Under The Silver Lake

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, and Topher Grace   

Director: David Robert Mitchell

140 minutes (15) 2018

Mubi DVD Region 2

Rating: 8/10

Review by Peter Schilling

A comedy-drama with specific elements of Hitchcockian noir, Under The Silver Lake is also an atypical rom-com offering, embedded with general themes of lazily modern Californian romanticism. Slacker Sam (Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man) spies on his topless neighbour, and beats up little kids for vandalising his car. He has dreams of cannibalism but can’t pay his rent. Sam drives around town, where a notorious dog-killer is on the loose. He follows three girls who meet a cosplay pirate, and encounters a spectral beauty. While he’s evading a phantom stalker, Sam is sprayed by a skunk, and unfortunately, that anti-social stink never quite goes away.

“Why do you have dog-biscuits in your pocket?”

Sam admires a comic-zine of urban mystery and reconstituted folklore. Vital clues are found in cheesy trivia. UTSL is an astute composition of conspiracy theory, delusional weirdo characters, clever zeitgeist surfing, contenders from across Hollywood history, and quirky tragicomic ambiguities. David Robert Mitchell (director of cult psycho-horror movie It Follows, 2014), strives eagerly for craftsmanship values, and his ability to blend varied influences results in a picture that’s far more than just the sum of its parts. A few inspirationally David Lynchian moments are outstanding. Other pop-culture examples are decoded but re-mastered for ironic effect. Some odd conceptual stuff seems out of Martin Scorsese’s off-beat After Hours (1985), and bits of Terry Gilliam’s Fisher King (1991) are lurking about, here and there, determining unexpected tones and off-kilter content.

Jesus and his vampire brides might know something about a missing woman that our scruffy hero is clumsily searching for. Media images stolen for a celebratory recycling become refreshed for relevance far beyond their original meanings, now locked away in confused memory. The finale concerns a doomsday cult taking refuge underground from a seemingly inevitable apocalypse. More like a fascinating curio of Americana than any kind of cultural excavation or an intriguing expose, UTSL still has undeniably abundant charm and revels frequently in its joyful mystique.

Hellboy

Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, and Ian McShane

Director: Neil Marshall

121 minutes (15) 2019

Lions Gate 4K Ultra HD

[Released 19th August]

Rating: 8/10

Review by Steven Hampton

Beginnings are often terrible, sometimes wonderful, and usually tricky things to get just right. Hellboy starts in the familiar mode of standard prologue, with a narration by Ian McShane - introducing us to the Dark Ages, and noting that it was called so for “a fucking good reason.” This is a quip that establishes the movie’s tone almost perfectly. It’s not edgy, but it is funny. If you cannot laugh or chuckle or, at least, smile at this acidic intro then it’s unlikely that you will enjoy the rest of this movie’s remarkably revisionist efforts to be more faithful to its Dark Horse comic-book source material.

A superhero in the mould of the Hulk, and especially like the Thing, of the Fantastic Four, Hellboy (created in 1994 by Mike Mignola) is a demonic orphan with sawn-off horns and a stone hand, who is adopted by secret agent Professor Broom (Ian McShane), after he foils Nazi plans to raise something devilish, and therefore presumably evil, straight from the Underworld, to be a WMD in WW2. Hellboy is guided away from his obvious heritage as a cross-breed substitute or hybrid-alternative anti-Christ, because of his human upbringing. His monstrous appearance conflicts with ethical choices and sympathetic humanity as the basic morality of his indomitably antiheroic character is derived from old-as-time arguments about whether it’s nature or nurture that makes a person who (or what) they are.

“Destiny... stupid word for coincidence.”

Professor Broom, the leader of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD), sends Hellboy to England, where he’s invited to join a mythical Wild Hunt for giants on the rampage, but our hero is betrayed. Alice (Sasha Lane, American Honey) is a psychic medium who helps Hellboy when the Professor later teams him with super-soldier Major Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim, TV’s Lost, Hawaii Five-0 remake), although his confrontations with the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), an immortal witch dismembered by King Arthur and Merlin, result in daring super-heroics that are actually fusions of gory action, wryly composed comedy, and fantastic visions of apocalyptic mayhem.

