🎬 "Last orders, please!"
Shaun of the Dead (2003). Welcome to the 17th edition of The Reel!
Estimated reading time: 6m 40s.
2020 will be the first film in a decade without the release of a Marvel MCU film.
Alas, says you.
The heavens weep, says I.
What a truly irretrievable loss for cinema, says renowned Marvel fanatic Martino Scorzeze.
ABOVE (Black Widow): ScarJo carefully watching the Tenet box office returns over the past two months.
It may come as a surprise to readers of this blog that Monsieur Le Reel is not a huge Marvel film fan, despite my comic book obsession and evident lack of social skills.
The MCU films, to me, are very similar to the Press Up bars and restaurants that have overwhelmed Dublin city.
The reasons being:
They look nice and are stylish, but with little substance.
They all follow a very similar formula.
They’ve developed incredible popularity in a short space of time.
Everything started with Captain America(‘s).
ABOVE: Mary’s Bar on Wicklow St, an “old man pub” about three days old.
Is this a negative thing, I hear you ask? Not if that’s what you’re into.
But when one company has a monopoly on properties, creative variety becomes increasingly limited. Now that Disney own the rights to Wolverine and the X-Men, will we ever see a film with these characters as bold and different as 2017’s Logan?
Unlikely.
Just because they’re pumping out content that you recognise and enjoy, does not mean it’s good for the industry.
Oh well. I do love Wowburger.
Time for some reviews!
This week: Single-take slaughter, revenge of the mom, and one small step for man.
🍬 She will find you, and she will bore you.
Peppermint (2018), film, directed by Pierre Morel.
Is it fair to review a film during which I was asleep for roughly 40 minutes?
A purist might say no.
I would say: “Oh yes, even more so.”
ABOVE: And the prize for “Most Boring Facial Expression When Pointing A Gun” goes to:
Peppermint stars Jennifer Garner as a dubiously badass L.A. mom seeking revenge on a Mexican cartel, for the murders of her husband and daughter.
Where to begin with this one.
Aside from being impressively uninspired, the plot is nonsensical. Garner’s Riley North has no military background, yet we are to believe that she can disappear for five years and return as Rambo reincarnate?
ABOVE: Duct tape over an open wound? No, that’s definitely not going to be painful to remove at all.
Then there’s the villains. The drug lords against whom Riley takes up arms must be the most stereotypical, templated, inauthentic bad guys ever to inspire mild-mannered characters to bloody vengeance.
Garner is adequate, doing her best while surrounded by more bland characters than the background extras in a Friends party scene.
Directed by Pierre Morel, who directed the first Taken film, you would expect at least a modicum of excitement and gripping action. My (unplanned) mid-film slumber is testament to the lack thereof.
ABOVE: Seriously, does this lady only have one facial expression?
It takes a lot (or rather, extremely little) to get one star from this blog.
Unless the 40 minutes I missed was ghost directed by Stanley Kubrick, I’m quite fine with that judgement.
Look out for: The nauseating opening credit sequence. What sounds like generic 00s rock music plays over a confusing, jump-cut sequence of cars driving past unsavoury sights in L.A. Credit sequences do not make or break a film, but by God they can reflect its quality.
If you liked this: Much better female-led solo action thrillers exist out there, from Uma Thurman in Kill Bill to Saoirse Ronan (c’mon Ireland) in Hanna. However, 2018’s Mandy starring Nicholas Cage (reviewed way back in The Reel #1) is the craziest, most gruesome revenge tale you can experience. You have been warned.
Rating: ⭐
🧟 Braiiins!! Braaiiins.. on that guy!
One Cut of the Dead (2017), film, directed by Shin'ichirô Ueda.
Horror films are not for this reviewer.
No thank you.
When I was eight I watched The Sixth Sense (with my whole family, nice one Mum and Dad). One scene starring a young Mischa Barton (of The O.C.) was so terrifying that it gave me nightmares for weeks.
It was not, as my sister remarked, because I was “afraid of girls”.
That didn’t start until at least my teens.
ABOVE (The Sixth Sense): California, here we come, right back where we AAAAAHHHHHH!!!
