The Monster

#StokerScore 2/10

Movies have been trying to scare people ever since they started putting images on celluloid. The invention was so totally mesmerizing to the first viewers that it didn't take the early directors long to decide to combine that feeling of awe with stuff that would also scare the living daylights out of the audience too.

The Germans were probably the best of the first bunch and the French could be pretty trippy as well.  Early horror movies from the 1920's included classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu and The Phantom of The Opera. These movies are still held up as scary today and often get hailed as inspirational by modern day film makers, even though their special effects appear silly and the lack of gore makes them seem tame alongside the horror porn and splatterfests we are bombarded with these days. You just need to consider how they must have appeared to people who were still coming to terms with other inventions like cars.

Horror movies have generally grown since then, although there are enough examples to contradict that last statement. Directors have taken their influences and either tried to create something new, or just gone for the quick buck and churned out more of what people want to see. The latter style has resulted in ordinal numbers resembling rugby scores being added to the end of a movie's title. That these are now being called franchises adds some legitimacy to the studios' need to keep coining in the greenbacks from movie titles that would never usually see the light of day.

Then there is the argument over studio vs independent movie. The movies that are blessed with the budget to visually create cinema magic usually come from the studio system who use logarithms to decide that they know what audiences like (and by that I mean will make a pile of money). Indie movies struggle to get funding but are often considered more artistic because the director's vision reaches the screen unmolested. 

The Babadook's budget was only $2m

Personally I prefer story over special effects and adhere to the belief that what happens off camera can be way more disturbing than having a Rob Zombie/Eli Roth decapitation shown in all of its supposed glory. Hitchcock was constrained by the film censors of his time so had to find ways around those restrictions if he wanted to scare his audience. That didn't turn out too bad, did it?Alternatively, 1960's Hammer Studios added Technicolour blood to the 1930's Universal monsters and there will always be a market for that visceral horror. But there is also room for the cleverly paced, well acted and carefully scary horror movie too. 

So when I saw the title The Monster and having understood the basic synopsis of a mother and daughter struggling against something nasty, I wasn't really expecting too much. I'd read nothing about it, knew nothing about it except that I'd heard of the director's first movie but still something intrigued me. Perhaps it was the poster, perhaps not.

The most disappointing part for me is that the first 40 minutes of the movie do a great job of looking at a dysfunctional mother and daughter relationship. It sets up the fact that the daughter is the emotionally stronger of the two. The inclusion of flashbacks to instances of family clashes go a long way towards investing us with some sympathy for the characters. If they had met nothing on that isolated road except their paranoid expectations, I'd have been happier than the actuality of the director suddenly changing from a solid, character-based story to a man-in-a-suit monster munch.

Seriously, if that was the movie that he'd wanted to make then he might as well have ditched the first forty minutes in favour of a back story involving genetic engineering, pods arriving from space or some sort of hybrid transformation (none of these are true, at least I don't think so) and then a stream of stereotypical victims. This movie had an estimated budget of nearly three million dollars but I can't say I can see that on the screen. It's as if there were two movies and two directors. Even the writing alters in the second half of the film, contradicting what we know of the characters.

I'm disappointed....

Doctor Strange

#StokerScore 10/10

Have a quick look at a general synopsis of these two Marvel Superhero movies and imagine what it would take to make them a success. Not only that but one that would sell to a wide audience, at least wide enough to claw back the money spent making them and also not affect the ability of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to continue raking in the box office receipts;

Guardians of the Galaxy: An (at times) annoyingly arrogant leader who sides with a talking raccoon, a green-skinned alien, a red-skinned alien and a talking tree to defeat a blue-skinned sociopath.

Ant-Man: A wisecracking ex-con who finds a suit that allows him to make himself small and communicate with ants, allowing him to stop world domination by a megalomaniac scientist.

will we ever get to see 3-D Man and do we really need to?

These movies really shouldn't have worked (and I speak as a huge fan of Marvel comics) yet, through a diverse director-hiring and casting policy, the groundwork that was laid with the earlier movies such as Iron Man and Thor meant that people did turn out in droves to see them.

With continued director and acting-talent selection, Doctor Strange movie hit the ground running, at least in terms of hype. Benedict Cumberbatch isn't just bankable, he's a global star because he seems so love-able, I don't think I've met anyone who doesn't like the guy. Add to that his acting range and the movie was, if anything, setting itself up to be Marvel's first failure. 

