Archive
PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been fascinating to watch the development of the Predator franchise over the years. Following their first appearance in the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie in 1987, the Predators have gone on to feature in numerous sequels and prequels, crossovers with the Alien franchise, comic books, video games, and more, developing a whole back story and cultural history in the process, fleshing out what were initially presented as bloodthirsty killers into something much deeper. We now know the name of the species – they are the yautja – and we know that theirs is a warrior culture that has been sending their young adults to Earth for millennia, requiring them to trophy-hunt human warriors as a rite of passage. Previous films in the series have depicted them interacting with humans across time, helping ancient Egyptians build the pyramids in Alien vs. Predator, and hunting 16th century Comanche warriors in Prey. This new film, Predator: Killer of Killers, expands on this legacy even more. Read more…
ALIEN: ROMULUS – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The seventh film in the Alien franchise that began in 1979, Alien: Romulus expands the original universe created by director Ridley Scott and writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett in new and interesting directions, exploring links between the original film and the recent ‘prequels’ Prometheus and Covenant. Chronologically the film takes place between Alien and Aliens and follows the adventures of a group of disaffected young adults seeking to find a way out of their soul-crushing life working at the Weyland-Yutani mining/terraforming colony Jackson’s Star on planet LV-410. They plan to steal a spacecraft and make their way to Romulus, what they believe to be a derelict research station in orbit, close to the LV-410’s belt of planetary rings. However, once they dock with the research station and begin exploring inside looking for cryo-pods, they soon realize that the dangers they faced on the planet are nothing like the ones they face here. To reveal more plot details would do a disservice to the story and how it unfolds… suffice to say, there are face huggers and alien xenomorphs involved, and much more besides. Read more…
TWISTERS – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Considering how popular the film Twister was in the summer of 1996, I am surprised that it has taken almost thirty years for there to be an official sequel, but thanks to director Lee Isaac Chung, and screenwriters Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski, we now have one to enjoy. Twisters, as it is somewhat unimaginatively named, is technically a sequel, but is actually more of a remake or reimagining of the same basic story. It stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as storm chaser and budding meteorologist Kate Carter who, along with her friends, is using an updated variation of the tech used by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in the original film to try to understand and reduce the intensity of tornadoes in Oklahoma. However, after an experiment turns deadly, Kate gives up storm chasing, and five years later she is working at a weather forecasting office in New York. Things change for Kate when she is coaxed back to the tornado front lines by her old friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), who is now working for a large well-funded company and is using military-grade technology to study tornadoes; even more interestingly, while out on the road with Javi, she encounters the self-proclaimed ‘tornado wrangler’ Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and his ragtag crew. Tyler is brash and arrogant and is apparently only interested in increasing his number of YouTube followers, but there is more to him and his team than meets the eye… Read more…
THE FLASH – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE FILM, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER WAITING UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE DONE SO TO READ IT.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about superhero fatigue, and how the movie industry has been eating itself alive with too many entries in the seemingly endless expanded universes from both Marvel and DC Comics. Director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash has been the recipient of a significant amount of criticism in this regard; it’s the 13th film in the DC series that was kickstarted in 2013 by Man of Steel, and the second of four DC entries slated for 2023, with the others being Shazam: Fury of the Gods, and the upcoming pair Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The film also came under fire for the fact that it’s star Ezra Miller, despite being inundated with legal issues stemming from his apparent real-life mental health problems, has been given the full support and backing of Warner Brothers, while the almost completed Batgirl film was unceremoniously scrapped back in August 2022. Whatever the case is; The Flash had problems from the get-go, and in the days since it’s release it has been a critical failure and a comparative flop with audiences. Read more…
