Me) (Kids)

The old Cygnet cinema in Como reopened, initially for the Strange Festival in July, but is now running films from a very wide range of genres and eras (as well as quality levels).  An exhaustive scan through the calendar turned up the seminal kids' fantasy-comedy, Gremlins from 1984. Seeing an opportunity to show the kids some 80s style, we ventured south of the river for the first time in ages. Now I hadn't seen this since about, hmmm, maybe 1986 (I'm pretty sure I was too young to see it at the cinema on release, so it must have been a TV screening). It's an oddity, in that it borders on horror, flirts with comedy and yet is, at its centre, a soppy heart-warmer from Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, written by Chris Columbus. Apparently though, this film (as well as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) forced the MPAA to bring in the PG-13 rating, due to complaints about violent scenes.

It starts with a slightly misplaced voice-over from an inventor/salesman called Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton), who's in New York looking for a Christmas present for his son. Oh, yeah, it's a Christmas movie too. He's led into a fusty Chinese knick-knack shop, where he tries to sell a gadget and ends up with a Gizmo instead. This is the name he gives to the Mogwai, which comes with three very strict rules - it doesn't like bright lights, you can't get it wet, and most importantly, don't feed it after midnight. Great set-up, you can see where this is going. Billy (Zach Galligan) is a good lad, it's not his fault that loads of shite starts hitting fans all across town when these diktats are broken. 

The cast is full of Gen X memories. Aside from Galligan, for whom this was the acting peak, you've also got many a teenage boy's torment in Phoebe Cates; Judge Reinhold and Jonathan Banks, both of whom were in Beverly Hills Cop that same year; Corey Feldman, who was next seen in another 80s classic, The Goonies; hey, even Michael Winslow, of Police Academy fame, voiced one of the gremlins. Nostalgia party!! In the background of the main mini-monsters plot, there's a pastiche of It's a Wonderful Life, Billy's mum (Frances Lee McCain) is even watching it on a little black and white TV in one scene, and there's a seemingly tacked-on 'message' at the end about western society not facing its environmental responsibilities - pretty prescient of 1984!

I was wondering if there are might be any lega-sequels in the pipeline for the Gremlins series and imdb tells me there is one in development. Bright lights! Bright lights!

Gremlins is screening again on Sep 1st at the Revival House - see link for other tasty films on offer.

See also:

Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop (1984) still stands up, and Gremlins director, Joe Dante, also directed 2 episodes of Zucker/Abrahams brilliantly stupid Police Squad! (1982).

Kneecap

What an oddly brilliant film this is. The Northern Irish hip-hop trio, Kneecap, have a pretty unusual career. According to my brief research, they currently have two studio albums and one feature film to their credit. Not knowing about these lads, I was surprised to find out that they aren't actors - you wouldn't know by their performances, particularly Liam Ó Hannaidh (stage name, Mo Chara). He's a standout. The film gives us a presumably fudged version of the band's origins - Mo and best mate, Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) have known each other since they were choir boys but it didn't take long for them to embrace the Belfast rave and drug culture, as well as the strong anti-British, anti-RUC feeling among sections of the Catholic community in the north of Ireland. Northern Ireland! North of Ireland! Northern Ireland! 

One night, Mo is arrested at a rave and refuses to speak English to the 'peelers' (police), so an interpreter is called in, high school music teacher JJ (JJ Ó Dochartaigh - soon to be DJ Próvai). Snaffling Mo's notebook of thoughts and scribbles (and tabs of acid), JJ realises these words would make good lyrics and so sets about encouraging the lads to lay down some tracks in his poky garage. Central to the music and the film is the steadfast commitment to saving and promoting the Irish language. A poorly attended gig at an uncle's pub is filmed and word starts spreading about this group that couldn't give a fock. Soon they're attracting lots of attention, the good AND bad kind.

Writer/director Rich Peppiatt, by design or accident, has riffed on a host of likeminded films - obviously Trainspotting, but also Good Vibrations, Sing Street and most interestingly, Kneecap plays like a grubbier, slightly ruder version of The Commitments (there's even a reworking of Jimmy Rabbitte's iconic "say it once and say it loud" speech). The film is full of verve, it's very funny in parts, and really fast-paced too. Peppiatt doesn't mind fiddling with animation, screen graffiti, slow-mo and freeze frames - he's very much turning this out as a feature length video clip (are they called that any more?). 

The dramatic additions to the story of the band include a Protestant sometime girlfriend, Georgia (an excellent Jessica Reynolds); a nemesis in the peelers, Detective Ellis (Josie Walker); a splinter group of Republicans, the RRAD (Radical Republicans Against Drugs); and Móglaí's absent father, Arló - a fantastic turn by Michael Fassbender (the scene of him in a hoodie staring from the crowd, surrounded by loads of jumping youth is priceless).

Whether you're a hip-hop fan or not, this film is well worth the watch for its energy, piss-taking and fired-up politics of rebellion. One of the year's best.

Kneecap opens at Luna and Palace cinemas on Thursday Aug 29th.

See also:

Alan Parker's The Commitments (1991) is a southern Irish cracker, and Good Vibrations (2012), directed by Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn, is another good Belfast-set music biopic.

