#StokerScore Rewound: Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

#StokerScore 9/10

I have loved watching movies for as long as I can remember. I think the first movie I was ever taken to see at the cinema was Disney's Snow White (which probably answers many more questions that friends have about me) and I should point out that I'm 49 years old as I write this. 

which one's Marlon Brando?

I was a kid who was inspired as much by the movie posters and trailers for the films that I saw in the auditorius, so much so that on a trip to see The Spy Who Loved me at the Darlington ABC cinema, I begged and pleaded to see the 1977 version of The Island of Dr Moreau, even though it was an AA certificate and I would never have been allowed in. Ten years later and just out of my teens I remember watching this John Hughes-produced movie and loving the hell out of it. So based on that and the delay in other cool movies arriving at the cineplex I thought I'd do a few retro reviews to see how the movies I used to watch stack up after a few years and try to avoid my rose-coloured spectacles potential for disappointment.

In the case of Some Kind of Wonderful the story really workssurprisingly well. I'm sure I can hear you asking how I know that when as a self-confessed lover of the movie I surely can't be impartial and I agree with you to the point that I decided to ask some of my High School Seniors to review it for me and give me their thoughts. Generally the results came back quite favourable considering it's a romantic teen melodrama. Having had my own thoughts put to rest I feel I can explain why the movie still works for me too, even in these more technologically enlightened times.

It's the classic story of poor boy loves girl, girl is in a relationship with another rich boy, girl finds current rich boyfriend is cheating on her, girl agrees to a date with poor boy who's in love with her to spite rich boyfriend, poor boy has confrontation with rich ex-boyfriend, poor boy ends up with drummer/tomboy best friend instead of girl he was originally in love with (It was the 80's, what can I say?)

The performances from Eric Stoltz (poor boy) and Mary Stuart Masterson (tomboy best friend), two sides of the triangle, are spot on to the point that I don't believe either of these actors has been better in anything else they've been in, and I'm a huge fan of Stoltz in The Prophecy. Lea Thompson does enough to make her character of girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-hanging-with-the-rich-crowd and at the same time removes the stains left over from the woeful George Lucas mess of  Howard the Duck. Thompson even bagged herself a husband by way of marrying Wonderful's director, Howard Deutch.

This American movie, from the iconic and prolific John Hughes writing and producing stable, covers all of the important points of the generational era; teen angst, teen indecision, teens trying to fit in, teen relationships with family and peers, along with the hard fought but requisite happy ending. Apart from the excellently drawn characters, writing, and main actors and supporting cast, what makes the

movie stand above other movies of a similar theme for me is the music. The main characters names are all references to The Rolling Stones so we get to hear The Stones singing Miss Amanda Brown along with a cover version by The March Violets amongst some truly great tracks that make the soundtrack worth seeking out in its own right. My own personal favourite is Furniture's Brilliant Mind.

Throw in Eddie Murphy's straight-laced partner from Beverly Hills Cop as Soltz's dad and Elias Koteas's credited comic turn as 'Skinhead' (his name is actually Duncan in the movie) and you are left with a feelgood movie that people of my age will watch and no doubt reminisce to, but that current teenagers may well see as a 'holy crap, mum and dad were like THAT?' kind of moment.

In the same way that unrequited love and coming to terms with our own mortality are themes that engage teenagers, Some Kind of Wonderful leaves you with a reminder that it's worth looking at what you have, not what you think you should have.

Brimstone

#StokerScore 8/10

Strewth, Sheila....

You may not recognise the street in the picture to the right but that little piece of suburbia is prolific when it comes to producing superstars, stars of the stage and big screen and even singing legends . This, is Ramsay Street, Melbourne

Home to the Aussie tv show Neighbours, this 6 days a week soap opera gave rise to Kylie Minogue, Alan Dale and Jason Donovan to name but three. But it also produced Guy Pearce. 

"better than doing Home and Away, right?"

