OUT NOW: Mrs Harris Goes To Paris

After a stroke of good fortune, hard-working Mrs Harris (Lesley Manville) takes a trip to Paris where she dreams of purchasing a Christian Dior gown.

Now this is a real superhero movie.

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris may not feature any special effects or action, but it does feature plenty of colourful outfits and good people standing up for what is right, and looking out for other people.

If that is not the essence of a superhero, I do not know what is.

I am only half-joking. While she does have a knack for wanting to help anyone who crosses her path, Mrs Harris is very ordinary.

For the first few minutes I was on guard for this movie.

Everything about it felt a little treacle - even the filmmaking felt a little unpolished, with flat compositions and a weird emphasis on shots with shallow focus

But by the time Mrs Harris made it you-know-where, I was won over.

This is a genuinely sweet movie. 

Part of the reason is that Mrs Harris is never presented as a saintly figure to repair everyone she encounters. That is an image image imposed on her by people who see her inherent decency as a vehicle for their own comfort.

The movie is ultimately about Mrs Harris refusing to let other people’s judgements of her stand, whether it is the overt hostility of Dior’s head honcho Claudine Colbert (Isabelle Huppert), or the subtle classism of a seemingly benign nobleman (Lambert Wilson) who takes a shine to her.

Mrs Harris supports other people in their struggles and shows genuine empathy for other people.

She spends the movie trying to achieve a modest dream, and just when it feels like her natural kindness has led her down a path of misery, it is repaid.

Mrs Harris Goes To Paris handles its subject with a delicate and knowing touch, knowing that genuine hope and empathy can only exist in proximity to their opposites.

Paris is a romantic place, but it is also a place where people live, and where piles of garbage signify the struggles of people like Mrs Harris to achieve a good life.

There is a strange melancholy to watching this movie in 2022. With its portrayal of a postwar England engaging with Europe, and the way it depocts old structures of class and privilege shifting, the weary optimism of Mrs Harris Goes To Paris stands in stark contrast to the circus of the present.

The latest episode of the James Bond Cocktail Hour is out now: TOTAL RECALL (1990)

On the latest episode, we continue our survey of the six year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye with a review of 1990's Total Recall.

Links to all of this season's episodes are below:

No Time To Die (review)

No Time To Die (commentary)

Pierce Brosnan - The Bond In Waiting 

GoldenEye & Spymaker - The Secret Lives of Ian Fleming

Nikita

Total Recall

If you enjoy listening to our voices, Hugh and I were recently part of a roundtable on the podcast Pods Like Us to discuss the Bond franchise at 60.

You can check that out here. 

BITE-SIZED: Frightmare (Pete Walker, 1974)

Years after they were imprisoned for cannibalism, housewife Dorothy (Sheila Keith) and her husband Edmund (Rupert Davies) return to their old farm to live in isolation.

Sadly, Dorothy’s compulsion for human flesh remains.

Step-daughter Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) has built an independent life in the city, but returns home periodically with raw meat for her mother.

Will this macabre arrangement remain the status quo? 

What an irony that this review will be dropping right in the middle of the UK’s latest political psychodrama.

Pete Walker’s brand of horror is rooted in inverting familiar institutions and archetypes (the justice system, the clergy, and in this case, the family). 

Because of its more familiar focus, Frightmare is more viscerally compelling than Walker’s prior film.

A stronger effort than House of Whipcord, Frightmare continues the theme of old sins coming back to prey on the young and the failures of an unknowing establishment. 

While I liked Whipcord, it took a while to get going and never felt as brutal as it should have been.

No such chance with Frightmare.

It helps that the focus is so small.

The horrors build from Dorothy’s crimes to the deeper idea of infanticide and feeling excluded by one’s closest family.

There is a timeless quality to Frightmare’s horror.

Sheila Keith, so striking in Whipcord, is given the central role. With her resonant, enunciated speech, Keith underplays the unrepentant cannibal.

I dug the oppressive atmosphere of Whipcord, but there is a sense of building tension to Frightmare that elevates it.

That vein of dark comedy is present - The idea of a mature English housewife chowing down on human brains is hilarious.

There is something darkly funny about her husband’s harried reaction to the revelation of another victim.

 

As the film heads into the final confrontation, the humour dies away. It isn’t the only thing departing the mortal realm…

Juggling dark humour with a genuine sense of building dread, Frightmare is a terrific horror flick and showcase for the underrated Sheila Keith.

Daniel Isn’t Real (Adam Egypt Mortimer, 2019)

As a child, Luke (Miles Robbins) had an imaginary friend named Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger).

Together they would get into all kinds of hijinks.

Now an adult, Luke and Daniel have been reunited.