THIRTEEN LIVES – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On June 23rd, 2018, a group of 12 boys and their coach left a soccer game and went off to have fun exploring the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex in Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand. It wasn’t an especially unusual thing to do – the caves are a local tourist attraction, and the boys had been there many times before -but on this day everything went wrong. A sudden, completely unexpected deluge of torrential rain flooded the complex, trapping the boys more than two kilometers from the cave entrance, and it was many hours before anyone noticed they were missing. However, before long, a dangerous rescue attempt was mounted, and this quickly became a massive international news event. The story of the boys’ heroic rescue has already inspired several documentaries and films, including the critically acclaimed NatGeo documentary The Rescue, but this new film Thirteen Lives is likely to be the definitive narrative version of the story for western audiences. It is directed by Ron Howard, and stars Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton, and Tom Bateman as the leaders of the team of cave divers who ultimately discovered and rescued the boys, alongside a cast of prominent actors from Thai cinema. Read more…
THE STARLING – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Starling is a comedy-drama film from Netflix, directed by Theodore Melfi, starring Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, and Kevin Kline. The film is an examination of the grief suffered by the parents after the loss of a child; McCarthy and O’Dowd play Lily and Jack, a husband and wife couple whose new baby dies of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which results in Jack having a nervous breakdown and requiring a stay in a mental health facility. As Lily focuses all her attention on Jack, preparing for his imminent return home, she neglects her own mental health needs; to compound matters, a starling has made a nest in a tree in their back garden, which starts to dive-bomb and attack her every time she comes near it. Eventually, things change for the better for Lily when she meets Larry Fine (Kline), a former psychologist turned veterinarian, who becomes an unexpected confidant. Read more…
MORTAL KOMBAT – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The video game Mortal Kombat, originally created and developed by the American video game developer Midway Games in 1992, is one of the most popular and successful fighting games in the history of the industry. Originally conceived as a video game spinoff of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies such as Kickboxer and Bloodsport, it eventually morphed into a fantasy setting in which human warriors, chosen by the gods, face off against assorted demons and monsters in a fighting tournament, the victors of which would go on to control the universe. The game is notorious for its incredibly gruesome and graphic in-game ‘fatalities,’ the realism of which eventually led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board and its age-based rating system, but this has not stopped it from becoming an expanding franchise that now comprises several spinoff games, comic books, an animated TV series, and several movies. Read more…
IT: CHAPTER TWO – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of the classic Stephen King horror novel It was an enormous, unexpected success when it hit cinemas in the late summer of 2017. For a generation prior Tim Curry’s 1990 portrayal of Pennywise, the murderous shape-shifting entity terrorizing the residents of a small New England town, was the gold standard, but Bill Skarsgård’s new take on the character looks destined to become just as iconic. Off the back of his performance It became the second-highest grossing R-rated horror movie of all time (after The Exorcist), and re-kindled interest in King’s stories by becoming the highest grossing adaptation of one of his novels, knocking 1999’s The Green Mile into second place. It also made stars of its cast of excellent teenage actors, including Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, and Sophia Lillis. Read more…
SHAZAM – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the race to make a movie about every single comic book character in history, DC have lagged behind Marvel in terms of mining their back catalogue in the search for box office gold. Whereas Marvel have unearthed hitherto little-known gems like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Black Panther to sit alongside Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Iron Man, the folks over at DC have tended to build everything around their ‘big three’ – Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. However, having suffered lackluster critical reviews for their most recent efforts at putting these luminary characters on the silver screen, the producers have now started to dip into their archives in search of characters to explore. The latest of these is Shazam, written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, and directed by horror movie veteran David F. Sandberg. The film stars Asher Angel as Billy Batson, a 14-year-old orphan kid with a ‘pure heart’ who is chosen by an ancient wizard to become a super hero. When he says the wizard’s name – Shazam! – Billy is magically transformed into an adult super hero (Zachary Levi), and together with his best friend Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), Billy sets about discovering his powers. However, this attracts the attention of the evil Dr Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), who has spent his entire life trying to discover the secret of Shazam’s power, and who has harnessed the physical manifestations of the seven deadly sins in order to do so. Read more…
