No One Will Save You

My Grey Heaven

No One Will Save You
Directed by Brian Duffield
USA 2023
Star Thrower Entertainment

Warning: Spoilers throughout.

Just a quick shout out to a movie from a couple of years ago called No One Will Save You and, also a bit of a warning because, in order to discuss this one properly, I think it’s necessary to talk about what happens at the end (most of the rest of the spoilers in here are just stuff you will figure out from the trailer). Also, I found out one of my comparisons I’m going to make, after I watched this and read the trivia section on the IMDB... well it turns out that Stephen King tweeted out the exact same connection to a specific episode of a specific TV show that had been in my mind when I was looking at this one. So glad I’m on the same page as everyone else here.

This is a movie about a young woman called Brynn (played by Kaitlyn Dever) who lives alone in her late parents large house, slightly remotely on the edge of a forest, a short bike or car ride from her local town (which she visits as little as possible). She is despised by a good deal of the population of the town for something which has happened in her past some ten or more years earlier. Something which Brynn has to live with every day.

And then, one night, as she is trying to sleep, she hears something downstairs. It’s a home invasion but, as she sneaks around trying to see who it is... she soon realises the question is not who but what’ is it? Which, as you’ll know if you’ve seen the trailer, is an alien. And not just any alien, this is obviously based on the greys (or Zeta Reticulans) of popular, modern UFO folklore (and don’t get me started... I gave up researching these guys years ago because of too many sleepless nights). That first night becomes a fight for survival but, survive Brynn does, after accidentally managing to kill said alien.

However, when she goes into town the next day, she finds signs that she’s not the only one who has been visited in the night. Indeed, not only does she change her mind about reporting it because of the reception she gets at the police station, but she’s chased by two humans who are obviously alien/human hybrids. And the rest of the film is about the second night, when more aliens come for her (and the rest of the local population).

Now I’ll get to that spoilery ending in a minute but, the film made me think of two specific sci-fi/horror tales of yesteryear. One of them is Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, based on the way aliens take control of humans with a living seed creature vomited from their mouths (in this case) into their victims. But the other thing was (and this is the thing Stephen King clocked too), the similarity to one of my top five episodes of The Twilight Zone, specifically The Invaders, which has a wonderful score by Jerry Goldsmith. That episode has a cast of one (Agnes Moorehead) and depicts a woman who is victim to a similar home invasion from teeny, tiny creatures. I won’t give the twist of that episode away (which is a humdinger) but, in order to make that twist work, there is no dialogue in the episode at all and it’s all set in the woman’s home.

Well, No On Wil Save You is definitely cut from the same cloth. The whole thing is practically wordless (other than a source song and some alien vocal sounds, there are only five words spoken throughout the whole film) and, asides from a few forest and town scenes, the majority takes place on Brynn’s property.

And it’s a well made suspenseful film, it has to be said. You will feel for the lead as she battles, with far inferior means, to stay out of the clutches of the aliens and, despite the revelations of what she did in the past, she’ll probably have your total sympathy (and that’s kind of the point in terms of leading to the ending of the movie too). And the greys themselves can be pretty terrifying, not just a one trick pony as they come in a variety of versions of increasing scariness. So there’s a definite feeling of unease as you watch Brynn fight for her life.

And so we come to the end... don’t read further unless you want to know.

By the end of the movie I felt kinda shortchanged by the conclusion... for all of thirty seconds... until I realised that this was a pretty good ending. When the aliens probe Brynn’s mind and discover how she’s repented for her accidental crime and had to live with the unforgiving towns folk, they spare her from being a human hybrid. Instead, with the planet now populated with human/alien hybrids, Brynn gets to live with them in her home town, teaching them how to be the best part of her human race, giving her a far easier and happier existence than when the Earth was populated by her own species. It’s kinda like what might have happened if the main protagonist of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers had let himself be reborn as an alien pod person, living in harmony (of a kind) with his fellow pod people... instead of what happened at the end of that movie. Here, Brynn has found her calling, continuing to live her life collecting doll houses for her diorama (where she watches her model townsfolk in a similar way to how the aliens hover in their flying saucers and monitor their new world) and teaching her new friends how to dance.

And that’s me done with that. No One Will Save You has a perfect ending for a pretty suspenseful film. Not the happy ending you might have wanted but, certainly a happy ending that Brynn deserved. And who needs humans anyway... horrible creatures. This one is definitely worth a watch, as far as I’m concerned.

Death Of A Unicorn

Unique Horn

Death Of A Unicorn
Directed by Alex Scharfman
USA/Hungary 2025
A24

Warning: Definitely some minor spoilers here.

Death Of A Unicorn is a bit of an unusual film, it seems to me. At first I thought it was a little like one of those movies that Hollywood sometimes churns out as being an ‘independent movie’ when it’s about as far from one as you could get on a truly independent budget… but the studio is still trying to sell it as a quirky, fun and unusual movie to appeal to a specific kind of audience. And I’d normally avoid such things if it weren’t for the fact that, despite seeming to try to be all those things so fiercely… it is, actually, also a genuinely quirky, fun and unusual movie.

The story involves the oft times brilliant Paul Rudd as Elliot, a lawyer who has been invited around to a hugely wealthy family’s retreat in the mountains to seal a deal to serve said family, with the pharmaceutical CO father of the family (played by Richard E. Grant) near death from cancer. He is also accompanied by his daughter Ridley, played by the equally brilliant Jenna Ortega (who was so good in Beeteljuice Beeteljuice, reviewed here). They are here for the weekend but, on the way, they accidentally hit a unicorn with their car and, after trying to kill it to put it out of its misery, Elliot and Ridley get sprayed in its blood. This has the effect of clearing Ridley’s skin condition and fixing Elliot’s vision so he doesn’t need his glasses (among other things). They stuff the fabled creature into the back of the car and Elliot tries to get in good with the family, consisting of Grant, Tea Leoni, Will Poulter and various servants and doctors including Jessica Hynes as a personal bodyguard/chief of security. Then the unicorn wakes up and is put out of its misery again with a gun shot to the head… before the family discover the medicinal properties of its ground up horn, which cures the father of his cancer. The unicorn then becomes their main concern as a money spinner but, the unicorn’s mum and dad are on their way to take revenge on the humans… among other things.

And it is a nice little film. I was torn at first because the villainous, shallow, filthy rich family are given such over the top performances by their respective actors that it just felt like they were all having too much of a good time hamming it up at the expense of the audience, for a while. However, I can only think this must have been a deliberate instruction from the director because the characters who are not ‘all about the money’ and who are more decent types, all seem to come across as naturalistic and genuine in comparison. Rudd is delicately balancing a half in/ half out relationship with the human antagonists and Ortega, as the voice of reason, anchors the film when things threaten to get overly pretentious with the majority of the rest of the cast. Ortega also has a special relationship with the unicorns, it turns out… I’ll leave you to discover that element of the film for yourself.

It’s also a film where the depiction of right and wrong in terms of where the characters’ respective moral compasses are set is not necessarily something that will save them from the wrath of the unicorns. A doctor played by Sunita Mani, for instance, definitely has the audience sympathies I would say, despite being torn between her own humanity and the best financial interests of the family. This doesn’t stop her from being despatched in a way which would mean the police, who discover the bloodbath at the end of the movie, wouldn’t have to look in a few different places to recover her remains.

The film is nicely shot and edited with some amazing visual effects. The unicorns are, I can only assume, fully CGI but they come across as great personalities… and mostly terrifying. This is a 15 rated film in the UK and for good reason. Don’t bring your kids along to this one because the unicorns are quite ferocious and you will see some nicely gnarly scenes of such things as unicorn horn impaling and people being ripped apart (sometimes a thrilling combination of both) or, for example, having their heads burst under hoof. These unicorns have more in common with the ones depicted in the second Shazam! movie (reviewed here) than anything you might get in kiddie literature.