This was one of those movies that I heard about and kept it in my back pocket. It came out fairly quickly in New Zealand - it is unpredictable how indie horror/genre movies like this will get released down here. I am still waiting for Madaline’s Madeline which kicked up a storm on the festival circuit five years ago.

Daniel Isn’t Real is one of those movies which people should watch without prior knowledge. I saw some images and the cast, and that was about it.

In premise, the movie feels like a grungier, horror version of Fight Club’s big twist.

The big difference is that Daniel is presented as his imaginary friend from the beginning.

When Daniel starts doing things that imaginary friends cannot do, the film’s title comes into question.

The film is pleasingly small-scale, the special effects are mostly practical and contrast between dull, muted real-world and the psychedelic colour palette introduced by Daniel is striking.

I really like this movie.

 

I also have some questions in terms of its character development and themes. My knowledge of mental health is not great so I cannot analyse its depiction here. 

(And before I go further, there will be spoilers.)

One of the movie’s most frightening turns is when it  makes a definitive separation between Luke’s mental state and the true nature of his friend.

I have no familiarity with either Patrick Schwarzenegger or Miles Robbins’s previous work, and it adds to the movie's sense of unpredictability. 

One of the weird juxtapositions of this movie is the combination of its stars, the children of Hollywood icons, and its Lo-fi, independent spirit.

And it is a testament to both performers that they are plugged in to the movie.

The film is a two-hander between Robbins and Schwarzenegger.

Robbins walks the line between sympathetic wallflower and walking time bomb. It is always odd when characters like Luke are also romantic leads, but there is a weird sense of decency to Robbins' performance that makes that development somewhat more believable.

Schwarzenegger's resemblance to his father is sometimes uncanny, but he has a completely different vibe.

He brings a loose, berserker energy to Daniel. He does not employ a lot of histrionics, but there is an electricity behind him that is compelling. Even before he begins to turn Luke's world topsy-turvy, there is a dead-eyed maliciousness to Schwarzenegger which inflects every scene he is in.

While the acting across the board is good, on repeat viewings certain elements began to stick out.

Primarily, it becomes clear that every other character feels like a sketch - on one hand, it adds to the sense of discombobulation and feeling like you are trapped inside Luke’s head.

I wanted more meat on Luke’s relationship with his mother (Mary Stuart Masterson), and her struggles with her mental health.

By the end of the movie, her role seems to have been to be a red herring for the film’s big twist. It felt like the theme of mental health was somewhat trivialized. 

The other prime example is Cassie (Sasha Lane), a struggling artist who catalyzes Luke’s passion - Lane is an interesting presence who always brings something unique to her roles. There is something unstudied about her that plays so well on camera.

She is also the light to Daniel’s darkness. While her art is chaotic, it is not destructive. Daniel is the dark side of creativity - he feeds on selfishness and narcissism.

What is disappointing about Cassie is that it feels like the filmmakers tried to bottle Sasha Lane’s unique qualities into an arty weirdo archetype. That would be fine as a starting point but the character does not get much of an opportunity to grow.

She is not quite a manic pixie dream girl but it feels like a slight waste of an actor.

On the flip side, one of the film’s strengths is how claustrophobic it begins to feel. The sidelining of other characters is purposeful as Luke becomes more detached from the world.

As the movie nears the climax, and Daniel’s true nature comes into focus, the movie becomes more off-kilter.

I am torn on this - on the one hand I could not grasp the rules governing Daniel’s powers; on the other hand, it is refreshing to see a horror movie where it is impossible to figure out what is going on. There is an anarchy and irreverence to the climax that I loved. 

Daniel Isn't Real is a fascinating film. And while it is dark, it is also a lot of fun. Unlike a lot of contemporary horror movies, the film never feels like it has to commit to a single grim tone. It feels like the story has a chance to breath.

There is also an economy and a lack of pretentiousness to the story-telling that gives it an extra charge.

In that spirit, enough rambling. If you are tired of slasher sequels and are looking for something original and under two hours, check out Daniel Isn't Real.

OUT NOW: Black Adam

Black Adam was gifted with powers 5000 years ago.

He is angry and kills lots of people.

The justice society does not agree with him.

But there is a generic Big Bad to fight.

Will the Rock and these other people join forces?

It is my understanding that when big movies need extra jokes, they will get a group of comedians together to riff over sections of the movie to find lines that will work.

I was reminded of that process throughout this airless, joyless slog whenever one of the characters would (try to) drop a one liner.

This movie is the breaking point for the Rock as a movie star.

At least that is my hope.

When Dwayne Johnson first got into movies, he was a joy. A bolt of charisma who lit up every scene he was in.

And in those early years, he had a go at a bunch of different roles. It felt like he was trying. It felt like he wanted to be a movie star and an actor.

