hamish-25851 Reviews

Preacher (2016–2019)

Has potential but plays it safe

[6/10 · 18 April 2017]

At last, it's happening. Preacher. They're finally going live action with one of the weirdest, strangest, most imaginative works of fiction - in any genre or format - I've ever encountered.

The good, in order: Dominic Cooper, as Jesse Custer, titular Preacher. He's managing to wear the role, something that very few actors could pull off. Ruth Negga, doing a better Tulip than the one in the comics (and that is saying something). Joseph Gilgun, whose turn as Cassidy is spot-on, truly the comics brought to life.

The sets, the costumes, the effects, the support acting are all first class too. The direction is nicely understated; they keep shots simple, with lots of use of nicely framed setups.

The humour is occasionally outright hilarious. Unfortunately there isn't nearly enough of it, and that's where the bad times start.

They've made some big mistakes with this series. Now, this is not just a fan of the comics talking... they've been putting minor characters and minor plot lines through the blender. Yes, initially I found this profoundly offensive, and it took some work to get past it. Someone who hadn't read the comics wouldn't notice the changes. The trouble is, they don't improve things.

Presumably this chop and change was done in an attempt to create workable TV. I think it was a strategic mistake, a case of missing the wood for the trees. The best thing about Preacher, hands down, was Garth Ennis' hyperactive imagination. Anything went, and frequently did. The original story was absolutely mental. Catlin, Goldberg and Rogen do the best they can (and they're no lightweights) but the goings-on in the TV series are a pale shadow of the fun and games in the comics.

The second major mistake was to make it sexually safe. The comics had every kind of oddball, weirdo, creep, and flat-out pervert imaginable. It was messed up. Sometimes it was shocking, and not in a good way either. Mostly, though, it was cry-while-reading hilarious, not least because the characters came across as real people. Not so the TV series. This is Preacher as overseen by studio execs and marketing teams, watered down to appeal to middle America, or at least to not incite too much hate mail. It is, frankly, tame.

There are the usual TV series problems - bogging down in one location (they spend way too long in Annville), throwing hooks in simply for the sake of luring the audience further along, undeveloped characters and plot lines - but that's just me picking threads at this point.

It's OK. Honest. It was diverting enough that I finished the whole first series, despite everything. It's just that it could have been great and it isn't.

Banshee (2013–2016)

Over the top fun

[8/10 · 11 October 2016]

Banshee spends its first five minutes telling viewers exactly what they're in for: hyper-fast plot lines, action, sex, criminality... and the unexpected. The pace slows down to something more normal after that hyperfast introduction but it's still very quick compared to most television plot lines. They don't waste a second of screen time.

It's also extreme compared to anything else I've seen on TV. The violence is frequent, graphic and brutal, sometimes even hideous. The sex is the counterpart to that: there's a lot of flesh on display and a lot of people getting their game on. Sometimes the sex isn't nice or happy either. The thing about both of these isn't the quantity (there's a lot), it's how they're both done.

Extreme but believable, in a nutshell. The sex might be almost a drinking game at times (who isn't the main character going to get with?) but it feels real in a way that I haven't seen in a TV show before. It's rough, it's raw, and just because people have been lovers, it doesn't mean that they love each other. The negotiation doesn't stop on the morning after.

The fight scenes are expertly choreographed. The moves are correct and they're not shy about improvising weapons with whatever they can get their hands on. One of the things that impressed me most about the fights is something understated: there are frequent shootouts, mostly with pistols. People miss. A lot. The entertainment industry is plagued with the cliché of the impossible pistol shot, but it doesn't happen here.

There has to be more to it than sex and violence, and this is where the show really does excel. All the main players are caught in a tangled, interlocked web of lies, secrets and history. The acting is uniformly good to excellent - and the two leads are fantastic. Characterisation gets better as the show progresses, and characters evolve and change. It'd work without the graphic material, the obvious stuff is simply the icing on the cake.

Great dirty, nasty, rough escapist fun. It's a bit cartoonish at times, a fair bit of suspension of disbelief required, but never a dull moment. This is basically the best show I'd never heard of.

He Never Died (2015)

Quirky, low-key, strangely charming indie horror comedy

[7/10 · 14 August 2016]

Odd wee film, quite low key, clearly tight on budget. Henry Rollins anchors the whole thing rather well as the main character, a slightly dishevelled man named Jack.