Not a chance.

The movie looks awesome, at times resembling the view through a kaleidoscope I remember having as a kid. The (amazing) special effects aside, the story is, admittedly, no big shakes on the surface. Guy overcomes adversity, gets superpowers and de da, de da, de da. But the way in which it's done, the humour and pathos working side-by-side, made it a great experience.

The supporting cast are just excellent, they need to be to go toe-to-toe with Cumberbatch, and I found myself wanting more and more of this story.

In what seems to me to be Marvel's biggest problem, the villainous side of things is, well, not as super as the heroes. It's no secret that Marvel has been setting up the fight against blue/purple-skinned Thanos for ages, and maybe they don't want to have a particularly strong villain being compared to the threat that is coming from the cosmic menace but I do think they need to start and venture further with their bad guys and girls, a bit like they did with the open-ended defeat of Red Skull who I'd still like to see make a return to the movies.

Finally as to the debate on white people playing parts intended for people of colour, Tilda Swinto nails the part of the Ancient One

The villainy problem is a small thing and I'm not going to let it affect the overall score because, for 2 hours, I was immersed in the antics of a brave new character. Even if I can't quite forget the 70's version...

....Oh, and look out for a couple of extras in the mid credit and end credit parts

Suicide Squad

#StokerScore 4/10

The DC Extended Universe of movies deserves a break, doesn't it? No matter what it does at the moment, be it appealing to fan-boys by placing classic scenes onto the screen, or trying to listen to criticism and changing out stuff to appeal to the masses, they just don't seem to be getting a rub of the green.

But is it audiences or critics who don't like their movies? Personally speaking, I place myself in the former category, I just so happen to love movies and I also like to write about them. 

I have to confess, I enjoyed Man of Steel. I thought that even though we were treated to yet another telling of Clark's origin story, and apart from the phallic prison tubes that Zod and his cronies were forced into on Krypton, I enjoyed it. But Batman vs Superman came across as confused (here) and this latest effort is just a glorious, glorious mess.

David Ayer, the director, is responsible for writing 2001's Training Day and directing 2012's End of Watch. Both movies had black humour and grit in equal measures. Does he then try to transfer that over to Suicide Squad? Well I think you can see where he tried to but where the other two movies were grounded in reality Suicide Squad's basic premise and characters are ripped from the pages of a comic and therefore don't get to consider the realities of the world. This is especially so when one of the squad's number has a soul-storing sword. Kind of takes away the whole reality thing.

Because of this, the characters who came across best for me were the absurd and weird. Diablo who can channel fire and Killer Croc (yes, you heard me) felt more comfortable in the movie than Rick Flagg or Will Smith's Deadshot. In my opinion, Harley Quinn isn't a lead character for me, she's way too one dimensional which in a comic is fine but here starts to fade into the background misway through. In fact the stand-out character for me was Amanda Waller, the head honcho at the CIA, who came up with Task Force X, she manages to combine the real with the fantastic and yet still retain a believable level of menace

For me, the attempts to shoe-horn in other DC characters was unnecessary, The Joker should have been saved for his own movie, and this would have freed up more time to tell a better story or even scale it down to a leaner running time.

I think that by now everyone in the world is aware of superheroes and supervillains but the problem here is that the backstories weren't fleshed out enough for us to care who lives and dies. At least I didn't. This is in part due to superhero universes having access to 'McGuffins' with which they can miraculously bring people back to life (see you later, Supes)

As a bit of summer movie hokum it's ok. Go and be bombarded by the images and the silliness and when Gozo eventually takes.....oh wait, that's Ghostbusters......Look, just watch it and make up your own mind, but for the time being don't expect to see a DCU movie as layered and fulfilling as a Marvel superhero movie....See you in November, Doctor Strange...

Cell

#StokerScore 2/10

Imagery.... 

Carrie White, bathed in pig's blood, channeling the full extent of her telekinetic powers. Little Danny Glick, floating outside his friend's bedroom window, begging to be invited in. The gurgling voice in the storm drain saying 'they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–'

"Sam Jackson was GREAT in The Big Game...."

There is a photo of Stephen King in every dictionary in the world next to the word prolific. Not only does he write amazing fiction, he does it consistently. Whether writing under a pseudonym, collaborating with another author, or just amusing himself, the guy is at the very least a hard worker whose writing creates enough dread to fill a lifetime's worth of nightmares.

