Mark Twomey

A stronger entry than Asteroid City, but it’s smaller scale than The French Dispatch. It’s a three-hander film where the interplay of three characters drives the narrative.

Benicio del Toro gives a charismatic performance as magnate Zsa-Zsa Korda. A shrewd entrepreneur of strategic foresight who is amoral. But he’s a striver, and he’s so likeable that even enemies who want to see him dead can’t help but like him.

Liesl, Korda’s 21-year-old estranged daughter played by Mia Threapleton is the morality absent in the Korva genes. Threapleton plays the role of a pipe smoking trainee Nun deadpan and it works. She has moments where she looks like her mother, Kate Winslet. That passes when she pulls a knife on someone while giving them a dead eyed stare down.

Michael Cera is an actor who can set my teeth on edge, but he gives a marvellous performance in this as a bug loving academic, Bjørn Lund. He has a Nordic accent that I’ve heard in person and the comedic intonation is spot on. While del Toro is the standout of the picture, Cera is a close second.

What’s the story? It doesn’t matter. The Korda fortune will either continue for generations or it’s riches to rags for the family. Our three characters go off and their adventure decides the outcome.

It’s a tight 105 minutes, and I appreciated it didn’t overstay its welcome. I’ll watch this again when it gets a home release.

Horror movies done well are cheap to make, pack in viewers and make much more money than they cost. The good ones leave an impression. Neither "Death of a Unicorn" nor "Drop" left enough of an impression for me to write a review but Until Dawn is different because it doesn't try to adapt the source material. It does its utmost to ignore as much of the source material as possible.

The basics are there. A group of young adults find themselves stuck in a house over the course of the night. They need to survive until dawn. When they don't, the night starts all over again but their physical and psychological wounds start to accumulate.

The video game is a butterfly effect simulator where your choices lead the protagonists down different story paths. The movie is a haunted house slasher flick with supernatural aspects. The movie director, Shazam's David F. Sandberg, has a horror background and knows better than to try and shoehorn in six hours of video game plot into a 90 minute movie.

What Sandberg has made from a video game story of young adult guilt and psychological disintegration is a smartphone era slasher movie. It doesn't try to be a young adult drama, though young adult drama sets the plot in motion. Choices do have consequences. But there's nothing here about someone's choice leading to these consequences. Are you looking for answers? You're not getting any in this movie. Enjoy the jump scares.

Jump scares are things Until Dawn does well and it looks good though you can feel how cramped the budget is through the limited number of locations. The practical effects are gruesome in a way that will please horror fans. The jump scares I mentioned before keep the tension up from the opening scene right until the end. The cast are capable but not memorable except for Peter Stormare does his usual great work of playing that unsettling Peter Stormare character we've seen in other movies.

This is a trash movie that I'd watch again only if they announced a sequel. Should you watch it? Probably not. But did this movie leave an impression? Yes it did. It was very well made for a B-movie horror flick.

Two charismatic leads can carry a lot. Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller are two charismatic leads and the burden they carry is the flimsy story of this movie.

There is a mist filled gorge somewhere where two concrete observation towers face each other from opposing sides. Opposed geographically and politically. Each tower has a top tier shooter responsible for maintenance of the automated defences preventing what is in the gorge from escaping. These lethal maintenance people are not to have any contact with each other.

Before the first hour has passed, romance blossoms across the divide. It is a movie about distance and communication. It’s Sleepless in Seattle with snipers facing the stuff of nightmares.

Not that there’s any real threat. The lethality of Taylor-Joy and Teller’s characters is clear from early in the movie. Indeed, it is what is in the gorge that should worry about them. Shootouts and explosions in the second half precede a predictable finale; however, the film remains an interesting distraction.

This is one of those mid-budget genre movies Hollywood used to send to movie theatres on a weekly basis. A simple story with effects and explosions that would entertain you for two hours and then send you on your way. But mid-budget movies were risky with making a profit. Streaming saved this type of movie because tech companies have goldmines of money and millions of customers to entertain.

Here we have an action director who is comfortable with what, in places, is spotty CGI delivering a picture worth a watch for its leads. If you want a romance-action mashup movie that will show you the headshots but will tastefully blur out the sex, this is the movie for you. If you are looking for anything else beyond that, this offers nothing.

