DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (full review at Screen Realm)

Few filmmakers working today are as crucial as S.Craig Zahler. Novelist, screenwriter and with Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cell Block 99, the director of two of the best films this decade has seen so far. A renaissance man for pulp cinema, he’s even had time to scratch out an excellent column for Fangoria magazine on home made horror. In this reviewer’s opinion, only Jeremy Saulnier and Ben Wheatley can really give him a run for his money.

So with that in mind, it’s safe to say the bar is set quite high for Dragged Across Concrete, another foray into the type of pulpy crime universe Zahler is making his own. Unfortunately, instead of clearing that bar with ease, Concrete ducks just underneath it.

Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) are two detectives, suspended from active duty after being captured on video using excessive force on a suspect. Ridgeman needs to move his family out of their bad neighbourhood and Lurasetti has an expensive wedding on the horizon, so with their ability to earn taken away from them, they turn to a less legal income stream. Working off a tip, they stake out a local drug lord, soon discovering what they thought would be a routine drug trade, is fact the preparation for an elaborate and savage bank robbery.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/dragged-across-concrete-movie-review-vince-vaughn-mel-gibson/

IMDB: Dragged Across Concrete

NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (full article at Diabolique Magazine)

In 1986 Fred Dekker, made his directorial debut with that trickiest of all genre blends – the horror comedy. He was twenty six years old, and wrote the movie in two weeks, incorporating all of his favourite elements of horror, science fiction and classic 50s B-movies into Night Of The Creeps. Although it failed to set the box office alight on release, Night Of The Creeps found its audience in the years to follow, developing into a popular cult favourite. As it enters its 32nd year, what better time to take a look at why Night Of The Creeps is still so much fun.

Read the full article at Diabolique:
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/revisiting-night-of-the-creeps-1986/

IMDB: Night Of The Creeps

THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (full review at Screen Realm)

The Night Comes For Us is director Timo Tjhjanto’s follow up to his 2016 action movie Headshot and is premiering on Netflix. It’s a kinetic, bloody action movie utilising Indonesian Pencak Silat martial arts, cinematically popularised in The Raid movies.

Ito (Joe Taslim) is an enforcer for a Triad operating out of the infamous Golden Triangle. He is a member of a group of high level operatives who go to extreme measures in service of the Triad. These merciless enforcers are known as The Six Seas.

Under orders to exterminate a fishing village for skimming profits, Ito refuses to kill a young girl, Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez), and turns instead on his own men. He heads home to the Jakarta underground hoping to get himself and Reina fake identities and passage out of the country.  However, the Triad has recruited Ito’s old friend Arian (Iko Uwais) to pursue him, promising Arian a lucrative territory and Ito’s place in The Six Seas in return. In addition, the Triad sends its local thugs in pursuit of Ito, and a mysterious, deadly assassin known as The Operative (Julie Estelle) is circling the whole affair with an unknown motive. 

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/the-night-comes-for-us-movie-review-netflix/

IMDB: The Night Comes For Us

BEAUTIFUL BOY (full review at Screen Realm)

Beautiful Boy is the true story of David Scheff and his son Nic’s battles with drug addiction and the impact it has on their family. Directed by Felix Van Groeningen, it is adapted as an amalgam of David’s book Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction and Nic’s memoir Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

The story unfolds from David’s (Steve Carell) point of view and follows his family’s journey though the turmoil of Nic’s (Timothée Chalamet) drug addiction, recovery and relapse, recovery and relapse. We see the impact it has on David, his other children and his wife, Karen (Maura Tierney). We see the impact on Nic’s mother Vicki (Amy Ryan), and we witness Nic’s life unfold and compose and unfold again.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/beautiful-boy-movie-review-2018/

IMDB: Beautiful Boy

HOLD THE DARK (full review at Screen Realm)

Hold The Dark is Jeremey Saulnier’s fourth film as director and is an adaptation of a novel by William Giraldi. Collaborating with Macon Blair (writer/director of the exceptional I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore) they bring us a slow burn, enigmatic thriller, saturated with violence.

After a young boy is taken by wolves outside his family home in rural Alaska, his mother, Melora Slone (Riley Keogh), writes to author and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) for help. She requests that he come to Alaska, track and kill the animal responsible for her son’s presumed death.  Russell agrees to assist and what follows is a film that takes us in unexpected and not always explained directions.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/hold-the-dark-movie-review-netflix/

IMDB: Hold The Dark

DEEP RISING (full article at Diabolique Magazine)

It's always exciting when you get to write for someone new, and this article on Deep Rising is my first time writing for the excellent Diabolique Magazine.

In 1997 a movie about a stricken ocean liner set the box office alight. Titanic, James Cameron’s historical fiction starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet romped to Oscar glory and monumental box office, changing the face of cinema forever. The following year, another imperilled ocean liner movie emerged… and it was better. It incorporated many elements that were sorely lacking in Titanic – namely sea monsters and lots of guns. And that movie was Deep Rising.

The plot is pure and innocent and beautiful in its simplicity. Somewhere in the South China Sea or “the middle of nowhere squared” according John Finnegan (Treat Williams), skipper of a small boat hired by a suspicious group of mercenaries, a luxury cruise ship called the Argonautica is on its maiden voyage. The mercenaries, led by Hanover (Wes Studi) and comprising a motley crew of great character actors like Jason Flemyng, Cliff Curtis and Djimon Hounsou are en-route to intercept the Argonautica and mess some stuff up. However, when they arrive at the rendezvous location they find the Argonautica adrift and deserted. As the crew investigate the desolate vessel they encounter several survivors including smarmy boat designer Simon Canton (Anthony Heald) and the fantastically named professional cat burglar, Trillian St. James (Famke Janssen). Together, they learn the cruise liner was the victim of an attack by a multi-tentacled deep sea leviathan, hell bent on gruesomely chowing down on everyone on board.

Read the full article at Diabolique:
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/deep-rising/

IMDB: Deep Rising

TERRIFIER

My second movie for Shocktober was Terrifier. I'm not sure why I dislike its particular brand of crass exploitation over say, Maniac, which I like very much. Perhaps because Terrifier can't decide if Art the Clown is mortal or supernatural and if there aren't any rules then there aren't any real consequences. While Art is a superbly nightmarish character - silent and freakish - and the movie is uncompromisingly violent, the kills are not scary. Terrifier does not terrify - it disgusts. It lingers too long on repugnant set pieces  and crosses a line into territory that's just generally unpleasant. Art's real successes are early in the film where he does little more than stare at people - in these moments of bizarre, stoic creepiness we get to be genuinely uncomfortable and Terrifier actually works quite nicely. The odd bit of warped, black humor also unnerves - when Art randomly honks a clown horn in the direction of a victim he cannot reach.

Otherwise Terrifier is largely just a collection of horrifying imagery draped over the flimsiest of plots. Again I've given a lot of thought as to why this doesn't sit right with me, when other horror movies concerned with imagery over plot (Baskin, for example) fall right into my wheelhouse. And I think it's because there's almost no thought process to Terrifier beyond wanting to gross you out. And even it's worst excess is an idea shamelessly lifted straight out of a better movie (naming it would spoil both films, so I will decline to).

Ultimately Terrifier feels like it had the tools at its disposal to become a really fantastic horror movie, but instead focused on gore at the expense of all else. The result is a largely plotless film that's also quite nasty.

IMDB: Terrifier

This review was also posted to Letterboxd