BLADE RUNNER 2049 – Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner is considered a landmark of the genre, a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at the nature of humanity, dressed up with groundbreaking visual effects and a revolutionary neo-noir style. Now, 35 years later, the film’s long-awaited sequel Blade Runner 2049 has finally arrived after what feels like an eternity in development, with a new director in the shape of Denis Villeneuve, and with original director Ridley Scott acting as executive producer. Without wanting to give too much of the plot away, the film stars Ryan Gosling as a ‘blade runner’ named K, a futuristic cop hunting down the last few old-model ‘replicants,’ incredibly lifelike synthetic humanoids who have been designed to work as slaves for real humans, and whose rebellion formed the plot of the first movie. Since then, newer-model replicants have become a stable part of society, but when K discovers a long-buried secret that has the potential to change the world, he finds himself trying to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the protagonist of the first film, who has been missing for decades. Read more…
IT – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It has been one of Stephen King’s most enduring and popular novels since it was first published back in 1986. Conceptually, it covers two bases. Firstly, it’s a terrifying horror story, which takes many of the most basic human fears – death, disease, growing older – and personifies them into a single, unifying threat. Secondly, it’s a classic examination of childhood nostalgia, which looks at very adult themes through a kid’s eyes: friendship, the loss of innocence, blossoming sexuality, and the way the onset of adulthood strips you of your inquisitiveness and imagination. King sets the story in the small town of Derry, Maine, where kids are going missing, and adults seemingly turn a blind eye to the bizarre goings on in the community. Eventually seven friends, who call themselves the Losers Club, realize that the common link between all the disappearances is an evil clown named Pennywise, who re-appears to prey on the innocent every 27 years, and whose reign of terror they vow to end once and for all. The book was originally adapted into an acclaimed TV mini-series in 1990 which featured an iconic performance by Tim Curry as Pennywise; this new version is directed by Andy Muschietti, stars Bill Skarsgård as the clown, and features Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, and Finn Wolfhard as three of the Losers Club kids, all of whom are uniformly excellent. Read more…
ANNABELLE: CREATION – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest entry in writer-director-producer James Wan’s ever-expanding horror movie universe is Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to the 2014 film Annabelle. It tells the story of how the possessed doll from the original movie came into existence, expanding on a back story involving a toymaker and his wife whose daughter dies in mysterious circumstances. Twelve years later, the toymaker opens his large, but remote, farmhouse to a nun and several girls from an orphanage that has been closed, offering them a new home, but before long the girls find that something sinister is lurking in the shadows. The film is directed by David Sandberg, stars Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Anthony LaPaglia, and Miranda Otto, and has an original score by composer Benjamin Wallfisch. Read more…
A CURE FOR WELLNESS – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A Cure for Wellness is the latest film from Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. It’s a creepy, paranoia-infused horror-thriller starring Dane De Haan as Lockhart, a young and ambitious Wall Street stockbroker who is sent to an idyllic but mysterious ‘wellness center’ in the Swiss Alps to retrieve his company’s CEO, who has been spending time there, and who has sent a troubling letter home to the executives. Upon arrival, Lockhart meets the wellness center’s owner and chief medical officer Heinrich Volmer (Jason Isaacs), some of the patients (Celia Imrie, Ashok Mandanna), and a strange young girl named Hannah (Mia Goth), but when he tries to leave the facility he is involved in a serious car crash. Forced to recuperate at the facility with a badly broken leg, Lockhart soon discovers some troubling information about the history of the place, and quickly comes to believe that things are not as they seem. It’s a visually startling and quite beautiful film which drips with atmosphere, and is very reminiscent of many of the European paranoia-thrillers of the 1970s set in murderous hospitals, especially those by directors like Dario Argento. It’s also completely bat-shit insane in the best possible way, with a denouement that takes grand guignol to violent extremes. Read more…
LIGHTS OUT – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There has been a trend in recent years towards more thoughtful, creative, innovative horror films. Acclaimed works like The Babadook, It Follows, Under the Skin, and others, have begun to push the boundaries of the genre, blending art and terror together, while remaining cognizant of many of the classics that preceded it. Lights Out is another one of those films which may soon join that list of outstanding contemporary chillers by playing on one of the most innate and universal fears of them all: fear of the dark. Directed by Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg – remaking his own acclaimed 3-minute Youtube short film – the film stars Maria Bello, Teresa Palmer, and Gabriel Bateman as members of a family who are terrorized by a supernatural being which only appears when the lights are out. Read more…
Best Scores of 2015 – Asia
The sixth and final installment in my series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world concentrates on music from films from Asia, although all of main ones this year are from the far eastern nation of Japan, with a couple of interlopers from Iran and the Lebanon. In this article, I’m taking a deeper look at several truly excellent works, which range in scope from anime movies and prestigious TV series to fantasy adventures, small-scale dramas, and religious epics. Read more…
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