Jack lives a very quiet life. Keeps to himself, doesn't like company. He sleeps a lot, goes to a diner regularly, walks the streets of an urban area somewhere in the United States, and for some odd reason he likes to pop in to his local church. Oh, and he meets an intern wearing scrubs semi-regularly and purchases well-wrapped parcels out of the intern's car boot. He's a man of very few words.

Everything is quiet - the way Jack likes it - until a young woman comes looking for him. Shortly after her, a couple of young men come knocking at Jack's door looking for the intern, and then it all goes to hell, for everybody...

It's billed as a comedy horror. It's light on the horror element, the comedy is infrequent, absolutely deadpan, and sometimes hilarious, but where this movie really works is as a depiction of just what it could mean to be immortal. This is set up very clearly in the opening shots via the soundtrack. It's clear that Jack is plagued by memories, but we never see them. The audience only hears them, and has to imagine what could be going on.

It avoids the usual mistakes found in indie films. There's no dead time, no long, moody shots with nobody talking. Scenes get straight to the point. Every shot is tight, with nothing in frame that isn't needed.

Unfortunately that very tight cinematography is the movie's greatest weakness. There basically aren't any wide, scene-setting shots. The locations just don't feel connected to each other. There's never a wider sense of the city itself, or of characters moving from one location to another.

There's also an awful lot of generic going on in this movie. Locations, bad guys, incidental characters... too many of them are cookie-cutter stampouts. If the movie was a bit more specific, a bit more grounded, it'd make much more of an impact.

Very original take on the jaded immortal storyline, though. Watching Jack waking up to the world again is where this really shines.

Good but not great low-key alternative fare.

Triple 9 (2016)

Promising but ultimately falls a bit flat.

[5/10 · 8 August 2016]

There are a lot of names in this: Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Gal Gadot, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Aaron Paul. Directed by John Hillcoat, who did The Road and a stunningly dark and violent Australian western, The Proposition.

Heists, cops, Russian mafia, gangs, drug raids, shootouts, gritty urban decay and mean streets for authenticity.

Should have been great but somehow it just wasn't. That's not to say it isn't good. The story twists and turns the whole way through. The shootouts are about as good as anything I've seen in any movie, one standout scene is a police raid on a suspect in the middle of a housing project... and he turns out to be quite the drug cartel soldier.

The problem with this movie is that it takes on far too much. There are too many threads and too many characters. Nobody in the movie really gets enough screen time to establish themselves as a character properly. The result is a mess, frankly. It's got a plot line for a tight, single-season TV series, not a movie.

There's also no real action climax to the whole thing. It twists, it turns, it's got doublecross after doublecross and various plans going wrong, and it does these things brilliantly. But it all happens at the same pace throughout instead of building up. The result is a great start, okay middle, goes flat toward the end.

If you liked Heat then it's OK, 7 / 10. Otherwise avoid, this movie is not going to be remembered as anything special.

Fay Grim (2006)

An odd film, for serious cinephiles only

[7/10 · 22 February 2016]

A tongue-firmly-in-cheek spy thriller which is about the games along the way, not the actual plot. If you can accept that - and tolerate relentless use of the Dutch Angle - then you'll have a lot of fun. If that isn't your cup of tea, then this is very hard going.

I haven't seen the original Henry Fool and cannot compare this to it. The movie is reviewed as a standalone.

It's clear that the budget was extremely tight. This movie takes that limitation and turns it into an asset - creativity takes the place of special effects and the now ubiquitous chase scenes and choreographed shootouts. Props are kept to a minimum, so are locations, costumes, vehicles and the like. Swooping, highly technical camera shots are noticeable by their absence. This would have crippled a lesser director, but Hal Hartley takes these things and makes the limitations stylish.

This is a very stylish movie.

The way people talk and interact, the way the scenes flow or cut or jump, how characters evolve - it's all done in a way I've never seen before. It should be clunky. Somehow it flows. An awful lot of ground gets covered, with the absolute minimum of fuss. There are a lot of lessons here for jaded audiences and amateur film makers alike.