About ten years ago, Johnson finally began to have hits of his own - and he changed.

Perhaps it was the nature of those hits - sequels like Fast Five and Journey 2; weird IP like Rampage.

There was a sneaking conservatism to these choices and a sense of calcification to Johnson’s persona.

Where previously  it felt like Johnson could make fun of himself and show vulnerability, now it feels like he is just muscles and under armour.

The scales were lifted from my eyes with Hobbs and Shaw, and this movie only highlighted how limited Johnson has become.

Black Adam treats its central character as the most important character in the DC universe, as well as the funniest and the coolest.

The movie never really starts - it is just exposition dump after exposition dump.

While the primary setting - the fictional Middle Eastern state of Khandaq - is refreshing, the movie never grounds is in that world. 

When Black Adam appears the movie starts moving at a gallop.

There is barely an attempt at a fish-out-of-water arc - Black Adam shows no disorientation or real surprise at how much the world has changed. He also immediately knows English.

The movie wants to juxtapose Black Adam’s Old Testament method of punishment against contemporary ideas of superheroes not killing, but the movie is too weighted on Adam’s side to make it funny.

The Justice Society constantly come across as incompetent. 

The team also feel wedged in - there is a gracelessness to the way the characters are introduced and I spent the movie vaguely impatient with them.

It felt like another attempt at fast-tracking universe building, and is about as successful as previous attempts at DC.

This movie feels closer to the worst aspects of Marvel - when every character and plot point feels geared toward setting up other stories. This means nothing of consequence will take place and there are no stakes.

The cast also feel stuck in slivers of characters, with no chance to give them any dimension.

Sarah Shahi, Bodhi Sabongui and Mohammed Amer are fine actors, but they feel like non-playable characters in a videogame.

And after managing to inject Aladdin with a spark of menace, Marwan Kenzari is completely anonymous as the villain.

It is depressing because the movie this one is tied to - 2019’s Shazam - features a genuine ensemble and keeps one foot grounded in the ordinary lives of those characters.

Aldis Hodge is stuck in one mode as Hawkman and Pierce Brosnan is playing a super-powered character who is solely compelling because Brosnan is a movie star. Neither of them is bad - they just feel hostage to the checklist which is the script.

Supporting heroes Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and Atom Smasher (Noah Gregory Centineo) are the comic relief and the film’s vague maybe-romance subplot. Of course their bond is sketched in a few lines scattered over two hours so you will have to wait for their own spin-off adventure - if anyone cares.

Black Adam’s character never feels real - when we cut back to his past, Johnson’s digitally smaller physique was distracting. 

It is never terrible - it is just bland and devoid of personality. 

There was a small part of me that hoped this would be another Venom - a villain to a more popular character getting their own weird vehicle - but there is nothing here to match Tom Hardy’s performance or the romcom dynamic between its central characters.

It is a bigger disappointment because the director of this film is Jaume Collet-Serra, a filmmaker who made his bones on fun genre movies like Orphan and the Liam Neeson movies which are not Taken.

Here it feels like the movie has been made by an algorithm. 

There are two separate set pieces where Black Adam destroys armies to classic rock tunes. It feels like the filmmakers (or Johnson) watched Thor Ragnarok and wanted to do the same thing.

The one vaguely interesting aspect of the film is its Middle Eastern setting but the attempts at a critique of western interventionism feels half-baked.

There are moments where the film almost makes a point, like when the Justice Society arrive in Khandaq and end up causing more destruction than Black Adam.

But after endless combat, it starts to feel less like an ironic comment and the filmmakers did not care enough about highlighting the ordinary people caught in the middle of the super battles.

A better movie would have focused more on Khandaq and the community so that their eventual uprising would have some gravitas - it is an interesting idea but feels unfinished.

Johnson has spoken in the past about running for office and all of his recent moves - on and offscreen feel like he is trying to present himself in the best four quadrant way possible.

If Johnson wants to be president, he should declare now so we don’t have to pay for his brand expansion.

Related

Shazam

BITE-SIZED: The Host (Bong Joon-Ho, 2006)

After the American military dumps chemicals into the Han River, a monster is born which grows to the size of a truck and proceeds to make attacks on Seoul. 

On one of these sorties, it kidnaps schoolgirl Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung). 

As the military moves in to contain the situation, the girl's family come together to try and save her...

Created by Bong Joon-Ho (Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer), The Host is one of the best monster/family drama/black comedies ever made.

This movie is great: It starts like a traditional monster movie, showing us the creature's origin and early appearances, climaxing with its first attack on people.