Also, it has a quite nice ending with a little ambiguity, perhaps, as to the fates of a couple of the characters but with a sense of positivity and, in one character, a certain sense of redemption for what’s gone before. So I have to admit I quite liked Death Of A Unicorn, which I was lucky enough to see four days before it opened officially, at a special preview screening. Very much worth a watch, I would say.

A Working Man

Mortar Him
Than You Think

A Working Man
Directed by David Ayer
UK/USA 2025
Black Bear Films
UK Cinema release print

A Working Man is an adaptation of one of 12 novels featuring the character Levon Cade, as written by Chuck Dixon, who I know best as a comic book writer on the likes of titles like Batman, The Punisher and The Savage Sword Of Conan etc. Now I’ve not read the book this movie is based on so I don’t know how well it holds up as an adaptation but it makes for a great action vehicle for Jason Statham, who plays Levon here. The movie is also co-written by the director and Sylvester Stallone and, you could see how Stallone might have played this character at some stage of his career.

The thing is, if you’ve seen the trailer or, for that matter, any other major Jason Statham action films, you know exactly what you are getting and, yeah, this one does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. But that’s not a bad thing and an hour or two of The Stath in killing and rescue mode is usually quite entertaining.

So yeah. After he retired from the marines due to his wife killing herself and their daughter being taken into care by her grandfather (who’s not a great person it has to be said), Levon spends his time juggling a two hour a week visitation with his loving daughter, sleeping in his car and working on a building site as a well respected leader of a construction team owned by a family who believed in him and gave him a chance to work after his troubles. However, a higher up thug and his client in the Russian mafia, who secures/traffics young ladies to give to his clients, grabs the very clever daughter of this family, Levon’s work friend Jenny (played brilliantly by Arianna Rivas). And so his boss and wife plead for Levon to track down and bring back their missing daughter. It would probably surprise nobody if I then said the main protagonist goes on a killing spree to find the daughter and, yeah, that’s exactly what he does here. Hindered by people like Jason Fleming as a Russian oligarch and helped by his ‘blinded in combat’ weapons expert, fellow ex-marine friend Gunny (played by the always fun to watch David Harbour).

And what else can I say... it’s Statham doing what he does best, making it all look easy (although I bet he went home some days with bruises and abrasions at the very least) and doing a heck of a good job as a ferocious, kick ass killer with some great ways of flushing out the bad guys and getting the information he wants. And, although this should go without saying, the main lead is able to do all this stuff because he’s actually a damned good actor who knows how to make this kind of activity look believable and even credible.

The film is quite crunchy and brutal in its depiction of violence (although not especially gory... it’s a finer balance of elements, I think, to get the trade off right in an action movie, say, as opposed to a horror film) and, of course, you certainly know who the good guys and the bad guys are here. There’s perhaps one loose end I would have liked to have seen tied up and that comes from the first action sequence near the beginning of the piece. Here, Levon has to save one of his fellow workers from some heavy handed criminals in order to signal to the audience that the central character can, as they say in professional circles, kick ass. Now, I personally think that Jason Statham brings enough baggage with him that you don’t even need that kind of set up for him but, you know, this will always be someone’s first film with him in and, they do a fine job setting it up here. However, my loose end is that I would have liked to know why the guy on the construction site was in trouble and, you know, what could be done about it to ensure it doesn’t happen to him again. But the scene serves purely as an introduction to Levon’s ‘special set of skills’, as the saying now goes and, yeah, it's certainly fit for purpose on that count, at any rate.

So, a big action flick which doesn’t skimp on the action, has a central character who has his heart in the right place and a bunch of bad guys you won’t worry about coming to a bone crunching end. A Working Man certainly does the job when it comes to an action packed night at the movies and I hope the writers and lead actor consider adapting another one of the books in the series at some point.

The Case Against Reality

WYSIWYG Down

The Case Against Reality -
How Evolution Hid The Truth
From Our Eyes
by Donald D. Hoffman
Penguin
ISBN: 9780141983417

Just a very short shout out (because I’m not technically and scientifically minded enough to do a long review of something like this) to my annual ‘popular science book I read out of my comfort zone once a year’ (although this year it may well be two... some more brain stuff later in the year, hopefully), this one being Donald D. Hoffman’s book The Case Against Reality - How Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes. This is a book which sets out to prove... mainly using logic and scientific research... that the way we process reality through our senses is not only not actually giving us a good handle on what reality ‘looks’ like... but also not an objective perception colluding that well with what everyone else sees. In other words, the old acronym WYSIWIG applied to on screen interfaces for software standing for What You See Is What You Get, is similarly in no way a signal to what actually sits in the bucket of bolts you call a computer... but our personal interfaces with what we see as ‘space-time’, are all probably varying wildly from each other too, although at least relative to each other.

It’s not such a radical concept for me actually. Ever since I was a kid (and I assume I’m not alone in this, it’s a common question right?) I have challenged the idea that our perceptions could be different to each other. Specifically I’ve always wondered how I know that a colour I see is the same colour that somebody else sees. I mean, okay, we both call that same colour red because that’s what it’s called... but how do I know your actual perception of that colour isn’t the same as my green? And so on for every colour and every object in my perception of my external world.

Starting with the not so bold statement that “Your eyes will save your life today.”, Hoffman uses optical illusions, examples of such things as beetles trying to mate with bottles and the fact that our eyesight comprises of millions of photoreceptors and neurons perceiving blocks of photons interpreted in the brain by billions of neurons every time we open or move our eyes, to make a very convincing argument that our brain is deliberately tricking us into perceiving a subjective version of reality based on goals leaning towards fitness/survival rather than anything else we might imagine to be existing... such as an accurate picture of any physical reality (if indeed physical reality named as space-time even exists).

And however outrageous that might seem to a certain percentage of the population of this planet... he makes a very convincing case. A case which it would seem that all the different branches of science have finally come to conclude... although, it’s not something you’d hear being reported about on the evening edition of the news. So, although this may be a scary avenue for any reader to attempt to digest, all those different branches of scientific enquiry have been forced to conclude... hold on to your inconclusively perceived hats... that there is no such thing as ‘spacetime’. That reality as you think you know it does not exist... not that any of these sciences are exactly ecstatic to discover this because... a) it means everything is wrong... including physics such as explained by the likes of Einstein (again, I’ve heard that before in terms of physics but not for the same reasons) and b) we need some kind of alternative to physical reality to be able to base the next gazillion years of scientific enquiry on... and that alternative won’t come quickly, if at all.

And the writer gifts or curses the reader (depending on your point of view) with this information in a really charming, humorous and (for the most part) easily understandable manner. So you will encounter sentences like “If rocks have orgasms, they’re not letting on.” Or when speaking specifically about colour perception (or relative recognition at any rate), “Instead, you astutely enhance the distinctive oranges of the tiger, helping the tiger stripes to pop out visually from the brush, so that the tiger won’t pop out viscerally onto your torso.” So it’s one of those books which entertains as well as informs, for sure.

Some of the book lost me a little. There’s a whole chapter on modern studies of quantum physics which kind of left me behind but, there’s a heck of a lot which makes a lot of sense, I would say. For example, when discussing how our eyes shift constantly to help build and rebuild our very personal interface with the possibility of a real world (never expected I would come across the old ‘if a tree falls in a forest’ analogy in a book on scientific thought), I found my own metaphors to explain to myself how our eyes are constantly shifting to make detailed observations to translate into the illusion of reality. Namely, through one of my favourite music composers, György Ligeti... and how he uses micropolyphony, aka the constant and simultaneous use of very short notes repetitively going on over the top of each other to maintain an illusion of a series of long, sustained notes with no breaks in them at all. Or perhaps, indeed, the way that Philip Glass will sometimes use his cells of fast, repeated sequences of notes to create a shifting, tonal range which is actually giving you a slower melody in the foreground/background which is either something you are realising and are keyed into or something which is hitting your subconscious.