The acting isn't going to win any awards, but it doesn't have to. The style of the movie doesn't call for large dramatic turns. Parker Posey does very well as a woman taking control, Jeff Goldblum's role might have been a suit tailored for him, and the young Liam Aiken (as Ned Grim) has quite a turn as a precocious teenager. The rest of the cast are alright, and that's all that's needed. The whole movie is about people keeping a straight face while playing apparently serious games, and large displays of emotion would simply get in the way of the fun.

Unfortunately the film makes a strategic mis-step about two-thirds through. The first half of the movie sets up a delightful farce, with the initially beleaguered Fay Grim becoming someone rather smarter than those around her. It could have kept going this way, and to my mind it should have. Instead the movie steers into darker, more serious territory. When it does, the film's two biggest assets – the games between characters, and the feeling of a fairytale – are lost. Instead, Hartley chooses to concentrate on the plot line.

It's not a good call. The plot line is perfect for a farce; it's not suitable for where Hartley tries to go. He nearly manages to make it work, but the ground prepared in the first half simply isn't right for what he tries to move toward in the second. If the audience got this far, it's still worth seeing affairs through to the end, though.

Smart, stylish, and it makes audiences engage with what's going on.

Death in Paradise (2011– )

Seasons One and Two - brilliant fun

[8/10 · 26 December 2015]

Saint Marie, a fictional Caribbean island, has changed hands many times, as the Police Commissioner tells Detective Inspector Richard Poole upon his arrival. From the French, to the Dutch, to the English, to the Dutch, to the French, and then back to the English again... but it's still mostly French. Oh, great, says Poole, with no amusement whatever, having just found that the airline has managed to lose his baggage. There's only one flight, there's only one airport - but it's happened anyway - and there's a murder to solve.

And this sets the stage. DI Poole is the quintessential starchy Brit abroad, an Englishman wearing formal suits in tropical heat and desperately in search of a simple cup of tea. He doesn't like sun, sand, or salt water. Or the French, or island food, or island time, or most of what nearly everyone else would consider paradise. Which is a problem, if you're trapped on a Caribbean island by scheming superior officers back in good old London.

DI Poole is awkward. Infuriating, even. He's breathtakingly rude - without meaning to be, or even aware of it - but still. He doesn't understand people, and people don't understand him. But he does understand murder. When it comes to solving an impossible murder, nobody does it better.

It's not really about the denouement, though. Yes, there's a rather traditional gathering of suspects in a room and explaining who, how and why, but the clever murders and equally clever detective work aren't the show's greatest strength. Where the show excels is in the interplay between the characters and their clearly drawn and very different personalities. Most of the fun is seeing how people play off each other along the way.

Ben Miller's turn as DI Poole anchors the show. He's every bit the social outcast, but there's steel under the gaffes. It makes him a man to be reckoned with, and therein lies his charisma. It's not an easy role for an actor to do. Poole could very easily have been an unsympathetic character, but Miller manages to humanise him.

It'd be easy, and a mistake, to overlook Sara Martins' turn as Camille Bowden, Poole's second in command and crime-scene partner. Everything that Poole isn't, Bowden is. It's a difficult balancing act, frequently quite bluntly done, but the show simply wouldn't work without it.

They're supported by Danny John-Jules and Gary Carr, as the seasoned but carefree Constable Dwayne, and the young and idealistic Constable Fidel. The screenwriters allow quite a bit of time for these two characters to stand up in their own ways, further rounding out the team. There's a delightfully sly Police Commissioner popping in from time to time as well.

There aren't car chases, shootouts, or sex scenes. It's not that kind of show. Instead, people have parents or babies – or, in Dwayne's case, ex-girfriends – and forget about the very expensive, very detailed sets typical of high-budget American shows. The series works with what it can get, and is all the stronger for it.

Wit, charm, and good clean fun - an absolute delight.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

A beloved franchise falls further

[3/10 · 20 December 2015]

How you react to this movie depends on your need for instant gratification. If you like big-effects action to happen fast and keep happening, you'll love it. Unfortunately that's about the only thing that JJ Abrams has managed to do well. Everything else - and I do mean that - literally everything else has been botched.