His books have been read by millions, translated into umpteen languages and even his son has decided to follow in Dad's illustrious footsteps. This family connection may well prove to be prophetic if Joe Hill's (King's son) movies of his work continue to be on a par with some of his Dad's because the problem sure as hell isn't with the book writing, it's the movie adaptations.

Many* seem to agree that the Daniel Radcliffe-starring Horns wasn't a great movie, but it was a million times better than much of Stephen King's book-to-movie translations. (*Horns scores 41% over at Rotten Tomatoes) but compare that to Pet Sematary (43%), Needful Things (26%) or 2011's Pierce Brosnan-starring Bag of Bones which nobody has even bothered to review in five years.

50% of the 1408 audience felt the same way as you, John

The first heckler will no doubt notice that I'm cherry picking the worst and they'd have something of a point <cough> The Tommyknockers <cough>. King's written work has also produced absolute classics like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and, of course, Misery.

The second heckler may point out that King isn't responsible for how his books are translated into movies, but he is responsible for the screenplays to Sleepwalkers, Maximum Overdrive and this latest movie, Cell.

Imagine for a moment that the guy who created  The Dark Tower, collaborated on the creation of Jack Sawyer, and whose genius gave us the murderous Plymouth Fury, Christine, is also responsible for getting John Cusack and Sam Jackson to answer phones that have just turned people into murderous zombies and inexplicably reduced the population of Boston from 667,000 to 30 people waiting for Darwin Award levels of stupidity to bring them their next victim. It's hard not to lay some of this blame at the script doctor's door.

I'm not really knocking Stephen King though, the guy is a genius writer in my book whose literary work has given me hours of pleasure, but I am knocking the complete disregard of all involved towards making a great movie. Cusack is making a habit recently of channeling his inner Cage (Nicholas, not Luke), Jackson looks completely bored, and the director shouldn't be allowed near anything more dramatic than a school play ever again. And is it me, but why did this movie need to be executive produced by thirteen people? including Mr Cusack? Maybe that's what pushed Eli Roth away from directing it...

This is unfortunately the worst film I've seen this year..... and I've seen Zoolander 2

Eddie The Eagle

#StokerScore 8/10

The single most embarrassing moment of my life, and there are many to choose from, was when I was 16 and taking part in a school play. It was a small role that only asked me to interview a female football player, maybe a dozen lines at most. 

And on the first two nights I forgot them.

Instead of saying something like "Hey Dorothy, great game you played there. Can I get a few lines for the school newspaper?" what came out was "..................er, Hi..............How are you?" but I got over it and on the third and final night I delivered all the lines perfectly and felt as though I'd just delivered Hamlet's soliloquy

I'm rather uncomfortable even now, just remembering and writing down what happened but I remind myself that I went on to do amateur operatics for 3 years after it and remembered most of my lines during that time. For a while I even dreamed of treading the boards for a living. That small hiccup that these days causes me to cringe when looking back didn't dull the dream in the slightest.

Dreams are what Eddie The Eagle is about. Not exactly a biographical movie, it takes some liberties with characters and chronology to tell the story of Britain's greatest sporting failure, Ski-jumper Eddie Edwards.

the real Eddie

I remember the ridicule that Edwards faced in the UK but is it actually fair to call him a failure? Sure he never competed at the top of his sport but in much the same way as the Jamaican "Cool Runnings" bobsleigh team he captured the imagination. Never expecting to win a medal, rather for him it was realising his childhood dream of becoming an Olympian and in that respect he succeeded.

The movie version of this larger-than-life character sees Taron Egerton look uncannily like the title character and Hugh Jackman as his coach. The chemistry between the two leads, the well-cast supporters including Keith Allen as Edwards long suffering father, and the well written story all combine to deliver a heart-warming film that encourages you to keep your dreams alive and illegitimi non carborundum.

I think we can all take something from that.....

Midnight Special

#StokerScore 7/10

Sci-fi. Often a genre that puts people off before they even consider the film, the actors or the story and the diversity of the genre means that this is not without reason. As with any genre of movie some are well made, well thought out, well written and clearly drawn characters. They can catch the viewers imagination by looking at a subject from a different angle or just playing with our emotions. And then there are the opposite of these and unfortunately sci-fi has too many bad movies. Movies that could have been great but were just too careless.

why is it never somewhere easy, like the local mall?