And that’s pretty much all I want to say about the wonderful reading experience that is The Case Against Reality - How Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes. It’s a brilliant and probably important book and some of you should certainly take some time to delve between it’s pages. Although, I will offer one slight criticism on my way out here. And that is... I know this is an important book because, hey, it’s under the Penguin imprint. So why then, especially in the chapter about Polychromy which also includes the importance of synaesthetic experience, should a British book put out by Penguin allow the terrible American spelling of colour, in the book as color, within it’s pages (yeah, okay spellcheck, I already knew I spelled it color just then, that’s the point). Just seems wrong and not something you’d want to teach the kids, it seems to me. Other than this though... fantastic book.

Cure

Xual Healing

Cure
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Japan 1997
Daiei/Eureka Masters Of Cinema
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers... in as much as I could make out.

Cure is a genre film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to the great Akira) but, having watched it and not fully understanding it... I’d have to say that I’m not sure just what genre it’s in for sure. Certain elements could (or maybe not) concede an almost supernatural bent like a ‘curse/virus’ movie... other interpretations may put it down to having slight science fiction elements. For me, I’m not sure what it’s correct interpretation really is... if indeed it has an intended one. All I am absolutely sure about is that it’s a thriller dressed up somewhat as a police procedural movie.

Now, I’ve only seen one other of this director’s similarly lionised works, Pulse (which I reviewed here) and, yeah, I really didn’t think much of it at the time. Cure, on the whole, is a film I appreciated a little more, I think... and it engaged me while, not quite giving me any kind of wrap up. Now, as a lover of foreign language films, I loved the slower pacing and the lack of spoon feeding of story conclusions but, I did feel a little short changed by this one. More, I think, because there is an extra set of loose threads which people seem to be ignoring, I think.

Okay... so the hook is brilliant. We see a murder which is ‘so not’ telegraphed and performed so casually and brutally (and out of the blue) that it almost acts like a jump scare, right at the start of the movie. A customer murders a prostitute with multiple blows to the head and then carves a big X in her chest/neck area.

Detective Takabe, played by superstar Kôji Yakusho, is called into the case with his ‘psychiatric advisor’ who is helping him on what turns out to be a series of murders he is investigating. Takabe finds the murderer hiding nearby in a hidey hole in the same apartment building’s corridor.

The reason Takabe has a psychiatric consultant is because this is the third victim in a spate of recent killings and in each case, the murderer is easily found nearby and, in each case, the victim has been mutilated and had an X carved into the same region on their body. And in each case, each different killer has no idea why they committed the crime and find the incident as strange as the police inspectors doing the investigating.

Takabe has problems with his wife, who we saw reading Bluebeard during her psychiatric appointment and, seemingly to me, demonstrating slight psychokinetic abilities. Meanwhile, a possibly amnesiac drifter called Mamiya (played by Masato Hagiwara) is encountering people and, it soon becomes clear, is hypnotising them into committing these crimes, which continue to punctuate the film in gruesome ways while the detective finally catches up with him.

A which point you begin to fear for the main protagonist, as well as his increasingly forgetful wife, who seems to be approaching an outward state not dissimilar to Mamiya herself. Things get blurry and it’s hard to tell, in the end, if Takabe has actually killed his wife, who he is currently entrusting to the hospital or, given the dreamlike nature of an earlier apparition of her suicide, whether she is even dead or not (at least that’s my interpretation).

Before I get to the ‘what the heck actually happened’ nature of the ending, I will say that it’s pretty nicely put together and has some beautifully designed frames. Often the director will focus on a person and their space in the middle third of a frame, through a doorway or opening with the walls in the foreground as two similarly thin slats on either side of it. At other times, such as an early beach scene, he moves away from the claustrophobia inducing, crowded slats of this style of framing and instead places his actors in isolation, small against a larger, more tranquil backdrop. So visually and also in terms of the acting, I certainly never got bored.

The ending is... somewhat open to interpretation and so, because I wanted to know if there was a definitive conclusion to be drawn from it, I read some other people’s interpretations. When a waitress serving food to Takabe picks up a knife to kill someone out of the blue, many people are concluding, perhaps correctly, that he has become the embodiment of Mamiya for himself. However, this seems to miss out a few things which might have made that a cut and dried interpretation of the story elements in this one.

Firstly, Takabe doesn’t seem to be actively trying to mesmerise anybody. Secondly, there have been some much stronger, psychokinetically induced (I believe) tremors of late in the hospital where Takabe’s wife is. And thirdly, I can’t quite work out what the connection between the novel Bluebeard and this series of, seemingly unconnected, wave of murders actually is. Fourthly, a number of people seemed to be priming the waitress for her potential action at the end of the movie... were they just asking her customer questions or is there a whole network of these people around?

I don’t know and, sadly, by this point I don’t care. What I do know, however, is that Cure is a pretty interesting film which probably deserves, to an extent, the following that it has in some countries. It’s perhaps a film which doesn’t inspire multiple revisits over a short span of time but it’s certainly something I may revisit someday and I liked it well enough. Worth a look sometime, if you are into late 1990s Japanese genre cinema (although what genre this one is actually in is still up for debate in this case, I feel).

Brotherhood Of The Wolf

Mani For Your Thoughts

Brotherhood Of The Wolf
aka Le pacte des loups
France 2001
Directed by Christophe Gans
Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: If you’ve not seen this one before, it contains spoilers. So if you’re not familiar with it, I would advise you don’t read this at all and go acquaint yourself with this amazing movie instead.

It’s been a long time since I last saw Brotherhood Of The Wolf and got reminded just how great a director Christophe Gans is. I first saw the movie back in 2001 at... I think a few places but I’m pretty sure one of those was the cinema known today as the Curzon Soho (I don’t remember if it was called that back then). I absolutely raved about how good it was then and I can’t believe that, to this day, it’s still not that well known a film over here in the UK (although I’m sure it did pretty good business for a French movie in the US at the time and certainly brought Gans some attention). And the cut at the cinema back then was significantly shorter. I remember I had to track down a North American release on DVD (I think it was a three disc edition) which was the only way I could get to see the extended directors cut, several months down the line from the cinema release.

And now, I’m happy to say, that a relatively recent UK release of that extended edition has arrived on Blu Ray in the UK and so I’m very happy to be reacquainted with the film which made such an impression on me 24 years ago. The events of the film are ‘inspired’ by the 1764 to 1767 killings by a creature known as the Beast of Gévaudan... many of the characters are versions of real life people (not Mani, I’ll get to him soon). But of course, this film is not a portrait of historical accuracy... it’s escapist entertainment and it couples exciting action with wonderful period detail, great cinematography and some remarkable acting talent. The film starts off with one of the principal characters about to be pulled out of his rich aristocrat’s home and nobbled by the mob during the Reign Of Terror period of the French Revolution. Before he goes out to meet his executioners, he writes down the ‘true story’ of the Beast of Gévaudan some decades before... and the film is the back story of when he met the two main protagonists of the film...

There’s Grégoire de Fronsac, an expert in flora and fauna who has been sent by the king to find and kill the beast which has the area in a grip of terror, played by Samuel Le Bihan. With him is his Mohawk Indian sidekick Mani, played by Mark Dacascos. It doesn’t take many minutes in the movie before you find out that Mani is an expert at some kind of athletic kung fu like martial art... in a wonderful early battle taking place in the rain and mud as the two arrive in the area at night and rescue two figures (who will have later import) from being beaten up by soldiers. Originally this fight scene also included Fronsac but it was edited down so that his own kung fu powers would be held back from the audience and brought into play when he, to quote a popular movie, goes on a roaring rampage of revenge after the death of Mani, later on in the last act of the movie.

