Polite Society: Martial Arts And Uncomfortable Relationships

Summary

A wannbe stuntwoman, played by Priya Kansara, becomes convinced her sister, played by Ritu Arya, is marrying a baddie.

In a sense I really wanted to connect with this film as I often do try to give British films the benefit of the doubt, but in all honesty this film just didn’t jive with me.

I think there are certainly some entertaining parts to it, and the fight scenes are impressive for what they are but I do think in the end the issues outweigh the positives.

The main issue I had with this film is that tonally it is two separate films. The first half is much more of a comedy about a girl struggling to accept that her sister is moving on with her life and then the second half is full of vaguely incestuous clones and kidnapping scenes, they don’t align at any point and at others feels very much at odds with one another.

To make matters worse the lead character isn’t likeable. Throughout most of the film the character comes off as incredibly possessive towards her sister, and thinks that it is okay for her to interfere and mess with her life doing worse and worse things to try and get the outcome she wants. The film justifies this in the end by having her being proven right to be so involved in her sister’s life, but throughout the film she just comes across as a busy body.

Moreover, I don’t know if it is just how I red it but there is a subtext to this film that is quite depressing and sad. In a sense the second half of the film could be read as a metaphor for mental illness and the sister fully falling into delusion, as the film likes to remind us she has an overactive imagination. In this sense the ending then develops something of an uncanny and almost unsettling quality but perhaps that was just how I made sense of the two drastically different tones within the film.

Overall, the tone of this film was all wrong and the main character was unlikeable.

2.5/5

Pros.

The fight scenes were good

It was nice to see a British film in the multiplex

It has a charm to it.

Cons.

It has pacing issues

It is tonally a mess

The main character has a God complex

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Rye Lane: Finding Love In Modern Britain

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Two recently dumped individuals, played by Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson, meet randomly one day and find that they have a connection.

This isn’t a new film, the idea has been done in hundreds of films before especially within British rom-coms. However what this film does is update some of the older tired cliches and to produce something modern to a reasonable effect.

I don’t think this film reinvents the form but it is a nice wholesome watch. Jonsson and Oparah have great chemistry and both are charming in different ways. The way their characters interact with each other on screen instantly makes you root for them and want them to be together, this is helped by the fact that for once the relationship shown to us in a rom-com doesn’t seem incredibly toxic.

I also liked some of the more surreal shot choices and story telling frames this film used, it was a nice break from the genre but also from within the film itself it helped to shake things up and keep them fresh,

My highlight of the film was the Colin Firth cameo as the burrito chef, which I thought was hilarious and well placed. It was nice to see a genre mainstay like Firth show up for a film like this and give his blessing to a new generation, it rooted the film so easily within this very British tradition and created an unforgettable moment.

Overall, a nice happy watch but not one that will blow you away.

3.5/5

Pros.

The leads have good chemistry

It is fun

It makes you care about the characters

The Colin Firth cameo

Cons.

It is very familiar

The conflict towards the end of the film feels forced in rather than organic to the story

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Operation Fortune Ruse De Guerre: The Incredibly Eccentric World Of International Espionage

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Guy Ritchie teams up with Jason Statham yet again, this time to tell a spy story.

I had been looking forward to this film for so long, but with the delays I was beginning to question if I was ever going to see this film and now that I have I can say it was mostly worth the wait.

The main thing I enjoyed about this film was its sense of humour. This film can and does at times have an incredibly eccentric sense of humour, some of the lines of dialogue feel like improv on top of improv but in a good way. The spy story being told is strange enough that the fact that Statham’s character needs a private plane and certain vintages of wine to calm down seem to fit within this world well.

Moreover, the supporting cast are excellent. Hugh Grant, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone and Aubrey Plaza each have their moment to shine and come together to really make this film something special. I would say the character I liked the most was Plaza’s Fidel mainly because she had a lot of the funniest lines and was the most entertaining to watch.

My two issues with the film, which admittedly are each fairly small, are that having Ukrainians be the baddy in the current climate is a bad look, they should have changed that in reshoots, and also that the pacing of the film is atrocious, it feels like it is on for double its runtime and though most of the time is fun to watch I still wouldn’t want to watch 4 hours of it.

Overall, fun but with terrible pacing.

4/5

Pros.

Plaza

Statham

The eccentricity

It is fun

Cons.