Originality: zero. Every one of the big three in the trilogy had something unexpected, something unique... the Pit of the Sarlaac, the ice fields of Hoth, the now iconic X-wing run to the Death Star. Awesome spaceships and uniforms, with new gear introduced in every movie. Utterly iconic characters. Not this time. This is a trip down memory lane. That's fine - for ten minutes - but there's no way it should be a full movie.

Plot: the key storyline is beyond ridiculous. It's farcical. I won't do a spoiler, I'll just say that you'd have to be a five year old to buy into it. The rest of the plot line is just a re-hash of IV and V, at times playing like a mixup of scenes from those movies.

Dialogue: bad. Generally just bad. Not appalling (The Phantom Menace, anyone?) but the dialogue turns scenes that could have been actually pretty damn good into scenes that are just waiting time before the next action sequence.

And that brings me to where the movie really falls flat on its face. It fails its characters. Scene after scene, something is set up, the audience gets some anticipation going... and then whatever happens is either a fight sequence, or lame. There really isn't anything else happening.

Finn, a stormtrooper with doubts, could have been a tour-de-force of conflict, self doubt, morality and late blooming - but he just isn't. He's an action cutout, nothing more. It's a crying shame. There's so much more that they could have done with him, but it just never happens.

Poe Dameron should be awesome. He's a daring pilot, a man without fear... but that's kind of it. There isn't anything else going. He ends up being completely forgettable. Cut-outs are just fine in Star Wars, being forgettable isn't.

BB-8 is alright. Maybe a bit hammy in some scenes (yep, Abrams manages to make an expressionless droid overact) but generally good. C3PO and R2D2 aren't, though. They get thrown in for sentiment's sake, then they get left to flounder with a script that leaves them nothing to do except be annoying and unnecessary.

Kylo Ren was supposed to be the next Darth Vader. Nope. Adam Driver does the best he can, but when the mask comes off, the reaction is: this guy should be the male lead in a teen romance comedy. He's miscast and also misdirected. The first half of the movie sets him up as a remorseless badass, then they switch directions and try to make him conflicted. There's a scene where Darth Vader's burnt and melted mask turns up, for about ten seconds. The mask has more presence than Kylo Ren manages in the whole movie.

And that brings me to Luke, Han, and Leia. What the movie does to these beloved characters is simply unforgivable. I can't say more without giving spoilers, but they all end up being much sadder, paler versions of their past selves.

Rey somehow manages to transcend her setup as Luke Version 2.0 and actually become pretty freakin' awesome. This happens despite her apparently magical ability to pick up skills along the way. Luke had to train. She doesn't. She's a heroine for the instant-fix generation. I still ended up liking her, though. She's one of the few parts of the movie which actually work.

The comedy is an unusual touch in a Star Wars movie, and long overdue... or it would be, if Abrams didn't insist on making the point and then driving it home with a hammer as well. Comedic delivery is suitable for the average eght-year-old, but then again, that matches the plot.

J.J. Abrams can't take the blame for everything. The writing credits include Lawrence Kasdan (who's credited for V and VI, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Michael Arndt (who's an odd choice: Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine). Between the three of them, they've managed to committee-write a movie with a basic mistake happening at least once every five minutes of screen time. I imagine that Disney studio executives were breathing down the creative team's necks at every step of the process, methodically vetoing anything even vaguely risky out of existence, and insisting that the writers do as they're told. Unfortunately, given the film's record-breaking box office take, that approach will have been justified.

It's simply a bad movie. People were walking out of the theatre during the screening I went to. Nobody clapped at the end, or looked particularly happy. The die-hard fans will go anyway - and rave about it - but for the rest of us, this is now a franchise trapped in its own fossilized iconography. It would take a very brave director to break new ground and take risks, which is what it desperately needs. That hasn't happened here. It's one safe bet after another, but in the end it's a flop.

Rudderless (2014)

Great little music film

[9/10 · 31 October 2015]

A perfect example of its type. This film achieves everything it sets out to do.

It's important to point out that this is a small film. It's about relatively ordinary people living ordinary lives. Music scenes mostly happen in a tiny bar in front of a tiny audience, and that's fine, because that local intimacy is what drives the movie.