And it’s a great tale as Fronsac meets several key characters played by the likes of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci. Bellucci plays an interesting character in this, entering the narrative about half way through, she plays the ‘star attraction’ in the local brothel and it’s only revealed later on to both Fronsac and the audience that it’s also her cover and she’s pretty much a lethal agent of the secret service. With her steel tipped, deadly hand fan and her restorative potions, I like to think of her as the head of Q branch from the Bond movies... or this film’s equivalent. And then there’’s an older lady who looked very familiar to me in this (once again) who I still couldn’t place so, I looked her up and, yeah, it’s Édith Scob, who regular readers here may best remember for her iconic, masked role in Eyes Without A Face.

The film itself is solid action entertainment with a masterful blend of cinematography, design and editing. Gans chooses to slow down some of the action and even slow and then pause certain sequences to enhance mini moments at certain points. This was early days for ‘ramping up and down’ in cinema at the time and it hadn’t worn out its welcome yet. This film uses the technique sparingly and to good effect (unlike some others, over time). It also has some nice moments such as the camera moving up Monica Bellucci’s naked body then merging into the following shot, with the topography of her flesh such as her breasts transforming into a moving camera shot of valleys and forest. It’s nicely done stuff.

Additionally, Gans uses a nice colour palette throughout... mostly employing a lot (and I mean a lot) of blue in everything and then occasionally stabbing against it with a shot of a another colour or using a shifting colour palette to give a sense of different settings.

There’s also a kind of retro spaghetti western feel to some of the fight scenes... or rather, some of the preludes to some of the fight scenes. Gans and his cinematographer like to pick on little details and cut into them (such as rain and water splashing in slow motion) but there’s also a sense of time slowing down and building, just like Sergio Leone might do as a prelude to a moment of violence. And Joseph LoDuca’s thrilling score certainly reflects this accent on occasion with what sounds like a Spanish guitar in places. I may be wrong on the instrument used for those scenes (what do I know about music?) but... either way, it has the same effect of heightening the tension before the explosive, physical release.

And it’s good stuff all round when it comes to Brotherhood Of The Wolf. This is still, to my mind, one of the ten best historical action movies ever made and it certainly shows off the artistry of the director to full effect. This is one that I’ll continue to gravitate back to over the course of my life for sure. The Studio Canal (not my favourite company) Blu Ray has a second disc of extras, most of which I think were on the old North American DVD release including some hefty deleted scenes. I’ll get to those again at some point but, yeah, if you’re still reading this and you’ve not seen this one (and you love cinema)... this is one of those movies that show you just what it’s all about in no uncertain terms.

The ReZort

Hi-Di-Die

The ReZort
Directed by Steve Barker
UK/Spain/Belgium 2015
88 Films

Warning: A spoiler towards the end of this one.

The ReZort is yet another film I picked up on DVD for free at FrightFest a number of years ago but, it’s also one of the better of the freebies I’ve received from them. Like the majority of films made around a zombie outbreak, this one seems pretty low budget (unless you’re getting into something like World War Z) but, it’s quite a solid one and has a great premise.

This one opens up with some ‘found footage’ of a TV crew which is incorporated into a news bulletin and, for a while I thought this would be the format overall... but it’s just for this prologue to the story, to explain the world of the movie. Which is this... there was a big zombie outbreak, a la George Romero, and everyone on Earth was at war with the undead. The humans won and are slowly recovering their mental health and social interactions post ‘holocaust’ but, out of that, when a business woman discovered an island full of zombies, she turned it into a holiday resort. Basically a kind of Westworld but where people pay exorbitant fees to have a holiday blowing away the undead in a completely safe environment. There’s also a charity which has tents full of refugees in the same neighbourhood. However, the news team rushes to get a closer look at the Island because something has gone wrong and the ‘Brimstone Protocol’ has been triggered, which means the resort wil be obliterated by bombs to stop any zombie infection escaping within the next twelve hours. What went wrong?

Then, after the title card, we go into normal 3rd person viewpoint camerawork, with graceful, smooth movements in contrast to the cold opening. We cut to 10 days earlier and meet one of the main leads, the apocalypse haunted Melanie (played by Jessica De Gouw) and her boyfriend Lewis (played by Martin McCann). Melanie is haunted by whatever experiences she had in the pandemic and so she buys tickets for her and her ex-military boyfriend to get a cathartic release shooting zombies on the island. Then we get a beautiful shot of the company’s speedboat from above, cutting through the ocean and dropping off Melanie, Lewis and assorted other guests at the island. Including a shady character called Sadie (played by Elen Rhys) and a natural leader (and excellent shot) called Archer (played by Dougray Scott).

The guests party and then are taken out for their first kills, one group of many doing exactly the same thing on the island, where zombies are chained to moving targets in a walkthrough compound, for example, or shot at in great numbers from a safe distance (and, of course, if you don’t hit them in the head, they’re completely reuseable over and over as targets). However, the night before they go out for their first time, Sadie, who turns out to be an ‘undead rights activist’ sneaks in behind the scenes, hacks the security and swipes some files with all the statistics of the island, not realising that she has been set up and she is also downloading a nasty virus in the process. A virus which, inevitably, takes hold when everyone is out on their hunting parties. Very quickly, all the zombies get loose, eat most of management and go on the rampage. The aforementioned Brimstone Protocol is unleashed and the dwindling survivors have to try and make their way to safety before the island is bombed.

That’s the basic set up and the rest of the film follows Melanie, Lewis, Sadie, Archer and a few others as the usual stress dynamics play out while they are all trying to help each other get off the island. But it’s pretty entertaining and, while the low budget shows a little, perhaps, it’s extremely well executed and the zombies and the ‘shoot in the head and move on’ modus operandi of almost every post 60s zombie film is all nicely represented. There are the usual suspenseful, ‘sneaking around’ moments, coupled and punctuated with the usual ‘everybody run while we switch to hand held camera’ sequences and it’s all very nicely staged. It also makes the smart call and keeps it simple enough that it doesn’t go outside its original set up... apart from a nice revelation which, to be fair, I saw coming right from the start...

At some point in the film, the surviving few humans discover that the near unlimited supply of zombies in the resort are being topped up with deliberately infected numbers of the refugees, the charity being in on it for the profits also. But that’s a nice piece of satire and, although the film is already ten years old, it couldn’t be more relevant in the UK right now, where the recent coronavirus pandemic is fresh on everyone’s minds and you wonder if the current government might have also solved their ‘refugee crisis’ with a simlarly brutal tactic (which is possibly not far from the truth when you think of what the last government have been doing regard to Rwanda and so forth).

So that’s me done on The ReZort, I think. Except to say that the last minute appearance of a second human survivor from the island wasn’t something I was buying at all, considering the impossible odds he had when he sacrificed himself for one of the other characters. Still, I really enjoyed this one and it’s always nice to add another competently made romp of a zombie movie to the list. Definitely worth a look if zombies are your thing.

The Millionaires Express

Off The Rails

The Millionaires Express -
Extended International Cut
aka Foo gwai lip che
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Sammo Kam-Bo Hung
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

The Millionaires Express is directed by and also starring legendary Hong Kong comedy/action actor/director/producer Sammo Hung. He’s not the reason I’m watching this one though... it’s also the third film to star Cynthia Rothrock. Well, I say star but in truth she plays a minor role and really only has about three scenes in it. But this includes a nice fight scene with Hung himself at the end... more on that in a little while.

Okay, so the film is set in the early 20th Century and it’s a very convoluted plot. It’s not completely hard to follow but it has absolutely loads of characters and at least five different sets of interested parties (including large numbers such as the mountain bandits who Rothrock is a part of) intersecting on the path of a train... the titular Millionaires Express... in order to steal a map held by three Japanese samurai, which leads the way to the Terracotta Warriors ‘resting place’. And it’s quite convoluted and has lots of things going on. For instance, in the first 15 minutes of the film, Sammo Hung falls into an army trap in the snowy wastelands, dances in drag, escapes by using stolen explosives but then finds himself recaptured by a bounty hunter, who he escapes from with the two fighting and forming a giant rolling snowball... all this just to set up the quality of the kind of ‘honourable rogue’ Hung’s character is and also to highlight the bounty hunter before he returns for the final third of the film.

