Tag: Alice Krige

2022 In Film: Day Six (The Quite Good)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Beast

Ups: Good length

The CGI animals have a real presence

Wonderfully directed.

Downs: Not essential

Dialogue is a bit simple.

Quite cliche at times.

Best Moment: When the characters walk through the village and discover all the dead bodies. Haunting, like something out of a horror film.

Worst Moment: Lion in the house, only because it didn’t feel as natural as the other parts.

Best Performer: Elba, obviously.

Opening: The characters arrive at the reserve. Good way to showcase the scenery.

Closing: Surviving members of the family recreate an earlier family photo. Cliche, but kind of sweet.

Best Line: Death came calling to my wife and daughters and i wasn’t there to say no you can’t have them

Original Review here

Elvis

Ups: Is great at telling you who he was, not in a “facts and important dates” way, but in a “understanding who he is” way.

Austin Butler. He is phenomenal.

Will make you cry at times.

Downs: Weirdly edited.

Tom Hanks is a strange choice.

Terribly paced. Tries to do too much. There are at least three stories worth telling, and they’re not given enough time.

Best Moment: The Christmas special. Punk as anything.

Worst Moment: The assassination of MLK, trying to tie that into Elvis feels a bit cheap.

Best Performer: Austin Butler, obviously.

Opening: Tom Parker is on his deathbed. He then talks about how he met Elvis. Kind of a lazy framing device.

Closing: Elvis, fat and depressed, sings at Las Vegas. Truly emotional.

Best Line: His entire speech on stage to Tom Parker. Blistering fury.

Original Review here

Looking For Venera

Ups: The central relationship between the two.

The sociopolitical subtext to everything

Some really interesting shots.

Downs: Not very engaging at times.

Best Moment: The family dancing around a room to music being played on a tinny radio. The enthusiasm the characters have for the activity and for each other is heartwarming to see. And completely stopped by a man coming home and telling them to go to bed, all that happiness and joy, gone in an instant. Really demonstrates the power that the patriarchal system has over them.

Worst Moment: There’s a scene just after that at the breakfast table. It’s really well acted and has some shocking moments, but the characters are out of focus. Very picky I know but it’s too basic a mistake to make in a professional film.

Best Performer: Kosovare Krasniqi 

Opening: A sex scene in the woods between two fully clothed people. Strange choice as you don’t know who they are. Filmed from behind some trees so you do get a wonderfully voyeuristic feel to it. It’s later talked about by the characters, so we didn’t really need to see it.

Closing: A young boy drinking water at a table at a family dinner. At first, I thought “that’s a weird way to end it”, then it hit me. He’s observing. He’s watching the family interactions, he’s seeing how men treat women, and that’s what he’ll grow up to be too. A simple shot implies that everything will repeat. Kind of genius.

Best Line: “I’m not a coward like her”, that line shows her growth so much, but also her immaturity, as saying that to an abusive dick just means they’re going to take it out on the other person.

Original review here

She Will

Ups: Very claustrophobic.

Great sound work, both in terms of music and general sound design.

Downs: The fire incident doesn’t have a narrative follow-up.

Needs to set up some of the background characters better so we know how they’re regarded in-universe.

Feels like it should be better.

Best Moment: When she enters the lodge. You really feel the claustrophobic nature of it.

Worst Moment: A close up of a slug. Really specific but it cuts to it, and then cuts back, way too quickly to the point where it seems like a mistake.

Best Performer: Alice Krige.

Opening: Closeup on a womans eyes looking up at lights. Eye close ups are always good in horror movies as they can be so expressive. We see surgery being performed on her, intercut with her putting on makeup. A nice contrast, and intriguing enough to make you wonder what’s going on, especially when she talks about her mask being one of “preservation”

Closing: A scene of chaos and female reckoning.

Best Line: “The mud here is thought to have healing properties because of all the ashes from women who were burnt as witches” *blank-eyed stare* holy fuck.

Original review here

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Ups: Better than the first one.

Funny.

Actually has a plot.

Downs: Still inconsistent with the speed.

Quite forgettable.

Tries too hard with the comedy sometimes.

The lead character is kind of obnoxious.