Framing Ukrainians as the villain in the current year is a bad look

The pace

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What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A documentary filmmaker, played by Lilly James, makes a film about her childhood friend’s, played by Shazad Latif, arranged marriage.

The romantic set-up in this film is incredibly obvious to the point where it crosses over into cliché, everyone knows going in that James’s character is going to fall for Latif’s that is part of the unspoken agreement of the film. However, what isn’t known is that this film is worlds away from other rom-coms such as Love Actually, Crazy Rich Asians, Boxing Day etc by the fact that it is not a comedy at all.

I would argue that this film is not a rom-com, more so a romantic drama film with a schmaltzy ending that tries to undo a lot of its more depressing aspects but doesn’t really come anywhere near close enough. This film is depressing at times manically so, and that really is its greatest fault. Whether it is Lilly James saying how all the Disney princesses were depressed, her incredibly toxic relationship with her mum, played by Emma Thompson, or the fact that the arranged marriage actually happens although you knowing the genre think it won’t, this film knows how to upset you. There were multiple moments in the film where I found myself wanting to leave as it was so depressing I was no longer having fun at the cinema.

I think the great bane of this film is that despite James and Latif giving reasonably serviceable performances this rom-com lacks any kind of warmth or charm at all and that makes the film off-putting.

Overall, this film does the one thing a rom-com never should do, be depressing.

1/5

Pros.

James and Latif try their best to save this film

Cons.

It is depressing

It is not by any means a fun watch

The ending feels like it is over compensating

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The Awakening: The Horrors Of A British Boarding School

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The film follows ghost hunter Florence Cathcart, played by Rebecca Hall, as she travels to an all-boys boarding school to investigate otherworldly goings on.

I think this is very much the quintessential British ghost story, and I mean that both as a compliment and also as a criticism. In many sense this delivers as you would want it to, there is a ghostly mystery and a few good scares, and a key element of the horror comes from the atmosphere and location. So far so good.

However, the issues become apparent when you have watched at least one other British ghost story horror film before as it becomes all very predictable quickly. Nothing that happens really catches you by surprise, the twist of the film I guessed early into the first act because it seemed so obvious. Perhaps this is a case of me watching too many horror films, as I both watch them for pleasure and also for an academic interest and as such I can see all the twists and turns coming but maybe also there is an element of weak writing here as well.

I think the two central performances from Dominic West and Rebecca Hall are both strong, I would say Hall is a the stronger of the two and her ghostly lost demeanour throughout the whole film only adds to the scare factor. I think the scene with Hall’s character down by the body of water where she looks as though she might throw herself in is truly haunting.

Overall, a good creepy ghost story if one that is also a little on the obvious side.

3/5

Pros.

The atmosphere

West and Hall

The scares

Cons.

It is a little obvious

Pacing issues

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Papadopoulos And Sons: The Chip Shop At The Beating Heart Of The Family

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A Greek Business titan, played by Stephen Dillane, is brought low and must go back to his roots and in doing so he finds his spark for life all over again.

I thought that this film did what British films do best it brought out both the pains and the triumphs of everyday life and reflected that on screen. There is something very human in British cinema that American cinema often lacks for one reason or another, it dwells more in the overly fantastic than the real for one.

I also thought that Dillane and Georges Corraface were both fantastic and played off each other well. I thought they were very believable as brothers, especially as estranged brothers, and I thought the final scene towards the end of the film hit with a hell of a punch because of this.

The one thing I will say of the film that maybe could be viewed as a criticism is that it struggles to match the comedy with the drama and leans far more into the latter. The final third of the film is quite the gut punch and the laughs here and there aren’t really enough to balance it out, so tonally things start to come unstuck by the end.

Overall, a bittersweet film that hits mostly all the right cords.

4/5

Pros.

The emotion

Dillane

Corraface

The message of the film

Cons.

A little light on laughs and at times fairly depressing

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Enys Men: Can You Make Meaning Out Of The Meaningless?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A woman, played by Mary Woodvine, begins to experience breaks with reality whilst living on a remote Cornish island.

I haven’t been so disappointed with a film in a long, long time. What was this film? It didn’t even feel like a film in the sense that it had a narrative and characters and really just anything that you could follow. It had minimal to no dialogue, no discernible story or plot and seemingly was just a series of random shots stuck together, it was the height of pretentious art house garbage.