And from then on, the twists and turns of the narrative continue in a convoluted manner and, because it’s also a comedy, there’s lots of farce and physical humour throughout too. Not always so broad that it almost defeats the main narrative... such as it does in films like The Inspector Wears Skirts, to a certain extent (review coming soon)... but enough that you never get bored with the film at any rate.

Every character (and we’re well into double figures in main characters here folks... it seems to me), has their own story and stake in the narrative objective and the director manages to explore them all while still keeping a certain amount of action going. The setting, although its obviously supposed to be taking place in China, also borrows the tropes of the Western genre... in fact, the film very much seems to be taking some of its influences from Italian Westerns of the mid to late 1960s, it seems to me (which in turn looked back at Japanese chanbera, some of which looked back at the US westerns anyway, to an extent).

It’s a fun ride and Sammo Kam-Bo Hung does come across as a likeable chap, as he tries to redeem himself and make more profits for the town where he once lived. To this end, he manages to blow up the rails and stop the train just at the edge of his town so the place can profit from the many passengers for the duration of this unscheduled stop. And it’s here where the last 20 minutes or so of action take place, as all the main interested parties take place in a battle royale, with the camera cutting between various protagonists and antagonists for a very well choreographed and satisfying end game.

It’s in this final battle where Hung and Cynthia Rothrock have their final show down but, after the former has shown the latter his superior fighting skills, he lets her go and its revealed in the dialogue that she was once one of his followers... I think. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of that scene in Yojimbo where Toshiro Mifune lets a young thug live and escape rather than snuff out the life of someone who should never have got mixed up with the wrong people in the first place (even Tarantino had a moment clearly influenced by that scene in the House Of Blue Leaves section of Kill Bill Vol. 1). But Rothrock, who was suffering from a leg injury at the time of filming, certainly gives as good as she gets in the fighting stakes and she comes off pretty well here.

And there are so many other actors in this who turn up in a lot of these Hong Kong action films and are recognisable from a lot of them. I don’t know their names but, heck, there are a lot of ‘known’ actors in this and the whole film has the kind of epic feel of a Sergio Leone epic, for sure... when it’s not trying to be too slapstick, it has to be said. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Millionaires Express and I’ll certainly try to give this one another watch sometime in the future.

Trust Your Market Place - 15th Anniversary Post

My 15th Anniversary Blog

Trust Your Market Place

Well that makes 15 years of the NUTS4R2 blog.

As regular readers will know, I don’t usually do an actual review on anniversary blogs or posts ending with a 00 number. So this time I thought I’d talk about something which really annoys me about the decisions, presumably economically minded decisions, in the world of the boutique media labels.

We’re in a golden age of physical media right now and collectors and modest film fans alike have never had it so good. And this isn’t an attack on the boutique labels and, as you’ll know from my recent 2700th post (right here), I love what these labels are doing, but, seriously, they need Paddington Bear to come along  and give some of them a long hard stare when it comes to releasing only partial series’ of films…

I was in Fopp records about 8 weeks ago when I saw that the 88 Films label had put out a Blu Ray of Erotic Ghost Story, which had somehow escaped my attention. I know nothing about the film but I’m always happy to learn about any cinematic history which involves supernatural shenanigans combined with naked, sexy ghost ladies. All well and good but, literally a week or two after I’d bought it, 88 Films announced a box set (already on the shelves now for a few weeks) of the Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy. What can I say? If I’m learning about sexy gals n’ ghosts then I really need to stretch that degree to a masters but… why the heck did they put out a single edition when a box set was in the works? To punish people who bought the single edition and make them double dip… again?

Similarly, let’s look at Arrow films (who are great but also do seem to be all about money for old rope these days)… I was fortunate enough to grab their box set of all four Psycho films pretty much the week it was released. Lucky me then because, literally a couple of weeks after, it was already unavailable and Arrow had reissued it as a Psycho Sequels box set, excluding the first movie. What the heck? Who would want that without the first film? And sticking with Arrow, they’re about to make me double dip with the ‘badly described because none of these films feature the same characters’ Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy. But here’s the thing, instead of releasing it as a box set as you might imagine would be the best format to release these films, they’re stupidly releasing it as three single editions, one per month. I mean, what the heck? And don’t get me started on their missing film from their Coffin Joe box set... I mean, I’d almost rather they didn’t issue any of them if they’re going to have one missing.

Eureka Masters Of Cinema are another much respected label doing some bizarre ‘odds and ends’ releases too. I got hold of their Mr. Vampire release one year and, the very next year, they released a Mr. Vampire sequel set of the other ones closely (but still somewhat loosely) related to that movie. I’ll get to why I think they and 88 Films have been doing this stuff to us in a minute but… let me just reel off another couple of examples for you…

I’ve been saying to my friends (and anyone who will listen) that, with all these gazillions of Shaw Brothers releases seeing the light of day on Blu Ray these last few years, somebody should put out a box set of one of the jewels in their crown, the four Monkey movies based on the Chinese tome Journey To The West (best known over here in the UK from the Japanese TV show adaptation called Monkey, in the 1980s). It seems to me that a box set like this would be like a licence to print money. Monkey money. Well, the Australian label Impact has just released three Shaw Brothers movies into the wild, similarly themed but in single editions and… one of them is the first Monkey movie. I mean… what? Surely they must realise their target audience for these will be happy to pay out for all four in a nice slipcase? What the heck?

Let’s turn our attention to Severin Films now. Severin, for a while now, have been putting out huge boxed editions covering subjects like Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Folk Horror, Black Emanuelle and even Psychotic Women. And for years now, I’ve been wondering why they or someone else hasn’t put a Russ Meyer box set out onto the market, which would surely sell well? And Severin would, of course, be the perfect fit for those films… except… a few months ago, Severin put out Meyer’s Vixens, SuperVixens and Beneath The Valley Of The UltraVixens as single editions… with a couple more single editions following a month or so after that. What’s going on? Surely they must know a box set would get even more bucks in for them?*

One last example before I carry on... Curzon cinemas have their own Blu Ray label that releases ‘comprehensive’ box sets covering directors (their words, not mine) and lovely things they are too. Why then do their box sets for Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier both have at least one film missing? What’s the point of that then?

Okay then...here’s what I think is going on in some of these cases (or slipcases). Single editions before boxed versions such as Mr. Vampire, Erotic Ghost Story and The Monkey Goes West may well be testing the waters to see if anyone wants to buy them. But come on, trust your market place people! The kinds of customers who buy this stuff, even it’s a blind buy, known their movies and have done their research. They are as likely to splash out on a boxed edition as they are a single edition. And in the case of someone like me, less likely to buy the single editions. For example, I’ve never bought Blu Ray editions of The Exorcist or Trancers movies because I can’t find them all in the same boxed venue. I dont want to have to do the work tracking down different distributor’s versions around the world because legal can’t get all the films in one place. So deal me out, there are a gazillion other films already taking up my time and valuable shelf space.

And if it is a case of testing the financial waters on a release before repackaging it with the sequels... sure, some people will buy it but, there are just as likely going to be people who won’t because they’re optimistic a box set will be coming down the line at some future point. In which case, you’re just not getting an accurate reading on how well the full monty would do on the shopfloor (real or virtual).

So yeah, my message for my 15th Anniversary post is... please labels, trust your customers a little. We want the movies you’re putting out, for sure, but we want them all in one place, properly curated. Definitive editions are definitely the way to go with these things. Anything else just leads to customer frustration.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog over the years... thanks very much. Normal service will return again tomorrow.


* Since writing this last week, I’ve listened to one of their always excellent Severin Podcasts which explained that, due to their growing relationship with the rights holder and the rigid art direction and production of these coming from the estate, the Russ Meyer titles are not something they can get all the licences for, at present. So that lets them off the hook as far as those are concerned and let’s just be happy with what they managed to achieve.