Out of all of the actors who got their start on Neighbours, Pearce is without doubt the most diverse when it comes to his choice of roles. He was the lead in the backward Memento, he was the cowardly-cannibal-turned-avenger in the gloriously over-the-top Ravenous, he was the heroic saver-of-daughters in the space romp Lockout too. He's so flexible an actor that he's done period (Count of Monte Cristo) he's done big budget superhero movie (Iron Man 3) he's done small indie (The Rover) and is just so damn watchable that he's been cast in military movies, kids' movies and comedies. So when I saw the chance to watch Brimstone, well colour me watching-it-now.

did I really make this twoddle?

The premise of the movie is that it is four interconnected chapters linking the central characters of Guy Pearce and Dakota Fanning with the first three chapters told in reverse order in terms of timeline.  We're introduced to a wild west that is tough on those who lived in that period. Where religion is the only salvation for hard work and poverty and where people eke out a living as best they can.

I can't really tell you too much about the characters without giving too much away, suffice to say that the movie keeps you guessing, right to the final chapter where most of your questions are answered. I say most, all that is except an incident that happens to Pearce's character in the second chapter. Maybe the director left it up to the audience to decide but there are no other explanatory events to help with other predictions and it is only this that for me spoiled a really good movie. 

"who do you prefer, Liam Cunningham or Guy Pearce?"

Supporting cast is a bit hit and miss, especially Jon Snow....er, I mean Kit Harrington who just doesn't really fit his particular character. That he happens to appear alongside GoT co-star Carice van Houten maybe has as much to do with their schedules as it does with the casting director. Either way, that's the reason for the second mark missing.

Dakota Fanning's character is believable, Pearce's, once you understand his background, is too. If you like retributive westerns I think you'll enjoy this, I certainly did.....

Logan

#StokerScore 9.5/10

I know I'll probably get some stick for deducting half a mark, but hear me out first, ok? What do these characters have in common; An Egyptian posing as a Spaniard*, A British secret agent**, an Irish policeman***, a Russian submarine commander****, and a Greek king*****? Yes, The same accent, courtesy of the one and only Sean Connery.

There comes a time in your career when just being cast is what's important, not the accent that you bring with you. Connery has long been cast for his acting and his name, not his ability to drop that shtrange accshent of his.

There are countless examples of bad accents, that I'm sure I must have mentioned on here before, but there are actors who only bring their name, not an ability for mimicry. Tom Cruise is another who springs to mind for never trying different accents (with the glorious exception of Tropic Thunder)

Logan is the movie that every Wolverine fan wanted to see. It has Jackman finally being allowed to sink his claws all the way into various body parts, all in the knowledge that this Wolverine, who should be virtually immortal if you have been following the other movies, is looking his age and isn't healing.

The sunset is beckoning and references to the deaths of colleagues and watching the final scenes of the old Alan Ladd movie Shane all seem to suggest that Hugh Jackman was being honest when he said it was time to hang up the claws after nearly 20 years. 

The movie brings on a great variety of bad guys and introduces us to the lttle-girl-lost we saw in the trailers. Patrick Stewart tries to steal every scene that he's in and almost succeeds but for Logan's presence. Everything moves along at a pace that doesn't feel rushed or leave the viewer bored. Instead, it adds to the mythos and legacy that someone else has to try to fill.

I loved this movie. Everything about it, well nearly everything. There's one character that appears in this movie who was also in X-Men Apocalypse. The problem isn't the actor he's played by in either film, it's the accent the Logan version has. It's the actor's real accent and it's a perfectly reasonable accent to have, but the continuity of having the character leaving the USA and immersing himself so deeply into the Bristol area of the UK that he now sounds like a native of that area who has then gone back to Mexico, I can only assume he had had enough of the Bristolian way of life. He's just not quite at the stage of his career where I'm prepared to forgive the part/accent combination.

It's a tiny, tiny thing but mattered enough for me to take the half point....