The initial attack sequence is fantastically visceral. The creative choices made with the creature work for the film's eye-level view of the genre: the monster is about the size of a large car or truck, and instead of an alien monstrosity, it looks like what it is, a mutated version of something earthbound. While it is big and strong, it is also clumsy and lumbering on land, as a water-based creature would be.

During this attack we are introduced to our hero, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), a clumsy schlub who is ignored or belittled by society.

When the creature kidnaps his daughter, it is a catalyst for him to finally prove his mettle.

But this is where the movie goes to another level. 

Fearing Hyun-seo's death, the family comes together to grieve.

This family are all screw-ups in all their own ways - their reunion at the memorial to the dead is blackly funny, as their shared grieving turns into a childish wrestling match on the ground.

Rather than being a monster movie, The Host turns into a kitchen sink dramedy, as our misfit band figure out their issues while trying to find Hyun-seo.

The film balances these tonal shifts without losing sight of the stakes (with cutaways to Go Ah-Sung in the sewer), or making fun of the family - the film has the empathy to show these characters and their relationships in all their nuance and contradiction.

The film even finds a way to bring its critique of US militarism full circle, when the American military  become an active impediment to the family's search. 

As the family's hunt escalates, the film avoids betraying its eye-level approach to its genre - our heroes do not turn into instant action heroes, and the set pieces do not get so over-the-top that they do not lose a sense of scale or danger.

And as with every narrative turn in the film, its finale is an emotional gut punch. 

A great genre mashup, The Host is worth watching over and over again.

OUT NOW: Halloween Kills and Ends (for now)

The Shape (James Jude Courtney) lives.

After escaping the inferno he was trapped in in Halloween (2018), Michael Myers carves/stabs/crushes a path of destruction through Haddonfield while a mob led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) and other survivors follow in his wake.

Because of contractual obligations, Myers kills everybody and escapes again.

Four years later, Myers is still missing, but Haddonfield has found a new boogeyman: Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a young man who accidentally killed a kid he was babysitting. 

Still traumatised by the incident, and bullied by those who believe he is a murderer, Corey has been unable to move on.

After some kids assault him, Corey is left for dead. 

Which is where he meets someone who will shape his future - and that of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)…

This is a review of Halloween Ends, but it will partially be about Kills, which I watched immediately before it.

I lay out that track because it probably informed my impression of Ends more than anything else.

Kills feels narratively unfinished - it begins as a previously on and ends in a way that feels more generic 

There is some attempt at thematic development - the rage of the trauma caused by Michael Myers - but it is dissipated by a story that splits itself too thin, and feels more like connective tissue for elements of its predecessors rather than a complete story. 

The movie is more of a straight slasher movie, but the attempts at commentary (is mob justice bad?) and constant need to fill in narrative gaps means it is never as fun as it could be.

If Kills is the franchise spinning wheels, Ends is the series picking a direction and mostly sticking to it.

From the beginning, Ends feels like it has a sense of direction and purpose. It also feels less interested in tying itself to the franchise.

The lack of familiar story beats gives the story a real sense of tension and surprise.

Michael Myers is not seen for almost half the runtime, and when he is, he comes on like the sum total of his injuries and age. 

 

For the first half of the movie, the story is centred around Corey and his increasing estrangement from society. There is a shift from Michael - a creature seemingly born evil - to Corey, an ordinary person rendered evil through circumstance.

It makes for an interesting change of pace from its predecessor and marks Ends out as the original entry in the franchise since Season of the Witch. 

It is not perfect - the bullies who catalyse Corey’s transformation are cartoons, and feel totally out of step with the muted, autumnal tone of the film. Their presence, along with Michael Myers’ eventual appearance, begins to deflate the sense of psychological realism the film is attempting. The romance between Corey and Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) never really convinces either.

And in the end, unlike the first Halloween III, this movie has to also act as a conclusion to the Laurie-Michael story, which means the Shape has to be wedged back into the story - and means we get two distinct climaxes right after each other.

For a trilogy which is supposedly about Laurie finally triumphing over the Shape, the films still feel stuck in the familiar groove of the unkillable slasher villain.

What is frustrating is that the finale ends on the idea that evil never dies - it changes shape. It feels like you could cut Michael Myers out of this movie and it would still work with the Shape mask as a metaphor for Michael’s evil enabling new variants like Corey.

Back in the eighties, John Carpenter supposedly pitched the idea of a Halloween movie where Michael Myers is dead, but his presence continues to haunt and influence Haddonfield.

A genuinely progressive direction for the franchise would have been to kill Michael in Halloween ‘18, and use the fear he has engendered in the community to explore the ways it affects people, whether through the mob mentality of Kills or the rise of copycats in Ends.

Halloween Ends is more entertaining and involving than it has any right to be, but in the end it highlights the limits of the legacy sequel template.