Showing posts with label 10/10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 10/10. Show all posts

Backrooms

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) owns a failing discount furniture store. He always wanted to be an architect but blames the need to make a living and support his now ex-wife for his failure to pursue his dreams.

He's a bitter man and is trying to come to terms with things through therapy with Dr Kline (Renate Reinsve) but with little success.

The electrics in the store (where he also lives) are weird and when he goes down to check the breakers one night he sees light emanating through an impossibly thin discontinuity in an otherwise plain wall. When he starts looking for the source he literally falls through the wall as if it isn't there.

No good will come of this.

CW: weird as fuck

The Zone of Interest

Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) are raising their family right next to his place of work in a home surrounded by an expansive garden. The house maybe isn't quite as big as Hedwig would like but the garden is magnificent having been cultivated over just a few short years with the help of local gardeners.

Rudolf's work is stressful: he's a workaholic, occasionally meeting with suppliers and colleagues at the house but when he can he rides his horse and takes the children swimming in the nearby river.

Rudolf is the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

CW: the Holocaust done matter of fact, off screen but constantly within earshot

Weapons

One night, every child but one in the primary school class taught by Miss Gandy (Julia Garner) disappears. All of them ran spontaneously out of their homes in the night at 02:17, seemingly willingly and alone.

Now thirty days later with no sign of them angry parents, including Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), want to know just exactly what the now pariah Miss Gandy was teaching in that class.

Both Gandy and the sole remaining student, Alex have been questioned at length and no explanation, motive or connection has come to light.

Miss Gandy decides to try and investigate herself despite the warnings against this from affable Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong)

CW: bloody violence but very sparingly used

Perfect Days

Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) lives a sparse life of striking uniformity.

Early every morning he buys coffee out of a vending machine and travels from his tiny home to clean toilets in Tokyo's public parks. He goes about this with great diligence.

At lunchtime Hirayama photographs the light through the trees. He mostly eats from the same few places. Aside from this he reads and listens to music, mostly 60s and 70s Western rock, on cassette. At night he dreams in black and white.

That's it.

Pig

Rob (Nicolas Cage) lives an austere reclusive life in a cabin in the woods and hunts truffles for the fine dining market, relying on his truffle-hunting pig to find them.

He swaps the truffles for supplies with flash gastro-bro Amir (Alex Wolff) in a very one-sided arrangement but doesn't seem to mind being exploited.

One night people break into his cabin, knock him out and steal his pig. The following day Rob contacts Amir and demands to be driven into the city to get his pig back.

No good will come of this.

Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers

Eccentric inventor Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his anthropomorphic dog Gromit are low on funds after he bought a ridiculous birthday present to automate walkies: ex-NASA technotrousers. Forced to take in a lodger they end up with a seemingly pleasant Penguin but as soon as they've moved in it's clear they have designs on Gromit's place in the household.

No good will come of this.

The Substance

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is movie star famed for her beauty but now working TV doing aerobic workout & motivational slots on breakfast TV. On her 50th birthday she finds out that her show is to be cancelled and in somewhat of a daze gets into a serious car accident on the way home.

Unexpectedly she comes out of it completely physically unscathed but after she breaks down on the examination table one of the doctors secretly slips her promotional material for The Substance which promises to make a better, younger, version of yourself.

In a tailspin, Elisabeth succumbs to temptation, orders and administers The Substance and gives rise, messily on the bathroom floor, to Sue (Margaret Qualley). The Substance did not overpromise and underdeliver: Sue is perfect. Now the two must 'timeshare' life seven days as one, seven days as the other. There are strict procedures to follow.

No good will come of this.

CW: full frontal nudity, body horror ago-go-go, mutation, objectification of women (but subverting that's the whole point)

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Citadel is the only source of good clean water and food in the whole wasteland, ruled over by the tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his mutant offspring.

When his Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) goes rogue, stealing away his prized breeders, all hell is unleashed to recover them and deliver vengeance.

War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), living out the last of his cancerous half-life, isn't up to joining the pack until hooked up to a blood bag: a nameless feral wanderer (Tom Hardy) snatched up from the wastes.

No good will come of this.

CW: lots of grim, weird post-apocalyptic misogyny and violence

Barbie

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives an unchanging life in Barbie World where everything is perfect.

Her boyfriend Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) wishes she paid him more attention but it's girls night every night.

One day after some intrusive thoughts things start to go wrong. She's informed by Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) that out in the real world there's a little girl in trouble who needs her help and she must travel there to help. This comes as something of a shock as Barbie knows nothing about the real world.

Meg 2: The Trench

Following the discovery of the reserve of ancient sea life where the Megalodon was encountered in the first movie there's now a permanent presence at the station Mana One mapping and exploring the trench.