Billy Crudup is front and center in almost every scene. Great singing, good acting, and nearly perfect as a man trapped in a father's worst nightmare. The key to his performance here is the empathy he creates with the audience: he is very far from a perfect, or even particularly likable human being, but you feel for the guy in every scene. No matter what he's doing - he pretty much is the neighbor from hell - his pain shows through.

The supporting cast turn in solid work. Anton Yelchin pulls off something of a character transformation in the movie, albeit quietly. Felicity Huffman is calmly competent as ever, and Lawrence Fishburne is a welcome surprise, bringing with him a much needed leavening of humour.

Macy's direction is utterly competent. Low-key yet assured, deceptively simple, it's movie storytelling at its best. Macy lets the story unfold in its own way and in its own time. This is a rare skill, to say the least: events never feel forced, scenes never seem to jump, and everything plays true. It's direction that the audience never notices, because it never puts a foot wrong.

The surprise star here, though, is the writing. Macy, Casey Twenter, and Jeff Robinson are credited, and between them they manage to spin quite the tale. It might be small, it might be local, but it twists and turns right up until the last scene. Like the direction, the writing never puts a foot wrong.

The music is fantastic. Definitely a film for music buffs. It's very much in the vein of Once and Begin Again, where the melody and rhythm carry the song. If it can sound great with a voice and a guitar, then it can sound even better with a band.

Overall, a great little film for grown-ups, and thoroughly recommended.

I Survived a Zombie Holocaust (2014)

Tries hard but just doesn't make it

[3/10 · 29 October 2015]

It's a great core premise: troubled zombie flick's shoot gets overrun with real zombies. It could have been gold, sadly it wasn't.

The cast try. The crew do what they can with what's clearly a very limited budget. It's obvious that a lot of local goodwill went in, too. There are some scenes where it's pretty clear that most of the local town turned up and gave it their best shot - look at the rugby game sidelines for what I mean.

The trouble with the movie is what isn't there. The lead actor is simply not compelling enough to identify with, even after it's clear that he needs to become a badass if he's going to survive. The comedy feels like it's actors working lines from tight scripts and there's no vibe to it at all. In an area with some of the most compelling scenery and natural light on earth, the whole thing is shot in a generic forest under flat light (honestly, it looks like it was filmed under clouded skies at mid day). The cinematography is fixed cameras at a polite distance with plenty of unused space in most of the shots. The worst is the direction. This movie is staid, bloated, and terribly, terribly slow.

It's slow like a glacier is slow. Really.

There'll be the inevitable comparisons to homegrown classics like Bad Taste or Braindead. Nope. This isn't anywhere near those movies, at any level, and if you want to see what can be done on a tight budget then look those movies up. I've given a few stars for the sake of the support leads (especially Jocelyn Christian, who deserves better), but that's it.

See it if and only if you are making a movie and need to research mistakes to avoid.

Everly (2014)

Popcorn fun for your inner teenager

[7/10 · 18 October 2015]

The premise is simple: Everly, alone and outgunned, is trying to survive waves of attackers while trapped in her apartment. She has lots of weapons and also has lots of reasons to use them. Carnage ensues. At least that's what I got off the movie case... it isn't quite that straightforward, and therein lies most of the fun of the movie. There's a bit more to it than that. Hardboiled, bitter realism lies elsewhere. Cartoonish characters / violence / plot lines are the order of the day here, and as long as you accept that, you'll have a great time. Salma Hayek does a fantastic job anchoring this movie as the title character Everly. She's not trained for combat, or especially strong - she has to fight her way through with luck, improvisation and willpower, and Hayek plays her with just the right mix of emotion and action. Looking great while she does it is half the selling point of the movie, but her turn at acting is what really carries the movie. There are only a handful of other characters who are really presented as people, and they all have a much narrower range to play. The movie stands or falls on the lead performance and Hayek gets it just right. The director and scriptwriter manage to throw in enough jokey humour along the way to keep the tone relatively light, too. The movie gets a lot done with a little, it's quite a bit of fun along the way, and the audience can really start rooting for Everly, but that's about it. It's a good Friday night popcorn flick for the boys, but there's no way it's going to win any awards. That said, if there's a sequel, I'll be checking it out.

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Gritty, believable spy thriller

[9/10 · 4 October 2015]

The first thing that I want to say is that this is far more a John Le Carre movie than it is a movie by the director or by the cast. A Carre storyline is a lean, minimal, slow burning spy thriller grounded in realistic trade-craft, short on gadgets and long on twists. Intelligence is required to watch here, and will be rewarded.