In The Lost Lands

Go Ask Alys

In The Lost Lands
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Germany/Canada/USA 2025
Constantin Film
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilers.

This film is better than I thought it would be. I quite like director Paul W. S. Anderson’s movies but I find him a bit hit and miss. He seems to produce, write and direct a lot of films starring his wife Milla Jovovich and here she stars as the main character, Gray Alys, in his adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s short story In The Lost Lands. I’m used to some of the invention found in Martin’s Wild Cards mosaic novels and you can find my reviews of some of the more recent tomes in that series in my book section of the index page of this blog. I haven’t read this one though so, I can’t tell how good of an adaptation it is. I would assume though, since it’s a short story, that it is at the very least an expansion of the original material.

Gray Alys is a witch (a real one with real magical powers) who has lived for hundreds of years after the world as we know it has been wiped out. Yeah, that’s right, it’s a post apocalyptic spin on the heroic fantasy genre. In this future, everyone on the planet lives in one city, ruled jointly by a vindictive and evil religion (presumably Christian or Catholic or, probably a blend of both) plus the true Overlord and his Queen (played by Amara Okereke). And of course, the church wants all the power and are trying to seem subservient to the ‘royalty’ while looking for opportunities to seize the throne.

But the queen wants something, so she goes to Alys (who has already escaped being hung by the lead enforcer of the church, played by Arly Jover, at the start of the movie) to hire her to bring her the power to become a shape shifting werewolf. So Alys hires a hunter and guide, played by one of this generation’s undersung actors, David Bautista... and they go into the lost lands (where the ruined tower blocks and power plants of the former civilisation still stand) to kill a fierce werewolf who lives in the wilderness, so Alys can steal his power with her supernatural ways, to bestow upon the queen. And, of course, the church enforcer is hot on their heels, adding to their opponents along with a bunch of demons and so on.

But nothing is quite as it seems and, as Gray Alys warns every customer who she agrees to help, there are always consequences to the desires of those who seek her out. Which leads to a very nice narrative twist near the end of the film that I actually didn’t see coming.

And it’s a pretty well crafted movie. Lovers of both Italian post-apocalyptic movies of the 1980s and various heroic fantasy movies will more than likely find this one to be quite a nice entry into those sub-genres. Jovovich, Bautista and their supporting cast are all absolutely brilliant in this, with the enforcer being a character you will quickly learn to hate. So you’ll be rooting for them through the whole movie but, yeah, it has many twists and turns and all of Alys’ customers are somewhat surprised as to where their requests lead them. 

And, typically for a film from this husband and wife directing/acting team, it’s filled full of action and with the odd nice idea thrown in to keep the ‘road movie’ quest narrative lively and never dull. There are a few silly bits thrown in for good measure too. For instance, when the two leads are fighting for their lives in and on the top of an old, moving cable car, a few religious villains have jumped onto the car before it makes its trip... this doesn’t stop them somehow having to fight around twenty of said villains who seem to keep springing from the roof or sides of the car. I guess this is the modern equivalent of... ‘don’t count the shots in those old Westerns where they’re using six shooters’... just go with the vast numbers and have some fun.

My one big problem with it, which is completely conjecture but I suspect I’m right... is that you can tell the film has had its conclusion altered to fit ‘happy ending’ Hollywood expectations. The ending is grim and ugly... and then suddenly freezes frame and cuts away to a more agreeable resolution for the two main characters. Using, if I’m not mistaken, footage of them culled from material shot for earlier scenes in the film. Which is a shame because, it’s a rubbish ending which allows for a sequel but feels like it betrays the story somewhat.

Other than this slight crimp, though, I thought In The Lost Lands was a fine film in its genre with stand out performances, surprisingly competent and understandable editing (albeit the constant adding of villains where they couldn’t be in that cable car scene), a nice gimmick of visually counting down the number of days to the full moon (Alys’ self imposed deadline to coincide with the shape shifter’s rota) and a nice score by ex-Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger which, surprise surprise, hasn’t been given a proper CD release at time of writing. But the film is nicely done so maybe add this one to your list.

Black Bag

Unauthorised Item
In The Bagging Area

Black Bag
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA 2025
Focus Features
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Steven Soderbergh retired from directing in 2013. Since then he’s directed another 11 movies plus assorted TV shows and one can’t help but think that he’s more prolific now than before he made that statement. In fact, this is the second cinema release to be written by David Koepp and directed by Soderbergh this year and it’s only March (the first being Presence, released at the end of January and reviewed here).

And, like the aforementioned Presence, his latest opus Black Bag is absolutely brilliant. A startling and intense, emotionally claustrophobic thriller which seems to be an homage to the best of the cold war spy movies of the 1960s. I’ll give a couple of the references as I run through this review. .

The always interesting Michael Fassbender plays British intelligence agent (that’s spy to you and me) George Woodhouse, which is surely not a coincidental first name as a reference to George Smiley in a number of John LeCarre’s famous books (not to mention a character appearing in a number of movie adaptations of them). He is married to Kathryn St. Jean, a similarly high ranking spy who is played by the always amazing Cate Blanchett. Both are playing very muffled versions of themselves here, as two very cautious denizens of the global spy network. Both relying on the spy term ‘black bag’ as an area of their work lives which are off limits to talk about in their marriage, due to authorisation levels and ‘need to know’ status.

After hearing that one of five in his organisation is a traitor putting a huge number of lives at risk, with his wife being one of that list, George invites all the names to a dinner party at his and Kathryn’s home, with a little spiking of some of the ingredients, to loosen tongues and behaviour (a choice which leads to some more than inflammatory behaviour between the guests). These guests are played by Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page and the always brilliant Naomie Harris.

As the seeds of suspicion grow, the emotionally aloof and icy George starts exploring the twists and turns of the plot which features a device which could kill untold millions of people, called Severus. This includes suspicion and shadow thrown onto the head of the department, played by Pierce Brosnan. Shenanigans ensue and lovers of non-Bond sixties spycraft movies of the mostly British variety will love this suspenseful and well written thriller.

Well directed too, with Soderbergh directing, shooting and editing (using his mother’s name as a pseudonym) an intriguing concoction of thriller and ‘will he or won’t he shoot first and ask questions later’ style tension, as George moves ever closer to the solution of the problem (once he’s figured out that at least two people have been set up, including himself).

And it’s a damn near perfect movie, it has to be said.

The pre-credits sequence, filmed in a number of locations in London in one take (or appearing to be at least but, I suspect, just well staged and rehearsed and done in one take, as George arrives at a location and wanders a few floors of a busy bar until being led out somewhere else) with the camera firmly following George from behind, with his face hidden for this sequence.

Then, as we go into the credits, we see another major influence of the film as George prepares the meal in a way reminiscent of Michael Caine’s breakout role of Harry Palmer in The IPCRESS File, the first of his three movies playing the nameless character from Len Deighton’s famous spy novels. George even wears the exact same type of NHS spectacles which were synonymous with the Harry Palmer personality throughout the entirety of this movie. Soderbergh just couldn’t resist wearing his influences on his celluloid-like sleeve here.

The actors are all incredible in this, with an actress I don’t know, Marisa Abela, being particularly stand out as a young recruit who is perhaps a little too sensitive for the brutal world of international espionage. And she plays perfectly in a film which is, to be fair, only using the genre trappings of the spy movie to explore the depths of deception, loyalty and trust inherent in relationships, especially those in the spy game where the ‘black bag’ manifestation can be seen as a fallback to cover a multitude of sins, such as hiding a sexual affair.

Indeed, this is further explored in a scene which crosscuts between multiple subjects in a polygraph test.* A sequence which has been done to death in so many movies by this point that it’s become a very obvious cliché but, luckily for the audience, is executed to perfection here and which even gives some of the characters a little more depth than they had before this scene.