By the time I had read Harlan Ellison’s work, his talent had deserted him. A lifelong career isn’t guaranteed, but watching one’s career fade must be a terrifying, waking nightmare. The Last Dangerous Visions, the irrevocable part of a once ground breaking trilogy of short story collections, explains why the talent evaporated and for those 60 pages it’s worth the read.

In this book, I found two interesting pieces under glass in a museum of the mediocre. Short story anthologies are like that, but "Dangerous Visions" was a career making anthology for emerging writers. It was such a success its sequel, “Again, Dangerous Visions”, had established authors knocking on the door to get their story in. This third book has none of the cachet of the first two and, as Straczynski points out, some people he reached out to did not want their work included.

Focusing on the key essay by Straczynski, Harlan’s long time Sancho Panza, Ellison’s crushing bipolar disorder explains but doesn’t excuse the worst of his behaviour. You empathise with the man, reading of projects large and small he was not capable of writing beyond a handful of pages. The unfinished pile of stories for the planned three volumes of The Last Dangerous Visions, few of which seem to have had written introductions even after 50 years, must have been a cacophonous failure blaring from the filing cabinets in his writing room. Like The Tell-Tale Heart, but this was the murder of stories bought but not published.

A Night At The Opera by Robert Wissner was a stand out story to me. When you realise the author was 24, you can’t but acknowledge that hard work alone isn’t enough, there has to be talent. The various single page Intermezzos got me thinking beyond the page. Besides that? Most of this left me unmoved, and I will forget it.

“Dangerous Visions”, a relic of the 60s, will be available in paperback at local bookstores for as long as there are bookstores. I have a copy that I reread a few years ago and still enjoyed it. If you see it in paperback, pick it up and see if it resonates. Its direct sequel “Again, Dangerous Visions” has some solid stories, but it’s a bloated book that needed a stronger editor. Ellison was a people pleaser to the right sort of people, other writers and Hollywood stars. His audience was not the right sort. He could say no to the audience until he dropped dead but couldn’t turn down a poorly written story from a friend he had or wanted to make. I dropped “Again, Dangerous Visions” into a book collection bag soon after finishing it. As for “The Last Dangerous Visions”, if you want to read it, see if it’s available at your local library and take it out as a loan.

As readers, we owe authors nothing more than they owe us. You buy a book or not and you get a book or not. Even if you are a fan, that’s where the contract ends. Of the Dangerous Visions series, only the first anthology is worth the exchange between author and reader. And as you’ll read, Harlan was at the pinnacle of his talent while working on the first and best of the series.

Vampires one week, werewolves the next. Unlike the highly cinematic Nosferatu, Wolf Man is merely a good-looking streaming movie. It could be psychological scarring from Covid, but monstrosity because of disease has taken root in the mind of horror writers.

In fiction, lycanthropy has been everything from a pact with the devil to a supernatural curse, but here we return to the idea of it as an illness. This is a movie where the werewolf is neither calculating nor 8 feet tall on two legs with a great coat of computer generated hair. Here instead it is rabid, deformed and has lost comprehension of humanity.

There’s some majestic Oregon scenery here. The practical effects used for the werewolf look great. Not only is that cheaper than doing it with CGI, but it’s a throwback to Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man. With practical effects, wounds fester quickly, bones break with satisfying crunches and if the actors can disgust you they’ll try to. The 1941 movie has a more satisfying story, though both movies focus on parent and child relationships.

At a lean 100 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome; its simplicity makes it suitable for second-screen viewing. Horror movies when they hit at the box office can make studios a fortune because the cheap ones are the best ones. They do less well on streaming. This is that. I can see it generating a tidy profit at the box office and then stalking off into the wilds of the streaming forest. You might only glimpse it again at the edge of your vision while scrolling through your viewing recommendations.

There’s a silver undertone to this movie that reminds me of vintage black & white film stock. But then everything about this movie is looking to remind you of something vintage. Once again, a couple opposes a personification of evil. A misshapen, diseased creature of catastrophic power.