There isn't a pat, simple plot, or clearly defined lines of good or evil. There aren't amazing effects. It's not that kind of spy movie. Shootouts, stunts, rooftop chases, and high-stakes games in glamorous casinos happen in other movies.

A lot has been made of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's turn in this, and deservedly so: he's very, very good. The support cast deserves credit, too, in particular the relative unknowns playing the human rights lawyer and her recently-arrived client. There have been some comments about Willem Dafoe's banker, and although Dafoe does make him the most outspoken character in the movie, I think he needs to be played that way.

I've rated this for what it is. If you go in expecting entertainment laid out on a plate, forget it - you'll have a terrible time. If you want to be challenged at every step of the way, to have to work out what is going on and why, then this is definitely worth checking out.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Fast and fun Friday night popcorn flick, but not memorable

[6/10 · 27 September 2015]

It's swift, funny, breezy, and has about as much substance as a soap bubble... but then that's all part of the fun! This movie applies a very simple formula: put beautiful people into gorgeous places, keep the plot moving with intrigue but keep it light with humour, then top the whole thing off with just a frisson of sexuality. It's the perfect Friday night at the flicks.

Everything looks gorgeous. Car lovers will spot a Ferrari 350 GTO quietly nestled into the background in several scenes - one of the most beautiful cars ever made - which is there, purely and simply, because the location is a whole lot prettier with it sitting there. Nobody gets into it, nobody drives it anywhere. The car isn't integral to the plot in any way. It's just there because, well, why not.

The other major strength of the movie is its sense of humour. There is something to have a chuckle at in almost every scene, from the interplay between the three lead characters, deliberate subverting of spy and action movie clichés by the director, and even making jokes that rely purely on character to make sense. This last is an area where the movie really scores aces. Guy Ritchie manages to take two good-looking but one-dimensional leads and actually turns their flat acting to comic effect. He turns what could have been a movie-killing liability into an asset, and not just once either.

Deliberately keeping it in the '60's has worked out brilliantly. Sure, it's the vision of the '60's that we'd all like to believe in, but it works. World powers facing off? Sure. Fast shifts from one Cold War hotspot to another? Par for the course. Everyone - and I do mean everyone - dressed in fab outfits and looking glam to the max? You bet. Over the top villains and diabolical plans fit right in, which is where the movie becomes a victim of its own success.

None of it carries any weight. It's just too frothy. Even a comedy has to have some substance, and this just... doesn't. The rapid pace of the plot, the quick getaways, the heroes getting out of one fix after another in the minimum possible screen time - it keeps the entertainment factor high, but the tradeoff is that it can't generate any tension.

The acting is pretty flat, too, even by the jokey standards that this movie runs on. None of the characters ever feel like more than cardboard cutouts. They're very stylish cutouts, they have the moves and the lines, but they're still cutouts. They don't grow. They don't become people, even the cartoony type that an audience would expect here. As a prop for jokes flung at that character, that's fine, but it's terrible for getting an audience to identify with them in any way.

The worst weakness of the whole thing is that there's a resolution around every corner, and not just for the plot lines. Every time a problem comes up it gets immediately solved. At first it's very engaging, but after a while everything just ends up looking easy.

In short, it's as light as a soufflé, and about as satisfying. It's fun along the way, but ten minutes after you've left the theatre, you'll struggle to remember any of it.

Sicario (2015)

Tense, intelligent drama, with thriller overtones

[9/10 · 24 September 2015]

The badlands of the US - Mexico border and the viciousness of the drug trade running across it sets the background and the tone for this movie. It's grim. Human life is very cheap and the movie doesn't flinch from showing consequences. There are definitely some scenes that are not for the faint hearted, but there is nothing gratuitous here. If anything - despite the subject matter - the film goes out of its way to avoid Hollywood heroics.

Emily Blunt does an amazing job portraying Kate Macy, a career policewoman heading a SWAT team. Her accent slips slightly a couple of times, but otherwise she's utterly believable as born and raised in the deep south of the US. Kate is a fundamentally decent, honorable human being, trying to the right thing in a world where the rule book doesn't seem to work any more. She's smart, tough, and experienced - but right from the start of the movie, it's clear that she's in over her head.