However they're not the only ones working there, it's also a source of precious minerals. No good will come of this.

CW: I think this movie is a genuine danger to your IQ

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As the US Civil War rages, three cruel and greedy men, The Good (Clint Eastwood), The Bad (Lee Van-Cleef) and The Ugly (Eli Wallach) travel the land doing violent stuff for money.

They become aware of a lost Army payroll amounting to $200,000 in gold, an absolute fortune, and set about locating it.

CW: scenes of violence and torture

The Terminator

In the distant future of 2029, mankind was almost made extinct by Skynet: an AI that triggered nuclear war and built an army of killer machines to exterminate the survivors.

One man, John Conner, organises a resistance that fights back. At the threshold of victory they discover that Skynet has sent one of its infiltration units: a Terminator T101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to kill his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and ensure he is never born.

One more trip is possible and Connor selects volunteer Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to follow and protect her.

Reese is outmatched in almost every way by The Terminator but has some critical information it lacks: her full name and knowing her face from an old photograph.

CW: injury detail and DIY surgery, enucleation.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse

Following the events of "Into the Spiderverse" where Kingpin was trying to tear a hole in the universe to replace his dead family from another, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) AKA Spiderman is back to usual Spiderman stuff: stopping crime, skipping school and hiding his secret identity from his parents.

He pines for Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) AKA Spider-woman who was one of the multiple Spider-people drawn from different universes and misses the advice from the world weary Peter Parker (Jake Johnson).

In Gwen's universe she too misses Miles but when a villain pops into her reality from elsewhere this unexpectedly offers a chance to be reunited.

No good will come of this.

CW: Flashing imagery

The Outwaters

Two brothers travel to the Californian desert to make a zero budget music video for one of their friends who is a singer songwriter. They recruit a fourth friend to do hair and makeup.

The trip isn't particularly well planned and they spend a chunk of time looking at scenery and larking about before getting on with the task at hand.

At night they can hear ominous booming that might be a thunderstorm and the local wildlife begins to act strangely.

No good will come of this.

CW: strobing lights, shaking camera with disorientating viewpoint, blood, gore, mutilation, psychedelic as fuck

Roma

Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) works as a maid for an affluent Doctor's family in 1970s Mexico City.

(that's it, there is no complicated premise)

CW: Absolutely mundane horrible onscreen death of people including a baby that is so unglamourised and matter of fact it's more horrific than any horror movie.

Lamb

Icelandic farmers Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) live a quiet and somber life in their remote homestead.

At Christmas, one of their ewes gives birth to a very special lamb and the two adopt it as their own.

No good will come of this.

CW: animal births

Full Metal Jacket

We follow a group of recruits to the US Marine Corps from entry through to fighting in the ruined towns and cities of Vietnam.

CW: lots of 1960s racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic language but the real horror is the dehumanising effect of war

Taxi Driver

In 1970s New York at the height of its seediness, insomniac, probably traumatised Marine Corps veteran Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) works the night shift driving a taxi. He witnesses the worst the city has to offer and wants it all to just get washed away one day, never to be seen again. He looks down on those around him even though he's just part of that world.

Lacking human connection, Travis develops a stalkery obsession with political campaigner Betsy (Cybil Shepherd) and amazingly manages to convince her to spend time with him. However she's clearly his cultural and intellectual superior and occasionally mocks him. After a terrible faux-pas she rejects him, setting him on a path to violent retribution.

CW: full spectrum 1970s seediness including paedophilia, racism, sexism, homophobia etc.

Aliens: Special Edition

Following on from the events in Alien, Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) escape shuttle is picked up by a salvage crew and she is revived from stasis sleep.

Decades have passed, many things have changed, some things haven't and everybody she knew including her daughter has died of old age.

With her report of events dismissed and being made a scapegoat for the financial loss associated with the Nostromo, Ripley ends up doing low status work to scrape a meagre living. The planet where she encountered the Xenomorph is now a small colony and nobody has ever encountered anything like it there.

That is until one day her Company case worker Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) knocks on her door asking if she will join a mission there as a consultant. It seems they've lost contact with the colony...

No good will come of this.

Candyman

Young affluent academic Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and her colleague Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) are working on a paper on urban legends and begin researching a local phenomenon, the "Candyman", who is said to murder people who invoke him with the hook he has instead of a hand.

Her husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley) and his colleagues are scornful, considering it "academic Bolivia" but the pair double down and dig into the one supposed killing they can link to a real event, travelling to the scene of the crime.

Here in the "projects" amongst poverty and crime the Candyman is very real. That reality begins to seep into Helen's life.