Of the other times I’ve seen Nosferatu told on screen, this couple is the best looking. Genetic super lottery winners, who I’m sure have real people's problems, but the only problem we are concerned about here is the murderous Count Orlok. The copyright holders had control of Dracula when the original Nosferatu was made. So here we have a Count Dracula knockoff called Count Orlok, with Jonathan called Thomas and Mina called Ellen.

Thomas and Ellen are a convincing team. Imagine making a movie where the husband isn’t an inept weakling, and the wife isn’t a five and a bit feet tall super human ass kicker? Though knowing the beats of the story before I went into it and this movie follows those beats, I liked it when Thomas and Ellen shared scenes. You see them struggle together. It’s better than any stated love they could say they have for one another.

I can put many comparisons to F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979), both of which are available on BluRay, aside, but this version is too long. Herzog turned in a one hour 47 minute movie. Murnau’s is about 81 minutes. This movie is two hours and twelve minutes and the story doesn’t support that running time. Scenes where nothing much happens run too long. There’s only so much of the audience’s time you can burn as you create atmosphere.

Now, the atmosphere is gorgeous to look at. Scenes where Thomas arrives at the crossroads and the Count’s driverless coach picks him up are like a gothic storybook you’d enjoy reading. Ralph Ineson’s baritone voice has a texture that adds to the movie alone. But trimming 20 minutes would have strengthened the movie.

You can watch this one at home if you’re going to do so in 4K with HDR. It’ll look better than it does in the movie theatre. This has very dramatic lighting that had me checking when I could get it on 4K disc with Dolby Vision. We’ve long passed the point where the dim 2K images projected onto a cinema screen are the best way to experience movies. I want to go see a self-emissive screen the size of a cinema screen showing me 8K movie experiences I can’t get at home yet.

If you need to get out of the house and want to see a beautiful and grotesque story you’ve seen before, Nosferatu in the cinema will do that for you. But if you want to see it at its absolute best, watch it at home in the dark with 4K and HDR.

This movie reminded me that movie theatres were never competing with streaming. They are competing against modern OLED TVs. The TVs are winning, so ditch the projectors and go for a wall of moving light with the best sound and good seats.

If you want to tell a good story about a man, show him fail. He can recover but there needs to be a journey into darkness. Part II of the Godfather trilogy is Michael Corleone’s journey into darkness.

By the end of the movie he’s lost his wife, his mother, the trust of his adopted brother and his last brother by blood. His enemies are dead by their own hand or by his. But Michael has failed. He destroyed his family.

In flashback, the film portrays his father committing crimes to provide for others. What is the point of sitting atop the most powerful crime family when there is no one to take care of? As great as the original Godfather movie is, Part II is a movie with a grander sweep. We’ve seen the principled thug of Brando’s Vito Corleone and now we get the icy rage of his youngest son.

The opposition also steps it up. Years ago when I first saw Lee Strasberg’s performance of movie antagonist Hyman Roth, I didn’t get it. I thought he was miscast, but actually, I lacked the life experience to appreciate his good casting. Roth sprawls. He’ll project dominance by folding a leg over the arm of a chair. He’ll lay on a couch in pyjama bottoms, chest hair exposed as a recovers from a health scare, and explain to someone in logical terms how close to danger they are. In these scenes he’s soft spoken, he’s direct, and he’s menacing.

More important, he’s smart. Not because he has every possibility mapped out. But because he adapts when the unexpected happens. A setback for Hyman Roth is an opportunity for him to try another line of attack. As one of the few remaining first-time mobsters, this skill has served him well.

When Michael and Hyman are together, it is clear their world is too small for both of them to thrive. This starts out a fact of business and then gets personal. What follows is a well lit, well shot and great sounding set of moves, countermoves and executions.

The 4K movie on UHD disc is a full screen HDR10 presentation with clear Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound. There’s a remastered monaural track if you want to hear it as mixed for cinemas back in 1974. I found the picture to be crisp, with good brightness and nice film grain.

Michael Corleone has more to lose in the Godfather Part III. But for your time it is the second Godfather movie that tells the best story of the three movies.