The ruse of the ‘gun on the table’ game towards the end of the movie will not surprise many people in the audience as to the intent of such an item on an open table but in terms of the surface story revelations as to the identity of the traitor in the ranks, it may well come as a surprise. Just like an Italian giallo trying to remain inscrutable by throwing motives at every single member of the cast, the traitor in this one could be anyone... even George. So when the traitor is finally revealed, coupled with the fortification of one character deciding not to kill that person when they had the chance to earlier in the film, it is somewhat surprising but, by that point there’s not much at stake in terms of the ultimate identity of said treacherous individual. And the film has a nice little punchline in terms of the secretive personal motivations of other characters in the narrative.

So there you have it. Black Bag gives us a  brilliant set of performances in a well written and directed motion picture which includes a very nice score by David Holmes, sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. This one is a full-on recommendation from me, especially for those lovers of cold war thrillers from days gone by. 

*Fun fact: The original lie detector test was invented by Professor William Moulton Marston who created and wrote the Wonder Woman character for comics in the 1940s. It's also why she has a 'rope of truth'. For more information, see my review of Professor Marston And The Wonder Women right here.

The Gorge

 

Gorgeoumaflip*

The Gorge
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK/USA 2025
Apple

Warning: All the spoilers.

The Gorge is a new film made specifically for a streaming TV channel… which is not my favourite way to view a new motion picture, for sure.

It stars Miles Teller as Levi, an ex-marine sniper, one of the top five in the world, who takes jobs on a freelance basis but doesn’t really care much for doing anything anymore. But he’s called in by, he assumes, his government to do a job briefed by a higher up, somewhat shady private contractor (played by Sigourney Weaver), after it’s established he has no loved ones or family ties. His job is to spend a year in one of two towers overlooking opposite sides of a gorge in an undisclosed location (which is never revealed but the film was shot in Scotland, I believe).

What he doesn’t know, but given the nature of the questions asked at his mini briefing the audience will surely rumble this five minutes before it happens, is that each previous agent being relieved after their year of guarding the gorge is shot dead and dumped in said valley by their pick up helicopter. And so Levi begins his one year tour of duty, knowing that an agent from ‘another side’ will be guarding the gorge from the opposite tower. Each can see each other through their binoculars but they are forbidden to communicate.

Manning the other tower is Lithuanian sniper assassin Drasa, played by one of my favourite modern actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy… who is even better at her job than Levi, it would seem. And, of course, over the year they bond through writing messages and playing chess etc through their binoculars, slowly falling in love. But they also have to defend themselves and each other when the ‘occupants’ of the valley try to get out of the gorge. And those occupants are pretty terrifying, presenting as kind of half decayed/half regrown vegetable textured soldiers (and horses) left over from the Second World War.

Of course, after a while, Levi finds a way of crossing the valley on a zip line so the two can ‘couple up’ but when he tries to return, he falls into the gorge and, naturally, Drasa parachutes in after him, armed to the teeth.

And in the gorge are what the very first guard in 1941 dubbed, The Hollow Men, named after the T. S. Eliot poem. And then, via a film canister marked up ‘God Forgive Us’ they find that the zombie creatures are fungal resurrections of soldiers resulting from experiments approved by the US, UK and Russian government, collaborating during the war. One which got out of hand when the viral agent used contaminated and engulfed the researchers too. So Levi and Drasa decide that this can’t go on, with private companies still trying to study and create these super soldiers… and so they try to stay alive long enough to destroy the gorge, despite Sigourney Weaver and a few goons arriving in a helicopter to kill them.

And, yeah, it’s a pretty nice film. The special effects work and designs of the undead soldiers and their equally sinister and vegetative environment is apparently based on the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, who I’d not heard of before this but I think I need to check his work out now (he reminds me a little of my favourite artist H. R. Giger). They’re quite terrifying, it has to be said and pose a real, credible threat to the two main protagonists of the film.

So all that’s great and the acting is pretty solid as well which, to be fair, I would expect from those two leads. And things are eerily and propulsively supported by the score from the popular duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross… sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. All in all I think it’s a well put together film which would have been much better served by an initial cinema release. I do, however, have two slight criticisms, which I’ll get into now…

Firstly, it could do with some trimming. It’s a long film and I think it would have had much more impact if a few of the lengthy combat scenes towards the end of the picture were whittled down a little more.

Secondly, it’s full of terrible Hollywoodland clichés geared to making it all seem sunny and happy in its outcome. Two things in particular annoyed me. One is getting the human villain helicoptered out to the gorge so she can be brought to violent justice… I really could have done without that, to be honest. And similarly, the seemingly impossible happy ending ripped straight from The Bourne Identity remake is not the most credible, to be honest. I would have had a ‘wake up dreaming that happy ending as a mutated monster on a laboratory table’ kind of rug pull rather than the way it’s left here which, like I said, really does strain credibility.

But there you have it, these things happen and I don’t think they detract too much from a movie which, I’ll say it again, really should have been given a theatrical release rather than being relegated to a barely watched streaming channel. The Gorge is definitely worth a watch if you like sci-fi action thrillers with a dash of romance. Maybe give it a go sometime.

*Okay, that title was meant for one specific person who I know reads this blog. For everyone else, you can take Into The Valley Of Death as an alternate title.

Mickey 17

You’re So Fine
You Blow My Mind
Over 16 Times, Hey...

Mickey 17
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
South Korea/USA 2025
Warner Brothers
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilerage.

Okay... so I don’t mind a bit of Bong Joon Ho but I’ve only ever been totally blown away by him once and that was for his brilliant giant monster movie The Host. His new film, Mickey 17, is pretty much what I expected from him, to be honest (on the strength of the trailer) and I had a pretty good time with it while, not being too taken with it at the same time.

The premise is that, in the not too distant future, a failed buffoon of an American politician played by Mark Ruffallo, satirically playing him as a kind of amalgam of Trump and Musk (which is not a hard stretch to amalgamate the two, to be fair), accompanied by his wife (played by the ever reliable Toni Collette) and a huge starship full of colonists is off to found the colony of Nipple-heim on the planet of their choice. On board they take an expendable, who is a guy who can be reprinted from recycled rubbish and implanted with all his former memories... and his job is to be the ‘canary in the cage’ for the mission. If you can imagine a canary in a cage which is deliberately killed with agonising and sometimes slow death on purpose, to develop vaccines and so on, in the field.

The current Mickey is Mickey 17 and he’s played by an actor I’m not all that enamoured of, Robert Pattinson... although he does a great job here playing the title character (with a Jerry Lewis voice) and his copies, who all exhibit slightly different personalities. And we start off with him accidentally dropping into a perilous, non-survivable position, about to be eaten by creatures and being abandoned by his pal, played by Steven Yeun. From this point we flash back to get the back story as to why Mickey decided to volunteer to be an expendable in the first place, before we catch up to it again a short time later.

Meanwhile, the somewhat more over-confident (to the possible point of being almost psychotic) Mickey 18 has been 'printed'. However, Mickey 17 is instead saved by the native creatures and when he returns to the ship and to his girlfriend played by Naomi Ackie (who is more than happy to have two Mickeys to sleep with at the same time), he is now an illegal ‘multiple’.

And things get worse when the indigenous, slug/armadillo-like population are gathering to take revenge on a president who is allowing his wife to use their tails to make sauces for her cooking projects. It all gets quite gripping and suspenseful with each twist and turn and it certainly doesn’t get dull.

Pattinson and the cast are all good with some nice framing and editing going on. There are some nice ideas too, such as Mickey’s memories being backed up onto a brick etc and the 3D cloning printer jerking back and forth in the process of making a new Mickey (like a photocopier going back for another scan pass). And it is full of ideas, somewhat reminiscent of the kind of things Philip K. Dick would have been writing about in the 1950s and on to the end of his career for sure.