Neil Marshall, the maker of Dog Soldiers (2002), The Descent (2005), and under-rated actioner Doomsday (2008), churns up fairy-tales, dread folklore, gothic moods, fabulous beasts, and grotesque curses, to show us that fighting evil is an intrinsically dirty business. From witching-hour nightmares on Pendle Hill, and Baba Yaga’s chicken-legged house, to encounters with a talkative fairy-boar changeling, and Mexican vampirism (recalling From Dusk Till Dawn), Hellboy runs through an impressive series of supernatural threats which establishes a varied rogues’ gallery of enemy forces, in formal sketches if not as finished portraits. This brisk pacing works very much in the movie’s favour. So, don’t worry if you dislike like any particular monster, there will be another weird one along in just a few minutes.

The original Hellboy (2004) movie, adapted/ directed by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Ron Perlman, was basically a clever blend of sci-fi and fantasy, with moments of humour more like Marvel’s recent epics of superhero cinema. This remake or reboot (if you prefer that term), is quite definitely - and rather defiantly of this decade’s seemingly inevitable trends - a fantasy-horror adventure. If, as David Harbour has reportedly said, this darker version of Hellboy ‘failed’ to match the ‘chocolaty’ appeal of DC, or Avengers, brands, it’s because the richer flavouring here is too boozy for mainstream success. There’s no sex or drugs (like in Deadpool), but this year’s Hellboy certainly is a big rock ‘n’ roll movie, so it deserves to be appreciated for its own grisly, grimly comedic merits, and not unfairly dismissed, or simply ignored, just because it’s not a copycat of its genre predecessors.

In Bruges

Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ciaran Hinds

Director: Martin McDonagh

107 minutes 18 2008

Second Sight

Blu-ray region B

[Released 19th August]

Rating: 10/10

Review by J.C Hartley

This is a thoroughly brilliant British gangster flick which can be watched in back-to-back viewings with no drop-off in enjoyment. First-time hit-man Ray (Colin Farrell, Minority Report) bungles his debut, and is sent to Bruges with minder Ken (Brendan Gleeson, Beowulf) because boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes, Harry Potter) had happy memories of a childhood trip there, and he wants Ray to have a nice little break in a magical place before Ken rubs him out.

Ray hates Bruges with a vengeance and anyway is wracked with suicidal guilt over the outcome of the botched hit, which resulted in the death of a child. Ken is enchanted with the medieval charm of Bruges and takes the opportunity for a bit of cultural tourism. Ray’s life begins to turn around when he meets the beautiful Chloe (Clemence Poesy, Harry Potter), who is taking a break from rolling tourists with her sociopathic sometime boyfriend Eirik to deal drugs to the crew of a feature film being shot in the city. Any chance of redemption for Ray is foiled when his escape from the city is confounded and Harry travels over in person to tidy things up. 

The film is wonderfully but gently allusive to both theatrical and cinematic traditions. The first port of call would be Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, as Ken and Ray wait for Harry’s phone call, but there are clear links to the two manipulated killers in the late Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, which owes its own debt to Beckett. Some commentators have compared Fiennes’ portrayal of Harry with Ben Kingsley’s monstrous Don from Sexy Beast, but the part is in a tradition of south London hoodlums that stretches back to Johnny Shannon’s Harry Flowers in Performance. When the wounded Ray stumbles into a dream sequence, drawing on imagery from Bosch, being shot for the film-within-a-film, the first impression as the snowflakes drift down into the square is of James Mason as Johnny McQueen cornered by the authorities in Odd Man Out.