The Girl With All The Gifts

#StokerScore 6/10

There was a time when you could rely on your horror movies to stick to the rules. Vampires were debonair/voluptuous, werewolves were hirsute and usually not of their own free will, ghosts rattled chains, serial killers were never stopped by the first thing that should have killed them, and zombies shuffled, slowly and menacingly in search of brains.  There were no A-list stars, the sets were relatively cheap, the blood was plentiful and there was no message other than not to indulge in sex before marriage as that way you could avoid said horror staple sending you off to hell.....then it all changed.

well, it's not Top Gun, is it?

I'm not sure which movie it was that changed the way each genre modified their own future, was it 28 Days Later for the zombies? Was it Alien for the ET's? I'm sure that movie buffs out there could tell me, but I generally embrace change, especially where horror movies are concerned, it's just that we seem to have hit a writers block and this is especially so with zombies. On one hand we have The Walking Dead, these reanimated corpses are still not referred to as zombies but are classic shufflers, taking out the human population either by force of numbers or appearing, silently, at the most inconsiderate of moments. Then we have the zombies in The Girl With All The Gifts, ravenous sprinters whose need is for human flesh and the spread of their virus. The problem with these two examples is that they're getting a tad boring. TWD is at season 7 now (I packed in watching after Season 5, so repetitive was the whole thing) and TGWATG is really just 28 Days Later but instead of the experimented zombies chained in the laundry yard, the experts have found other ways of assessing the virus, mutation. 

That being said, I loved seeing Glenn Close with the Army buzz cut, Paddy Considine being his usual mister dependable, and Gemma Arterton being Gemma Arterton. Alongside these stalwarts was child actor Sennia Nanua and bless her she really tried. She was saddled with some horrific dialogue but in the early stages of the film you really felt for her character and that was more than could ever be said for Kevin McAllister in Home Alone. 

Characters still do stupid stuff that warrants untimely deaths, so I guess some original horror movie tropes are respected and if you like a (very slight) change to your zombie fayre then this would be worth your time but I think zombies are in need of an upgrade or maybe we could go back to the voodoo roots?

Split

#StokerScore 8/10

I clicked Google images to find a movie poster to go with this review, as I always do, and was slightly thrown that the first images to come up were for the Croatian town or a yoga exercise because there was a time, relatively not that long ago either, when M. Night Shyamalan's name was a guarantee of a film's potential. 

Hitchcock was notoriously difficult to spot

He was "the man who does the twist ending", who does the Hitchcock thing of appearing in his own movies, all of this following a string of films that had twists towards the end of the film and small cameos played by the director. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, I enjoyed all of them and I really enjoyed the range of actors that he encouraged into the movies too. Joaquin Phoenix was great alongside Mel Gibson in Signs, much better than when chewing scenery for Ridley Scott in Gladiator at any rate, Bruce Willis, Samuel L., William Hurt, and he was pretty good at getting performances out of kids, too. Haley Joel Osment, Spenser Treat Clark, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, to name just some (notice I don't mention Jaden Smith here)

Shyamalan could have got a good performance out of Jake 

Then the bubble burst, or the schtick got old, or the Midas touch left him because he made a series of dreadful movies topped off by the disaster that was the abysmal, diabolical, awfulness After Earth. Bang in the middle of his bad run he happened to produce a classic little horror in Devil, so maybe he's just better when not playing with big budgets? I guess time will tell because with Split he's back to a much more dialogue-driven, small budget affair. Gone too is the twist ending, well, to a certain extent but this is a spoiler free zone so all I'll say is that if you're over 30 you might just appreciate the end of this movie.

What's good? Well, the writing is getting better again and the performances, especially from James McAvoy and his psychiatrist played by Betty Buckley and reminiscent of Jenny O'Hara in Devil,  are excellent. The smaller scale in terms of the sets encourages you to focus on the actors, and there is a pervasive sense of pessimism that I always found in his earlier films running through this one too.

I just saw the....Last Airbender

I left the cinema having thoroughly enjoyed this, I thought it was sensitive towards mental illnesses, as much as it could be, especially showing the caring side of the psychiatrist and the greater acceptance of mental disorders. All in all it was a welcome return to form and I can't wait to see what M. Night has for us next...