My biggest problem with the film is that, for all the ideas on show and explored throughout the fairly lengthy narrative, nothing really surprising ever happens. Even the somewhat benevolent nature of the alien life form on the planet is kinda telegraphed early on in the movie and so, to me at least, the film becomes more of an exercise in pulling the various narrative threads together into a sustained story without really coming off the rails. The film changes tonally on the drop of a dime, so to speak, weaving between moving drama and high comedy but, that stuff seems to fit okay together for the most part and... I dunno, it’s a good film but not a great one, is what I left the cinema thinking. I mean, I could let another ten or twenty years go by without ever visiting it again. That being said, I don’t know what it’s like as an adaptation of the book Mickey7 by Edward Ashton but it feels like it’s a novel I should definitely sit down and read at some point. Just to see how different it is and if the book is, maybe, more subtle than the big screen version.

And that’s me about done on Mickey 17, I think. It’s an okay film with some big concepts, great special effects and some nice acting choices. If you like science fiction (as opposed to just space opera) then you should have an okay time with it. An easy one to recommend but don’t expect anything much more than what it says on the tin, in this one.

The Rig Season 2

Oil Be Back

The Rig
Series 2
6 episodes Jan 2 2025
UK Wild Mercury Productions

I had a lot of good things to say about the first series of The Rig, not least of which came down to the excellent acting skills of the ensemble cast including stand out performances from the likes of Iain Glen, Emily Hampshire, Owen Teale and Martin Compston. I also said I was unsure why the series was left open ended on a cliff hanger of sorts and, considering the title of the show, after the giant tsunami is released, surely the only place the helicopters carrying the survivors could possibly go is to another rig. Which is, it turns out, exactly what happens.

This one is a bigger, luxury rig which can also move itself around if needed but the majority of the surviving ‘extras’ from the first show are taken back to civilisation after signing problematic gagging orders by the company that is trying to end ‘the ancestor’, as the Cthulhu-like presence beneath the sea has been dubbed in the first series.

The problem with this second series is that, asides from the acting, it doesn’t really have a lot further it can push forward on the science fiction/horror element of the show, it seems to me. So we have the two characters played by Owen Teale and Rochenda Sandall going back to the broken, post tidal wave UK to look for Sandall’s character’s wife while the main cast from the last one are playing survival games on the new rig. That is to say, the human villain, Coke (played by Mark Addy) is trying to stop the mysterious species beneath the ocean while the crew of the previous rig are trying to stop him.

Now, don’t get me wrong... it’s fast paced, very dramatic and never gets boring at all. A pretty entertaining package all around, I would say... but it’s nothing really new it’s showing us here from last time around. At least not enough, I would say, to justify a second series. Also, the creature itself, while not in the background, certainly takes a seat far from the action for the most of the six episodes. None of the Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers style shenanigans in this series and the element of threat seems almost gone. It’s brought in every now and again but this second go round is more about the politics and butting heads of the various human cast trying to stop each other before it’s too late. This includes famous actress Alice Krige coming in as one of the big bosses of the company running the rigs. And, her character goes through a similar arc to what the underused (in this second series) Iain Glenn had to go through in the first one... coming out on the right side before the end of the last episode while the ambiguity of the allegiances of the character are explored by all and sundry.

The music is somewhat off in this one, I thought... at least in that you can kind of hear the temp track coming through and bleeding into the original score. I would be completely unsurprised if bits of Philip Glass alongside the main theme from The Terminator were used to temporarily score the rough cut of this show with, as the music feels more than just a little reminiscent of these too in certain areas.

Having said all that, big shout out to an actress called Molly Vevers in this. She’s a secondary character and doesn’t get all that many scenes but she’s got huge screen presence in the bits and pieces she’s in and she should be getting more work, I think. For this reason alone, I’m kind of hoping the series gets renewed for a third season at some point soon... while the story can easily be finished here, there’s a weird, last shot coda which I’m not entirely sure about (okay... I admit I didn’t understand what’s going on there and kinda don’t care truth be told) but The Rig has a good cast so I hope it gets picked up again.

And I don’t have much more to say about this one, I’m afraid. It was much ado about nothing but I still enjoyed it for what it was so would certainly be a part of the audience for a third part, if it comes up.

The Last Showgirl

Off The Razzle

The Last Showgirl
Directed by Gia Coppola
USA 2024
Picturehouse Entertainment

Once again, one of the famous Coppola clan takes to directing. This is not Gia Coppola’s first movie but, it’s the first one I’ve personally heard of directed by her.

The Last Showgirl is an interesting piece, starring Pamela Anderson as an ageing showgirl dancer for a casino in Las Vegas. Her friend, an ex-performer and cocktail waitress there, is a harridan of a woman with too much make-up and an irresponsible side to her, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who also does remarkably wel here… although Pam is absolutely the star of this one, in what is possibly her best acting role she’s ever performed. Once again she is pigeon-holed a little into a dumb blonde kind of role but, in this case, one who has a lot of knowledge and interest in her art. But wrestling simultaneously with trying to repair an estranged relationship with her daughter (played by Billy Lourd), looking after some of the other showgirls (to an extent) and struggling, as always, to pay the bills.

Then, one day, their show runner, played by the always incredible David Bautista, breaks the news that the show, Razzle Dazzle, is being ditched after a 38 year run (Pam’s character has been working it there for almost that long) and they have only three weeks to go before their last show and, definitely in the case of Pam’s character Shelly, a future of probable unemployment.

The film starts off strongly with the intro to an audition that Shelly has to put herself through to try and get work, before the opening credits roll and then flashing back to just before the girls hear the news the show is closing and spending almost all of the movie catching up to that devastating audition. And it’s very good. All the actors are top notch including the aforementioned Pamela Anderson (and check out her recent Criterion Closet entry on YouTube if you have a mind to). And, yeah, everyone is just so good in this, somewhat low key set of incidents but, a special shout out to Bautista who really is one of his generation’s best actors. I first realised this in his performance opposite Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis (reviewed here) and, yeah, what he does with his facial expressions and the way he reigns in his physical presence to make himself seem like a somewhat run down, awkward man is absolutely amazing… and he certainly plays well opposite the main lead.

The photography is great too, with a lot of the visual information in the centre of the shots being in deep focus with the periphery of the frame at the margins kind of blurring somewhat… I’ve seen this photography style used in films before (it’s probably got a very specific name) and it gives everything a nice texture and contrast. And the naturalistic acting styles of the various characters is matched with a constant moving camera, often with lots going in on the shots and the hubbub of the backstage world of the showgirl nicely picked up, pulling the audience in voyeuristically without breaking the spell once it’s got you. In this respect, it reminded me a little of the films of Robert Altman, with his overlapping dialogue and shots packed full of people before, in this case, pulling back to a safer distance and observing the odd character alone in their environment.

I liked some of the scoring by Andrew Wyatt too which, to my mind, sounded somewhat reminiscent of some music at a certain stage in the career of Philip Glass, which certainly doesn’t do the film any harm and underlines some of the melancholic moments without lapsing into full on melodrama (which is a neat support from the music on this one, for sure).

Perhaps my one criticism of the film might be that I felt, somewhat, like it didn’t give any real closure or sense of an ending. It felt like it needed a little more happening towards some kind of resolution… positive or negative… at the end but, surprisingly, a few hours after watching this one, I was plagued by nightmares featuring some of the characters from this film. I must have taken things in more than I thought I had here so, already this film is haunting me a little and I’m surprised it didnt get more of an Oscar nod at this year’s Academy Awards (not that I like awards ceremonies or anything to do with them, to be honest... but I'm glad Anora did well, it's well deserved, read my review of that one here).

So, yeah, The Last Showgirl is a slow moving, thoughtful film with great acting, beautiful cinematography and a somewhat, deliberately muffled style to it, I thought. I really liked this one and you might want to take a look at it, if you are of a certain mindset.