Best Moment: The fact that the villain is basically defeated by a punch in the balls, much like Hitler was.

Worst Moment: The bar dance.

Best Performer: Idris Elba, he is hilarious.

Opening: Sonic is attempting to be a hero. Fun start, and demonstrates both his speed, his morality, and his naive nature.

Closing: They play baseball. Quite funny actually.

Best Line: “It’s so nice when diabolical evil lives up to the hype!”

Original Review here

The Adam Project

Ups: Perfectly cast.

Always good to see new ideas given a big budget.

Downs: Some characters are sidelined unnecessarily

The dialogue could be better.

Bad CGI at times.

Best Moment: The goodbyes. Incredibly emotional. There are two fight scenes I nearly chose, which looked good. But this section is incredible.

Worst Moment: The villain’s death. Mainly because the CGI looks atrocious.

Best Performer: Walker Scobel.

Opening: Ryan Reynolds has stolen a jet and uses it to escape through a wormhole. Sets up the central theme almost immediately.

Closing: Back in the future. Adam meets his wife again. Sweet, but not sure it was the right choice. We don’t see that much of them together.

Best Line: “Hey. You have her to take care of you. She has no one. You understand? Do you understand? She wakes up every morning with a broken heart and a, and a closet full of his clothes and gets nothing from you but a fistful of crap, and not even, like, ten seconds of genuine empathy. You know, thity years, you still get sick to your stomach every time you remember how you treated her now.” More moments like that please.

Original Review here

The Princess

Ups: Bloodier than I expected.

Some good fight scenes.

Downs: Really bad CGI at times.

Feels too much like a video game at times.

The whiff of pandering never really goes away.

Best Moment: The opening because it sets it up as being something different

Worst Moment: When she sets someone on fire. Only because the CGI is REALLY bad

Best Performer: Dominic Cooper

Opening: The Princess (hey, that’s the title of the movie) wakes up in a tower and finds herself chained to a bed. Flashbacks to her being kidnapped. She breaks her own thumb to escape. Surprising but effective.

Closing: She slits a guys throat. There’s a lot of blood and his head comes off (which was a bit weird as she didn’t initially seem to cut that deep). The king announces that now women can rule the kingdom. Yay, finally equality for all rich people of that one family. Her friend didn’t actuallly die, then a guy who’s been searching for her the whole film recognises her. Kind of expected. Then there’s a completely neutered cover of White Wedding

Best Line: “You’ll learn to sleep with one eye open. To never turn your back. I’ll be in heaven, just thinking day and night of ways to kill you. And you’ll be in hell, wondering when it’s coming. And you know that it will be coming. Because you know that I’ll never rest, never idle, never stop, until i am standing above your corpse, holding – in my delicate, manicured hands – your still beating heart!”

Original Review here

Zero Fucks Given

Ups: Has the best drunk acting. They don’t make sense and they talk mostly shit.

Adèle Exarchopoulos, she’s quite good isn’t she?

Downs: There are a few plot points which don’t really go anywhere. Some more interesting plots are suggested but not followed up on.

Best Moment: Montage where everyone is recording safety videos and have to end it by standing still and smiling for 30 seconds in silence. Very awkward and weirdly funny.

Worst Moment: The moments when she’s not on a plane.

Best Performer: Adèle Exarchopoulos, obviously.

Opening: Pre-shift meeting of airline crew. Being told to focus more on individual sales. Then some beautiful shots of flying through clouds. That meeting doesn’t really lead to anything.

Closing: Her in Dubai (wearing a face mask incorrectly btw, it’s not covering her nose) watching a fountain show. Impressive but does seem a bit too much like someone’s holiday video rather than something in a film. It was all supposed to be from her phone, hence the very final shot of her turning the camera towards herself and pulling her mask down. Slightly underwhelming.

Best Line: I prefer to be the irresistible one than the good girl. There is no past, there is no future it’s just you as a cabin manager in this precise moment and her in front of you. Nobody cares about your personal life or your personal issues or what you did yesterday or what you’re going to do tomorrow.

Original Review here

She Will (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: An ageing film star (Veronica, played by Alice Krige) retreats to the Scottish countryside with her nurse to recover from surgery. While there, mysterious forces of revenge emerge from the land where witches were burned.