The tension never lets up. An attack could come at any moment, from any direction. Anything could be a trap. All of it, no matter how extreme something is, plays as real. The director manages scenes expertly to avoid any clean and easy action movie clichés, and it pays off enormously as the movie goes on.

It's also a highly intelligent movie, made for an intelligent audience. It doesn't lay things out on a plate. Instead you have to pay attention and you have to think, just as Kate has to - because her first mistake could be her last.

Staging, costuming, sets, cinematography, and lighting are all perfect. Some airborne shots in particular stand out as both daring and stunningly original, clearly showing just how harsh the landscape is, while managing to propel the story forward - without showing anyone, no less. This part of the movie is in the "As good as it gets" category. The only part that I didn't like (and the reason that this doesn't get a 10 from me) was the music. It's used deliberately to heighten tension during some scenes which would otherwise break the feel of the movie, and generally it's done well, but some scenes are spoiled with a There Will Be Blood styled screech. It's really not needed, especially since Sicario's own score manages to build or maintain tension quite successfully in other parts of the movie while remaining low-key.

To my mind, this is much more of a drama than it is a thriller. It's certainly not an action movie. The acting from the support cast is exactly what it needs to be - good in general, and great when a minor character is the focal point - but look closely at how much Benicio del Toro manages to do with no dialogue and not even all that much movement. Simply amazing.

This is a great movie to see if you want to be challenged.

Snowpiercer (2013)

Flawed genius

[3/10 · 20 September 2015]

Artistically: 9 out of 10. Fun: 1 out of 10.

There are some amazing ideas in here. The sets, the costumes, the lighting, the outside snowbound landscape - it all looks fantastic. The basic premise is compelling enough: it's a train that never stops, with a repressed underclass fighting their way up and forward against everything thrown at them by their privileged masters.

Unfortunately not one jot of it holds up to any sort of critical analysis. As soon as the viewer starts to ask awkward questions, it falls apart. It doesn't have anything close to a sense of humour either. Quite a few of the characters are cardboard cutouts or even - and it is not often you see this - a parody of a cardboard cutout,a walking joke in a costume. By the halfway mark, almost everyone has started indulging in ludicrous behavior and / or acting like overemotional idiots. By the three-quarter mark, some truly ridiculous speeches have started to appear, then the plot itself (such as it is) clearly runs out of ideas and the movie paints itself into a corner.

It's visionary, it's trippy, it's wildly eccentric and certainly has elements to it that I've never seen in another movie, but what could have been a great trick story ends up shooting itself repeatedly in both feet. This happens (repeatedly) because the director seems to be far more interested in making artistic points than he is in coherent, competent storytelling, or storytelling at all for that matter. There are attempts to rescue it, but they just add to the mess that results.

I simply don't think that this director understands people very well. He knows about how to make something look stunning, but good looks alone do not a movie make, and once it was finally over I couldn't believe I'd wasted my night on it.

Livvagterne (2009–2010)

The Protectors

[9/10 · 6 September 2015]

Government bodyguards, recruited from experienced police officers and working to protect high-level targets against very real threats, in a world where nothing is quite what it seems. It's a great opening concept and a great addition to the police procedural genre. In the wrong hands this could be a disaster, but writers Thorsboe and Brostrom take on extreme but believable situations and then run a mile with them. It always twists along the way. Every time I thought I knew where it was going, the show would do something else. You never know where you're going next. And the people you meet along the way... wow. The core group of characters is played and written to perfection. They take a while to come properly into view, and once in view, they evolve constantly. They're dedicated, but there's no way they're perfect. Everyone's got problems, everyone makes mistakes, and it just makes them even better to watch. Even the minor characters, ones you see for only one episode, are all real people, with foibles, personalities and problems all of their own. The show is a little short on humour, and at times deals with some pretty heavy issues. Lighthearted escapism it is not, and if you want mindless fun then you're better off elsewhere. Some rather convenient shortcuts come in every now and then. It's the only thing keeping me from giving it a 10/10. This is a show well worth trying out, and I'm very surprised that it hasn't been more widely promoted outside of Denmark.