Two other issues that go along with this are firstly that the pace is awful and the film as a whole quickly becomes tedious, in all honesty I disliked this film so much I would have got up and left if it were not for being bunched in by people on either side. This film is a chore to get through that is the easiest way to describe it. Secondly, the film seems to like piercing random loud noises and uses them again and again, for what reason we will never know but no doubt it is pretentious in reality all this does is leave you with a splitting headache.

The only thing positive I have to say about this film is that it has some interesting folk horror aesthetics but really this is barely even a film.

Overall, a tedious painful film to get through that feels more like a live art performance you have been forced to sit through rather than anything even remotely resembling a film. Easily my worst of the year so far.

0.5/5

Pros.

I liked some of the visuals

Cons.

It has no narrative

It uses loud noises constantly and again for no reason

It is tedious

It is incredibly pretentious

It never made a lick of sense

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A Field In England: Taking Drugs In A Field

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

An alchemist’s assistant, played by Reece Shearsmith , and a group of deserters try and navigate the battlefields of the English Civil War.

I like the films of Ben Wheatley for the most part even though sometimes they miss the mark. However, this film I think may be his worst and misses the mark by a large degree boiling down into pretentious nonsense that feels like the sort of thing a first year film student might make if they couldn’t decide on a narrative direction for their film and instead decided to throw everything at the wall.

This is clearly most experimental work but that isn’t a good thing as it makes the film feel far too art house for its own good, coming across as an effort in pretention. Additionally, this decision to be experimental means there are big sections of the narrative that make little to no sense and don’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the film, this doesn’t come across as some brave stylistic decision but rather a lack of ability to write narrative and an attempt to disguise lazy writing by being pretentious.

The only thing that really gripped me about this film is the occult focus which I enjoyed and which did deliver some good scares, we could have done with more of this and less silly art house nonsense.

Overall, Wheatley pushes the boundary into how art house he can be and still maintain audience interest and arguably goes too far.

2/5

Pros.

A few good scares

The occult stuff later into the film

Cons.

It is pretentious

Some sections of the film don’t fit

It has awful pacing

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The Jonestown Haunting: The Title Speaks For Itself

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Jonestown, a terrible real world tragedy is exploited for a lazy supernatural horror film.

I have watched quite a few of Andrew Jones low budget horror efforts and I question who is funding him to carry on making these films, whoever it is is wasting their money.

Honestly for me I found it very hard to get past the premise, its feels incredibly exploitative and in bad taste. I know there are films made about the Nazi’s that again trivialise the evil they committed by adding in ghosts and ghouls but that feels further back in the past and more remote, moreover in many of those films it is not as blatantly tasteless and badly handled as it is here.

Worse yet the horror is a mixture of deeply obvious jump scares and scenes that are just dark enough that one of the production team moving can be mistaken for a ghost, that is the level of budget clearly given to this project.

Overall, this film disgraces low budget horror by not doing something new or inventive, but rather exploiting a real world tragedy in the most tasteless way possible.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is mercifully short.

Cons.

It feels exploitative

The scares are awful

The acting is dire

It is so unoriginal

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The Eternal Daughter: You Can Guess The Twist Just From The Title Of The Film

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A mother and daughter, both played by Tilda Swinton, head to an old manor house that has familial significance to both of them and slowly mysteries begin to unravel and things plunge towards the gothic.

I was very disappointed by this film. From the trailer I was expecting a classic British ghost story, with maybe a few modern twists thrown in to update things, however, what I got instead was a suitably creepy film that then delivers one of the most obvious twists used far too frequently within horror cinema which then puts the kiss of death on any hopes of the film being good. The twist, which is that the mother is actually dead and the whole time she and the daughter are interacting it is only in the daughter’s head is incredibly obvious and I could have guessed it from the title alone, I was hoping the film wouldn’t go in that direction and would instead do something more clever and creepy but clearly that was too much to ask for.

It is a shame as the film boasts quite a creepy atmosphere for most of its runtime that does deliver some unsettling moments and leaves a lot of unanswered questions to go over after the film ends, both of which are why this film hasn’t scored lower.

To briefly comment on performance, Tilda Swinton is very capable as usual, but I would say she is hamming things up just a little too much at times here and there are moments wherein you could claim she is overacting.

Overall, a sore disappointment.

2/5

Pros.

The creepy atmosphere

The unanswered questions

Cons.

The twists is incredibly obvious

Swinton goes a little too hammy in her performances

Pacing issues

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