I am aware I have huge gaps in my pop culture knowledge, so forgive my ignorance when I ask this question: is Alice Krige a big deal? Because after watching this, it feels like she should be. She carries herself brilliantly in this. If anyone is looking to remake Sunset Boulevard, you’d be hard-pushed to find someone to step into Gloria Swanson’s shoes than Krige. But also, don’t remake Sunset Boulevard you dicks. Her performance is a real highlight in this, it feels slightly exaggerated, but only because the character is a fading actress, so her whole personality is exaggerated. If she was too “real” and grounded you wouldn’t have that “she used to be a star” feeling, and if she was TOO exaggerated she wouldn’t feel real, and some of the moments would come off more comedic than creepy.

The supporting cast all have their chance to shine, although you sometimes wish some of them were in it a bit more. It’s only 95 minutes long and I feel another 10 minutes or so might have helped it. There are glimpses that Malcolm McDowell’s character is highly regarded, but if the film had more time then we would have had a better glimpse of how famous he is in this universe. Is he a “known in Britain” actor, is he a “known by film buffs” actor, or is he a “respected and known by the world” actor? If we knew more about that, we would know more about the influence he had on Veronica’s life and it would help to flesh out the story. He is on verge of knighthood, but is it a “and now you’re put out to pasture” one?

I feel like “Post #metoo horror” is now a genre. In the last few years, there has been a definite increase in female-created horror films about women fighting back against male oppression and patriarchal power structures. I don’t know enough to judge whether there’s been an increase in those stories being made, or whether the ones being made now have more eyes on them, either way, stuff like this is very important to see. But since it is a delicate subject, it can be tricky to pull off well without seeming like it’s retreading old ground. There are moments where this does dip into the cliche, particularly with some of the visuals, and “this area is where witches were punished” is used a lot, to the point where it feels like it’s replaced “ancient Indian burial ground” as a horror trope. It does take it into an interesting direction though. It’s not enough that “bad shit went down here”, it’s not a therapy retreat where the people there praise the earth as being good for your health “because of all the ashes from women who were burnt as witches”, so its not enough that bad stuff happened, it’s the commercialisation of those awful events. Burning women wasn’t enough, they’re now exploiting their memories and deaths. It would be like if Dachau sold foundation powder mixed in with ashes from the rooms. It’s dark, horrific when you think about it, yet not entirely surprising. It does feel like that moment is there to influence the character, it doesn’t seem to go as deep into the notion of systematic oppression as it should.

This is the feature directorial debut of Charlotte Colbert, who also wrote it. She has a bright future in horror. Her main background is in photography and multi-media sculptures, and her knowledge of photography comes through in some of the ways the film is shot. She approaches them in a way that tells you the story with the way everything is framed, you could watch this with the sound off and still get a pretty solid idea of what is happening, based solely on the choices of shots used. Of particular note is when Veronica arrives at the lodge. Before that, you think it’s going to be a film about isolation and her losing her mind with nobody near her. So when she opens the door and is met with a room full of people you’re just as shocked as she is. Then there are a lot of really claustrophobic shots of everybody approaching her, it does a great job of putting you in her shoes.

Just because you can watch it in silence, doesn’t mean you should. Clint Mansell does a fantastic score, as he normally does. And the sound design is pretty fun throughout, there’s a moment where someone’s hand starts burning, and the sound is weirdly wonderful, it’s almost crackling, as if the world itself is coming apart.

That leads to the downside though, the film is very stop-start, it doesn’t keep momentum well at all. The fire incident, for example, doesn’t really have a narrative follow-up. The narrative is where Colbert’s inexperience as a writer shows. It tries to do much, and sometimes feels like it lacks identity. It has a lot to say, and I feel that if it tried to say less, it could end up saying more. There’s enough material here for three films, but now Colbert has put them all in the same film, it will make it harder for her to explore those themes again without it feeling like she’s retreading old ground.

In summary: a noble effort, and one with a lot to say. It’s definitely worth watching if you can, but you do feel it’s slightly on the cusp of something much better than it is.