While lacking a 6’ tall sword wielding heroine in boob armour riding on a flying reptile, Secret Level still gives off Heavy Metal movie vibes.

This is a character driven show that has to hook you fast. Some episodes are less than 15 minutes long. Stories with famous actors get a bit more time, but you’ll know if you’re in or out in the first three minutes.

The quality of the anthology stories in the first 8 episodes ranges from “this is a series pitch” to “this is a cut scene” to “could you give us another 90 minutes of this story, please?” When it’s good, it’s great, when it’s poor, it’s CGI filler. The fresh take on Pac-Man pleasantly surprised me. I wouldn’t have thought of the story that way, but the writer did.

The animation and motion capture is top-notch. There’s one vignette set in a storm blasted city where the only thing that takes you out of the action is the faces of the characters. It is not the case that the animation style varies. There is a dramatic change of style in episode two, but it settles into variations of realism for most of the first eight episodes.

If there is a weakness, it is the music. Nothing was memorable, but that may be a production choice. If you’re making UHD 4K animation, why risk dating it by adding stand out music that won’t survive inevitable changes of taste?

All in the first 8 episodes flew by and it would be great to see some of these stories developed as series. They won’t be, as adult animation has been having a tough time generating money. But as a project about leaving the audience wanting more, it left me wanting more. I’ll be back for the next episode on Tuesday.

Are “honourable criminals” lying to themselves? Is servitude worse than death? Less a criminal drama and more a criminal soap opera Prime Video’s Yakuza has thoughts on these questions.

Focusing on four orphans, two male and two female, on the cusp of leaving their orphanage the four protagonists here walk themselves into a nightmare of a heist gone awry. Gangsters who come looking for stolen money don’t shut up. The assassins who will kill them at their leader’s whim don’t talk. And the one who makes the room go silent when he speaks is now speaking to them. What’s it going to be, kids? Death or servitude to the Yakuza? You can have a bullet now, or you can work yourself to death at manual labour or in the sex trade.

With the characters' back stories developed through time jumps we’re shown the build up to the situation that changed their lives and what the results are a decade later. This isn’t the strongest story telling device and the show lost my attention when it went back in time. The Yakuza operation and its politics I found more interesting. Much of their code of honour is a way of controlling street scum on the ground but their ceremonies have reverence. There is no room in the sprawling criminal organisation for those who don't know when to take a blade and cut off their fingers. Self-mutilation to restore honor is a tradition.

Like all organisations rooted in tradition even gangsters are under siege from modernity. The difference is that their idea of pushing back against the pressure to change comes in the shape of a psychopath with a sword and a gun.

While our protagonist recruits see their transformed lives as more glamorous they become more isolated. Their criminal association is a stain on them that never fades. In the case of women, the world becomes something they see through luxury car windows. The show gives them lifestyles of high-end escorts while avoiding any mention of sex. In the main character’s case the world is something he perceives from inside the illegal fighting ring or through prison bars. Enforcing immoral people's will puts him in a cage.

Based on the video game franchise of the same name the characters dress pixel perfect at times. But there’s decent human drama here and the fights are competent. There’s good English audio dubbing for those who don't want subtitles and the story has a Japanese method of story telling that makes it different. I’ll watch episode 4.

I commend Francis Ford Coppola for taking an idea he wanted to do for 40 years, putting his money into it and bringing it to the screen. But this is an experimental movie overstuffed with his fancies which does not resonate with an audience. He brought it to life through his will, but he is the intended audience. It may not matter to him if no one else watches it.

Set in a modern age pastiche of the Roman Empire, Adam Driver’s Catilina is a blend of Roman history's Catiline, John Galt from Atlas Shrugged and New York City architect Robert Moses. He has bent matter to his will with the creation of Megalon, a Noble prize winning piece of materials science that unlocks the next phase in construction. Time is also not beyond him since he can pause it. He even scrubs back through it to clear up a bit of exposition in the second act.

For the budget it has this movie looks wonderful on the big screen. But the message of the superior man and superior woman willing the future into existence, like the director who dedicates this film to his recently deceased wife, may not go down that well. Catiline in history was a demagogue who used the people for insurrection. The Empire obliterated him and his forces at Pistoria. Driver here couldn’t be further away from the people. They suffer as he demolishes their homes to make room for his future. You may want him to succeed if only because it’s preferable his opponents fail but you won’t like him.