John Wick: Chapter Two

#StokerScore 6/10

Do you ever find yourself eating in a restaurant that you occasionally like to go to because the food is usually good and it's one of the best places to get a specific dish that you like? Not the only place that you can buy it, just a preference? Yeah, me too. That was what I was doing just before watching the highly anticipated second outing for Keanu's latest franchisee. 

It was a Thai-themed place that does pretty good Som Tam. For those of you unfamiliar with Thai food, this is a vegetarian, shredded papaya salad that is mixed with tomatoes, green beans, peanuts, chillies and fish sauce. It's pretty fiery and I think it goes really well with grilled meats or other finger food. If I was going to review the meal and the restaurant, I'd probably tell you that they didn't meet my expectations. The salad wasn't as spicy as usual, there was an obvious lack of attention to detail with the shredding of the papaya - some of which had come off the mandolin in a whole, slightly serrated slice rather than the individual julienne. The grilled chicken also seemed half-hearted with some bits being a single bone with no actual meat on it. Top that off with the waiter's apology that they'd run out of beer and I left feeling decidedly underwhelmed. The Som Tam was still Som Tam, just not the kind of Som Tam that leaves me with a big smile on my face (trust me, it does when it's good).

Remarkably, this was pretty much how I left the movie too. Chapter Two ticks all of the boxes that made Chapter One such a huge success; guns, mixed martial arts, sartorial villain and this time even reminded me of a couple of Bond set pieces which if you're familiar with classic Bond movies will hopefully stand out to you as much as they did to me. But it lacked the heart, the soul that made the first one so fun and not as predictable.

Maybe I'm too cynical. Maybe I should try to be less subjective and not allow my frame of mind or mood to cloud my judgement. Maybe if the Som Tam had been better I would have enjoyed the movie more, but I doubt it.

Keanu is still Keanu, Peter Stormare makes a great bad guy and is one of two characters to resume an on screen relationship with Reeves (Stormare played Lucifer in Constantine and Morpheus makes a return, or at least Laurence Fishburne does) and the transfer to Rome, highlighting that the crime syndicates are global, is a nice touch. Yet still I felt underwhelmed. It was like watching a chef make something he's made a thousand times and, rather than be interested in investing the dish with his enthusiasm, he just looks at the finished article and says "yeah, thet'll do".

As I said, the boxes are ticked and at times there is enough excitement to put you closer to the edge of your seat, you'll just never quite reach that far because something inside tells you it isn't really worth it.

iBoy

#StokerScore 3/10

Having seen the trailer for this new Netflix Original a couple of weeks ago, I was intrigued. It reminded me of The Matrix with a couple of visuals, the casting of Rory Kinnear as 'the bad guy', following up his turn as the monster in Penny Dreadful, and Maisie Williams, whose character in Game of Thrones suggests a real talent is about to explode were well placed, the London setting was even reminiscent of Joe Cornish's 2011 sci-fi surprise Attack The Block, so all looked good. 

I haven't read the Kevin Brook's novel, on which the movie is based, so was coming to it with only the trailer's information. The unwinnable 'book vs novel' argument is not something I ever want to discuss as it is, IMO, unfair to both genres in terms of putting the story on the screen, but it does allow for some interesting comparisons in visualising the authors intentions. 

All was going along swimmingly, if slightly predictably, in this story of an underdog righting wrongs for the love of a fair maiden. It's every superhero story you've ever seen, but with a tweak rather than a twist, the tweak being the superpowers and how they are, unexplainedly, happening. That being said, it's easy to guess between the lines and is enjoyable right up to the introduction of Kinnear's Ellman. At this point, either the editor of the movie left a hugely important scene on the cutting room floor or the audience is expected to believe that a line has been drawn between two invisible dots. I was gobsmacked. What came after, the way the movie ended was right there alongside all superhero movies, but that hole in the story, that was really unexpected and quite spoiled the movie for me.

After forty minutes or so, I was looking at a solid 8 on the stokerscore-o-meter but the missing link, so to speak, has left me still annoyed after sleeping on my review thoughts.