None of the above references are hammered into the viewer but are subliminally present for anyone with an abiding interest in the theatre and film. Likewise, the themes surrounding childhood, and the treatment of children, colour the behaviour of the characters. Ray’s target in the disastrous hit was a Catholic priest: “Harry Waters says hello!” The child accidentally shot by Ray, while in prayer, was clutching a piece of paper apparently listing the failings he was seeking forgiveness for, like ‘being sad’, and ‘being moody’. The viewer wonders what a priest might have done to incur the murderous wrath of a gangster, but with the child’s presence, Harry’s views on children and sense of obligation, and he is revealed to have killed the killer of Ken’s wife, suggest a scenario. Ken says to Ray that although he killed the little boy he might have saved the next one, but Ray fails to pick up on the allusion pointing out that if he were to become a doctor he would need exams. There is a link back to Beckett’s All That Fall where Dan, who may in fact have given way to murderous impulses, asks, “Did you ever wish to kill a child.”

References to Don’t Look Now recall the child’s death at the start of that film, which leads the parents to seek escape and distraction in Venice. On his date with Chloe, Ray makes a tasteless joke about the child abuse cases in Belgium. Chloe chides him revealing that she knew one of the victims, before relenting and saying she did this to discomfort Ray who, along with us, is not entirely convinced. Ray himself often behaves like a spoiled child, with Ken is like his big brother or else a father-figure. There is a beautifully observed scene with Ray preparing for his date with Chloe, and then presenting himself for Ken’s approval.

Above all this film is a comedy but one in which the laugh-out-loud moments are modulated by the darker comedy of Beckett, Pinter, and Chekhov. Some critics have bemoaned the action finale where Harry goes on a shooting-spree in the streets of Bruges, but that violent conclusion is inevitable from the earliest introduction of Harry’s character, “Don’t be stupid. This is the shoot-out.” Equally, locked into his exaggerated sense of what is right, when Harry shoots Jimmy the dwarf actor and mistakes the corpse for that of a child, his next action is inescapable. Whatever the irony of Ray attempting to tell Harry that what he has done is alright, and that his victim, although an innocent bystander, is really an adult. Despite the telegraphing of the ordinance-heavy finale, that’s beautifully shot nevertheless, the final moments of the film, and Ray’s dying thoughts on hell and Bruges, are priceless.

Limited edition extras:

• Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-winning short film Six Shooter in HD
• Shoot First, Sightsee Later - a new interview with director of photography Eigil Bryld
• Finding The Rhythm - a new interview with editor Jon Gregory
• Finding Bruges - a new interview with production designer Michael Carlin
• The Alcove Guy - a new interview with actor Eric Godon
• When In Bruges - interviews with cast and crew
• Strange Bruges - interviews with cast and crew
• Deleted scenes
• Boat trip around Bruges
• Gag reel 

The Colossus Of New York

Cast: John Baragrey, Mala Powers, and Otto Kruger

Director: Eugene Lourie

70 minutes (PG) 1958

101 Films Blu-ray region B

Rating: 6/10

Review by Christopher Geary

Creaky B&W sci-fi rarely looks good 60 years later but some, like this, are ripe for critical re-evaluation. Clunky old robot movie The Colossus Of New York is actually all about a cyborg, a huge mechanical walking support created by a family of scientists to house the salvaged brain of their dead genius, Jeremy (Ross Martin). Part Frankenstein’s monster, part superhero movie like Tobor The Great (1954), its post-human morality themes of immortality via cybernetics eagerly anticipate such modern classics as RoboCop (1987, remade very well 2014).

Lacking many conventional human senses, robo-Jerry gains ESP, while he’s working on a solution to the problems of world hunger. It’s no wonder that he stumbles on his fraught widow Anne’s growing attachment to his brother Henry. Stomping about in a jealous rage with blazing electric eyes, robo-Jerry becomes homicidal for a new genocidal campaign of inhumanity that echoes traits of wartime fascism. Only the cyber-giant’s relationship with Jeremy’s young son Billy offers much hope for survival in this routinely melodramatic tale of ‘hubris clobbered by nemesis’.