Nathalie Emmanuel is likeable here. Even if she starts out as a vain hedonist and becomes a worthy collaborator to Driver’s character in no screen time at all. Aubrey Plaza plays an Aubrey Plaza type character again. As an actor, her range was explored in its entirety during her run on Fox’s LEGION and you see the limits of that range here. Shia LeBouff remains an underrated actor. Change his hair and clothing and he can play anything.

This is an art movie infused with improvised moments. Go into it for the spectacle and cling on to the end, because you feel the running time before the two-hour mark, and you might find something that interests you among its ideas. Even if I had control of time, I wouldn't do a deep re-watch of this. On a repeat viewing it's a movie to glance at over the top of a second screen.

This doesn't work as a musical or a villain movie but it held my attention for most of its running time. The massive flaw in the production is that it's not supposed to be this horrific a musical.

The wasted life is a goldmine for an operatic performance. That's what Arthur Fleck's (Joaquin Phoenix) life is. A grinding misery that gets more miserable in increments. Every day the sun rises life takes a razor blade to Arthur's soul and shaves off another thin slice. But then there is love, and music, and comedy and tragedy. Or there would be if this was a better written movie. This is where it all falls apart. The love isn't love. It's someone who wants you to be your worst self. The musical numbers neither fit into what's happening nor propel the story forward. They're well lit karoeke numbers. Nothing here is funny. Even when we step into Arthur's inner life, where he should be everything no one else sees, he remains as unfunny to the viewer as he is when shuffling along Arkham's halls.

Your actor won an Oscar for an interesting take on a tired comic book villain. The hit movie you made had nonsense ideas about wounded men and their fragile egos projected onto it. You think to yourself "we don't want to encourage this." So you, correctly, say this broken man can't kill six people and expect to prosper.

But does it have to be so shallow? I'd have read this script and sent the writers off to watch Pagliacci. Several times. And if an opera about a tragic figure in deep emotional pain who swings from manic clowning humour to powerful murderous rages in a gritty setting can't improve the script? They've failed.

This should have been a musical about a tragedy. It's just a tragic musical. A big movie that's too oppressive to be anything but small.

The Substance
About 25 minutes into The Substance we're introduced to Sue. A younger version of Demi Moore's network television fitness goddess. It's a writhing in pain, blood-stained introduction. I sat there in the dark and thought to myself, "The third act is going to be wild." It was. Because this is a movie of ludicrous escalation.

Sue (Margaret Qualley) is so refreshing she's the condensation on the Coca-Cola can. Her firm buttocks enter the shot several times before she does. Her breasts defy gravity. Everything is tight. But she has the arrogance and appetites of youth. While this movie is positioned as a feminist body horror it is a movie about a parasitic system.

Yes, the movie's men are grotesque. They were in the director's previous genre movie, Revenge, too. But unlike that movie where all the men were abusers. Or this movie where men participate in a abusive system. Women do unforgivable things here.

After a chemical pickup from a dead drop that screams evil life sciences corporation, Sue emerges from Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Sue are one person but must alternate between seven days of active and resting cycles. There are side effects to breaking this rule. You'd have to be dumb like a character in a movie to ignore potential abuse. Abuse here begins with disregard, the resting party left on a cold floor, and slowly progresses to ghoulishness.

Sue transforms from born yesterday wandering to electronic dance music strut in hours. She is not Barbie Mr. Hyde but she is genetically better than Elizabeth and she can be cruel. With seven days of opportunity open to her she gets Elizabeth's old job and takes it to heights the older her could not achieve. While they are one person you know that has to hurt.

Were it the lazy "all men are pigs" trope I'd have tuned out fast. But the nicest character in the movie, a low bar, is an awkward former schoolmate of Elizabeth's who asks her out. This leads to a brilliant scene with Demi Moore later that is her finest work in the movie. It also brings what drives this story into focus.