It takes a lot, then, to convince me to watch a horror film, but One Cut of the Dead comes with quite the accolade.
It made box-office history by earning over a thousand times its budget.
This Japanese horror-comedy had a budget of ¥3 million and grossed ¥3.12 billion - the equivalent of $28.3 million for a measly $25,000 budget.
ABOVE: Higurashi’s reaction to advice that he should rethink, reskill and reboot.
With (admittedly) quite little horror, One Cut of the Dead depicts the cast and crew of a zombie “film-within-a-film”, who run into undead-related complications while filming.
This is very much a case of see it to believe it. Hilarious, meta and achingly clever, it will make you laugh as much as it surprises you - and surprise you it will.
ABOVE: This is what I imagine a midwife delivering a child looked like in pre-hospital times.
I purposely did very little research before watching, and I would highly recommend you do the same.
P.S. I should probably watch an actual horror film one of these days.
P.P.S. I should probably stop talking about my childhood in this blog.
Look out for: One-shot madness, baby! After Birdman but before 1917, One Cut of the Dead decided to take the single-take approach to shooting. The film is without a break in scene — much of the low budget wizardry (and a healthy dose of the humour) comes from this very mechanism.
If you liked this: Who knew that zombies and comedy worked so well together? Zombieland and its slightly worse sequel might be the most famous in this quirky sub-genre, but 2004’s Shaun of the Dead is still yet to be topped (and the opening line for this edition of The Reel!).
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
⏩ Quickies
Short and snappy reviews for a short and snappy time:
Emily in Paris (2020, series, cre. Darren Star): ⭐⭐⭐
Emily’s boyfriend on the phone, after bad signal: “I think I lost you.”
Emily, deciding to break up with him: “Yeah, you did.”
I can’t decide what’s more embarrassing, this dialogue or the fact that I watched and enjoyed a further six episodes of the same. Pleasant, asinine entertainment for unpleasant… asinine times.
ABOVE (Emily in Paris): Can’t wait for season two - Emily in Leitrim.
First Man (2018, film, dir. Damien Chazelle): ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An emotional, intimate account of Neil Armstrong’s journey to the great white pie in the sky. Minimalist and deftly shot, First Man uses musical cues almost as much as director Damian Chazelle’s previous features La La Land and Whiplash. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy (despite an unconvincing accent) are sublime.
ABOVE (First Man): Myself and all the other Irish millennials looking at rent prices in Dublin.
American Murder (2020, doc., dir. Jenny Popplewell): ⭐⭐
This account of the 2018 murders of Shannan Watts and her three children is following a popular Netflix method - using social media posts, content and recreations of chat conversations to give an insight into the lives of its subjects. A harrowing real life crime with little rhyme or reason, much like this uneven documentary.
📃 Quote of the Week(s)
Rick Armstrong: “Mom, what's wrong?”
Janet Armstrong: “Nothing, honey. Your dad's going to the Moon.”
Rick Armstrong: “Okay. Can I go outside?”
At once funny and tragic. In First Man, Neil Armstrong’s young son expresses complete apathy to his father’s selection for the Moon mission.
📅 Previously, in pop culture…
Landmark events from the last two weeks in film and TV histoire:
Sep 30 - James Dean dies in a car crash in 1955, aged 24. He goes on to become the first actor to be posthumously nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.
Oct 3 - Sinéad O'Connor rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992.
ABOVE (Sinéad O'Connor): Controversial at the time, but an undeniably effective way to highlight abuse in the Catholic Church.
Oct 5 - The New York Times, in 2017, publishes its investigation into sexual harassment behaviour by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
Oct 7 - In 2018 Jodie Whittaker debuts as the first female Doctor Who on BBC.
✅ Th-th-that’s all, folks.
Thank you very much for reading!
Another few weeks, another films, and another blog disseminated into the world wide web. Plus ça change!
As always, my thanks to those that have shared and promoted this small piece of content. 🙏
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Thanks again, and I’ll see you in two weeks!
xxx
Previous Reels:
🎬 Sep 24 - Spies in Disguise, The Devil All The Time, Predestination.