Some charming design elements and lighting set-ups for pivotal scenes grant this overtly tragic story many of the best gothic style visuals found in any sci-fi productions of its era, and the minimalist piano score deserves attention for a subtle evocation of silent movies. This movie’s dramatic finale, with a violent rampage in the UN building, where an antiwar inscription on a wall delivers a backdrop message of peace for all mankind, ably supports a still positively compelling techno cult fable about disarmament.

Restored to superb hi-def quality, this Blu-ray release is another splendid offering by the reliable 101 Films label. The disc’s bonus material is an expert commentary track.

Crack In The World

Cast: Dana Andrews, Janette Scott, and Kieron Moore

Director: Andrew Marton      

96 minutes (U) 1965

101 Films Blu-ray region B 
[Released 5th August]

Rating: 8/10

Review by Steven Hampton  

This disaster movie begins, like other epic genre dramas of its era, with official visitors arriving at a super-science complex, where a matte painting of a somewhat mysterious but nonetheless impressive building offers unique imagery. Men in suits accompany the blonde with a dazzling smile, to inspect the plans and customised hardware for Project Inner Space. The dying Dr Sorenson (Dana Andrews, Night Of The Demon, 1957), and his wife Maggie (Janette Scott, The Day Of The Triffids, 1962), another scientist on this project, are preparing an experiment, intending to harness geo-thermal power from the Earth’s core. 

The movie’s theme of penetration into the unknown, here via industrial testing, is using a nuclear bomb to burn through the otherwise unbreakable layers of the planet’s mantle in order to release sufficient heat, as molten rock, likely to solve all of the world’s demands for cheap energy. An intelligent deployment of its explanatory details ensures this rather action-oriented story distinguishes itself from most of the straight-forward, and typically unimaginative, disaster movies (like Earthquake) that followed in the 1970s. However, its drama is still driven by the romantic passions of a convenient love-triangle, that includes the project’s dissenting voice of Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore, previously paired with Scott for DOTT), who is much younger and considerably more virile than the aged and regretful Sorenson. It’s Rampion who quits his job here and travels to London to warn Sir Charles Eggerston (Alexander Knox), of his own theory about the geological risks of Project Inner Space, and his assessment of global risks proves to be an accurate doomsday prediction. 

One particular scene stands out in terms of scientific rigour. When Dr Rampion’s theory is evidently proven coherent and factual by unexpected results, Dr Sorenson quickly admits his now undeniable mistakes in calculating the extraordinary hazards of a daring project. Obviously, it does not solve the immediate dangers now facing humanity, but changing his mind fits in closely with how the checks and balances of science should work, ideally, in the real world, without any inflated egos, or consideration of lost profits, getting in the way of any further decisive options. From that point onwards, the team’s response to an environmental crisis is managed by both men, working together on new plans to save the cracked world. This consensus helps to dispel the movie world’s mad-scientist mythology of a lonely tortured genius whose overbearing will rejects any challenge from rationality. Cooperation, not competition, is shown to be the only way ahead to get the best results.   

Andrew Marton’s Crack In The World follows the planet-wrecking formula of earlier spectacular catastrophe pictures, When Worlds Collide (1951), and British classic The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961). Made on a surprisingly modest budget, this SF movie uses stock footage of volcanic eruptions and flowing lava, edited-in to add exatr veracity to a series of increasingly dramatic special effects. Shot on locations in Spain, standing in for the east-African coast, and some islands in the Indian Ocean, where the heroes survive quakes, floods, and a climactic struggle to escape from the collapsing underground base, Crack In The World boasts landscape scenes on a studio-set lit with all the burning reds of hell during the movie’s astonishingly sudden creation of a second moon, emerging out of the Earth’s crust and spinning away from the broken ground, up into orbit. Indeed, this movie’s apocalyptic finale provides some of the most awesome, and profoundly alarming, visuals in stylised genre cinema, until such modern productions as Alex Proyas’ visionary adventure Knowing (2009).