Focus is something used to make Dennis Quaid's, leering, sleazy, network producer fill the screen. He's ghastly and even more so when he's eating. Sue is his next dish after he exploited Elizabeth's beauty and celebrity to make money for the network's share holders. Sue and Elizabeth have their own relationships with nutrition. It's not healthy.

This world here has many stark block colours and sometimes feels like it's attacking you from the screen. That's intentional. The body horror is disturbing enough to make you wince so it succeeds. The flaw here is that the movie is indulgent and too long. At a bloated two hours twenty minutes the journey to the mania in the third act tested my patience.

This was an uncomfortable but interesting watch. It is a decent body horror movie with a high level of visual gloss that is uncommon. While it is more female than similar movies if you go into it sold on the idea of feminist politics you're in for a rough time. It is a genre movie first.

A female-centric movie for the Wednesday Addams audience, this film is overstuffed and unfocused. The team seem afraid of never getting another shot at this. So, they crammed as many plot ideas as they could into the running time. Some of it works. Some of it doesn’t.

The Deetz women are not having an easy time of it. Lydia (Ryder) has grown from a flourishing teenage goth girl into a timid celebrity medium. Seeing ghosts is not a gift. Beetlejuice has been tormenting her from the periphery of her vision for decades. Lydia is an unusual protagonist for a movie like this. There is no expectation that her life will get better here. It did in the first movie, but now we find a woman weighed down not by a problem but by the disappointments in her life.

This is the most adult of approaches to take with the material because none of the characters change. No one gets better. No one is redeemed. No one has a conversion on the road to Damascus. This lack of change isn't bad for Delia. In a great performance by Catherine O'Hara, she has perfected her taste and artistry. But, she is still hilariously shallow. Now a widow, she finds her husband's death both inconvenient and heartbreaking. Jenna Ortega's Astrid is more activist than artist. She has friction with her mother, Lydia. She's so strong and independent that she falls in love with a guy with great hair overnight. Well come on, he listens to great music and is tall. If he'll go to a protest with her he's the dream.

Like the first movie, repairing the imperfect family is the connective thread throughout the story. And like the first movie Michael Keaton here does Beetlejuice as a chaotic force. But he doesn’t feel as present here as he did in the past. We get several musical numbers; I particularly enjoyed the underworld train one. The production design looks good. The classic movie house looks impressive.

But, as I put in the opening paragraph, this is a movie for those who want more Wednesday quirkiness. It lacks sharp edges because the Beetlejuice of 1988 would be canceled if he showed up again in 2024. Studios are afraid modern audiences will trash their movies. I was in a theater filled with Gen X and older. Studios might want to rethink who the audience that pays to watch movies is.

Terminator Zero Few sci-fi franchises are as limited as The Terminator. It’s not like it has anything novel to say about AI or humanity's hubris. Humans unknowingly reach the pinnacle of their culture and creativity. They are then sent back to scrambling in the dirt for survival after that culture and creativity burns in nuclear fire. This is in every Terminator movie and this anime series.

The wrinkle the producers of this show introduce is the rhetorical appeal to another artificial life form to act on humanity’s behalf against Skynet. Malcolm Lee, its creator, makes poor arguments for human survival. Again hubris. If we were looking to enlist an artificial champion we would hope our most talented minds would engage with it to build our case. But no, here we have the heartbroken computer scientist who can’t muster enthusiasm for his own children. This is the man who thinks he can use philosophy and rhetoric to prevent the AI he has built from agreeing with the army of red-eyed metal skeleton killers on the way.

The balance here as in other movies is the idea that Skynet has overwhelming technical superiority but is too inept to finish the job its nuclear strike started. But then, "AI wipes out humans and now reigns over cockroaches" isn’t that much of a story. Here we get a robot action girl, a human action girl and three ghastly children. By anime standards it doesn’t look like the state of the art. It's too computer animated and looks cheap at times.

The flaw in this show is that it attempts to ask questions the premise was never designed to answer. Terminator is a story about a stalker who cannot be reasoned with looking to kill a person who has to save themselves. It was never more complicated than that. While Skynet creator, Miles Dyson, should have engaged in four hours of philosophical meditation before building the thing that destroyed humanity, the rest of us don't need that. You can skip this series.