Close Encounters of The Third Kind was Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi opus that followed a group of people who were motivated to find a place where they would meet aliens, aliens who are increasingly witnessed by people with an affinity. Twenty years earlier John Wyndham wrote The Midwich Cuckoos in which a group of children are born to regular parents but who are ultimately not human.

Midnight Special appears to draw from both of these sources in its tale of Alton, a young boy who seems to be sickening due to his being 'special'  (he cant go out in daylight and needs special goggles and ear protectors to sleep) and the attempts of his parents and their friend to help Alton to reach his destination before either a religious cult or the federal government can stop them.

The movie has a great cast with Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst as the parents, Joel Edgerton as their friend and Adam Driver as an NSA advisor. Jaeden Lieberher holds his own as the young boy, never coming across as a kid who can't act.

annoying

not annoying

The story keeps you involved and we're thrown right into the mix from the get go. Background is filled in through conversations and characters have motivations for their actions. But where the story lets itself down is never really explaining how Alton came to be nor the meaning behind the big reveal towards the end of the movie. It certainly left me with more questions than answers.

Nevertheless, the story was well told, effects were astonishing for such a cheaply made movie and if you can get past the questions and allow your imagination to answer them for you, you'll love this...

Captain America: Civil War

#StokerScore 10/10 

Expectations..... having them means that sometimes we're happy when they're met and unhappy, even angry when they're not, but is it fair to have expectations in the first place? There's a classic quote from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where Calvin suggests that the lower he keeps peoples' expectations, the easier his life is. As cynical as that quote is and as funny as it sounds coming from the mouth of a 6 year old, the uncanny accuracydoes make you stop and think. 

In my younger days I had the chance to meet a hero. I just want you to imagine that for a minute, I met a genuine hero. Someone idolised by millions to the point that they even transcend normal conventions of the word "hero".

My hero was Henry Cooper and he was a British heavyweight boxer. A 1960's pugilist who actually fought Muhammad Ali twice, Henry was considered a genuine hope for World heavyweight champion.

Was he undone by Angelo Dundee cutting Ali's glove, allowing Dundee's fighter  time to recover from an 'Enry's Hammer' left hook? This seems to be a question for the ages but it didn't stop him from being a hero. 

Approaching my twentiethy birthday I was working as a trainee manager in a bingo hall in York and henry was due to make an appearance as the brand ambassador for Mecca Leisure. Up to this point I'd never really met anyone famous with the exception of a few Leeds United players so so say I was starstruck would have been an understatement. Henry, or Mr Cooper as I called him when I was introduced to him, met every single expectation I had of him, His way of carrying himself, at that time in his fifties, was exactly the regular, working-class-guy-made-good that he was, no need for PR people to manage any character flaws. He wasn't patronising to me as the kid whose job was to help him find whatever he needed on his promotional visit to our club, just the opposite in fact. 

Of course there are others who say "never meet your heroes", just in case your expectations are destroyed and they, whoever these people known as 'they' are, are sometimes right and the person you meet doesn't match your quite realistically irrelevant,expectations.

Expectations went with me to watch Captain America: Civil War. Expectations due to the trailer, the cast, and the story and because here would be a number of characters that I'd been introduced to by many of the preceding Marvel movies as well as from the comics that I'd read as a kid

This movie didn't just meet my expectations, it left them trailing in the dust and not because it was keeping my expectations low. This is Marvel's best movie to date. To say that takes nothing away from the rest of the great movies they've been making since 2008, rather it is just making a very simple statement of fact.

The story is clear even if characters motivations aren't obvious at first. Stark wants to make up for past mistakes and expects everyone to agree. Rogers doesn't trust any politician and never will. But how the other characters fall in line isn't as straight forward. So this mix of action and drama worked perfectly and the witty one-liners gave some real laugh out loud moments too.

It's a Captain America movie and he's the star of the show but the supporting cast weren't bit players. Often the problem is that there's not enough screen time to do so many people justice but because we know the characters so well by now it wasn't an issue. It was also very nearly stolen by up and coming Tom Holland with relatively little in the way of screen time but more than just a cameo.

What was most refreshing was that The Bad Guy wasn't wearing a costume and threatening to destroy the world. By the time we get to Infinity War the threat will be very much in everyone's face so it was a pleasure to watch a superhero movie that kept you guessing as to what happened, but what will happen going forward.

Get your popcorn and sit back for a perfectly crafted movie that will make everyone at DC/Warner Brothers cry over missed opportunities and hopefully rethink their own expectations.