Alien: Romulus

Here's the seventh installment in the Alien franchise, if we can disregard the two Alien vs Predator efforts, and it fits in the timeline about 20 years after the original film (see graphic below). It kicks off with a hat tip to Ripley and co with a mission to recover some unmentionable. The film then jumps to a grimy mining colony called Jackson's Star, where we're introduced to Cailee Spaeny's Rain and David Jonsson's Andy. She's rebuffed by the authorities in her attempts to get off-planet, and so agrees to a hare-brained scheme to escape the working drudgery and likely death in the mines. Her accomplices, a similarly aged group of chancers, need Andy to get into an abandoned (hmmm) Weyland-Yutani spaceship that they've located floating above them. They need Andy because he's actually a company synthetic and should be compatible with the mystery ship's systems. Set-up over, time for the viscosity.

This is director Fede Alvarez's fourth feature following an Evil Dead remake, Don't Breathe and The Girl in the Spider's Web. Sunshine and lollipops aren't really his bag. He does a pretty good job with the constraints of the material - there are boxes that must be ticked in an Alien film. Little scurrying crab finds a face, said human has a chest problem, slimy result grows in stages, crew members get picked off until one (or two) remain, and so on. 

It must be tough to find something different to do, and the biggest change here is probably the lack of any mature players in the crew. No grizzled Tom Skerrits or John Hurts, not even a slightly younger Idris Elba or Michael Biehn. This lot are closer in age to Newt than any of those mentioned above. Plot-wise, it kind of makes sense, as the older folk on Jackson's Star seem to have a short shelf life. As I was saying, trying to find a new angle, or even just a stand-out shock (see the DIY caesarean section in Prometheus) can be difficult, but here it becomes downright fucking ridiculous. Hey, it's something different, I guess.

Spaeny does most of the good work here, she's a really solid actor and the camera loves her. The rest of the cast are ok, though their lack of star wattage clearly marks them out as Alien fodder. There are some really tense moments, one floating acid scene in particular, and Alvarez knows his way around a fright fest. 

Unfortunately, a lot of the good work is undone by the disappointing trend for fan service callbacks, even though most fans of the original would surely blanche at some of this tripe. I don't have a problem with a (poorly done) CGI version of Ian Holm's Ash reappearing, but I do when he knocks out a famous line from the past. Even worse is the return of one of Ripley's iconic lines - I can't tell you how much this deflated me. Give it a rest writers, not clever.

See also:

The first is, hands down, the best - Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), but it's worth going through the following three films to see how the wildly varied directors turned them out - James Cameron, then David Fincher, then Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Deadpool & Wolverine

So, after years of teasing punters, Huge Action said yes to appearing alongside Deadpool, the result being this uneven, snarky bloodbath. It's very funny in parts, slow in others but it seems to have washed its face already, bringing in over $600 million worldwide to the evil Disney coffers. This is the third film in the Deadpool series, but the first since Marvel/Disney acquired FOX studios, a Hollywood business deal referred to way too often in this film - once or twice would be enough but I reckon most of the audience don't find these Pool asides as funny as the writers do. Speaking of writers, there's a veritable stable of them credited here - Ryan Reynolds himself; Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick from the first two Deadpool films; Zeb Wells; and director, Shawn Levy; not to mention the comic creators, Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza. Many cooks, lots of broth.

Plot-wise, there's a lot to get into here but I'm not sure that's really of concern - the 'story' is background to the sparring, verbally and physically, of the two leads - with one another and with several different punching and slicing bags. A few of these must remain nameless, as I'm not about to divulge the numerous cameos that appear. Most people have probably already seen or heard about them, or conversely couldn't give a flying shit. Suffice to say, one or two of these 'surprises' were the best things in the film.

Ah, bugger it, I'll have to talk a little about the plot. Wade Wilson (Deadpool) is floundering in his private life, having been rejected for a spot on the Avengers team. Suddenly (and for reasons best known to the writers) he's kidnapped by TVA agents - these are the folk from the Loki TV series, the Time Variance Authority, and holy fuck am I sick of this lot. I realise it's likely the best way to involve 'a' Wolverine, seeing as the excellent film Logan put the character out of business years ago, but it still boils my piss. On that, it would seem there's an old Logan floating about somewhere in this world, Earth-10005, which is discrete from the 'sacred timeline' of Earth-616, where Pool went, presumably with Cable's time device from Deadpool 2, to apply for the Avengers. Confused yet? Don't let it bother you, just enjoy the shits and giggles.

Admittedly, there are some great gags but ultimately, you can see through the chuckles to the bare bones, and you might be left wanting if you can't get excited by all the multiverse stuff (there are some nice throwaways to this, though). The pathos from Wade at the start and Logan throughout doesn't really ring true, but nothing in the film does except for the laffs. Honestly, Reynolds (or as Ozzy Man calls him, Noldsy) and Jackman (Jacko) have been all over everything promoting this film. The anticipation was always going to be more than the actual payoff. 

Some of the faults may lay at the door of Shawn Levy, who's responsible for The Pink Panther remake, Night at the Museum, the Cheaper by the Dozen remake, Free Guy and Real Steel, plus some TV, including Stranger Things. Let's face it, this is a pretty dire resume. Oh, and the musical choices are fucking terrible, but that's the point, I guess.

The future of Deadpool? How about an R-rated Uncanny X-Force (Pool, Wolvy, Psylocke and Fantomex)? Could be bloody, compromised and dark, with less humour but more nuance. A chance, maybe, but it surely wouldn't make as much money as this is doing, and that's the point, innit?

See also:

I favour David Leitch's Deadpool 2 (2018) over the others, and once again, Logan (2017), directed by James Mangold, is a fantastic film.