black comedy

CATFIGHT

Cert 15 Stars 2

This satirical essay on the pointless destructiveness of violence offers caustic mockery of hideous people.

Anne Heche and Sandra Oh are splendidly unlikeable as middle class New Yorkers, caught in a long term feud. One is rich, the other poor, and a chance encounter at a party leads to a fist fight, lasting trauma and fluctuating fortunes.

There are merry digs at war in the middle east, the dumbing down of news media, the consequences of lacking health insurance, and modern art.

But as the feud stretches down the years, we end up wanting them both to lose.

 

 

OVERLORD

Cert 18 110mins Stars 4

Zombie Nazi’s make a frontal assault on the senses and take the Second World War to a new level of hell in this full-blooded action horror.

With a knowingly uproarious tone, it’s a brain-splatting, gut-ripping blood-drenched thriller which isn’t for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

British born actor, Jovan Adepo, is one of a team of paratroopers whose deadly mission behind enemy lines in France is to help enable the Allies’ 1944 D-Day landing goes to plan.

However the radio mast they must destroy is above a heavily-guarded church crypt, where Nazi scientists are attempting to create a breed of ‘thousand-year’ soldiers of super-human strength. 

Fortunately help comes from Mathilde Ollivier’s glamorous local who has the Germans hot under the collar and is burning for revenge.

Being produced by Star Trek’s J.J. Abrams gives this a big screen sweep and gloss, and though it’s arguably in bad taste, it’s also a great deal of over-the-top fun.

DEAD IN A WEEK (OR YOUR MONEY BACK)

Cert 15 90mins Stars 3

There’s an unexpected gentleness to this charming and life-affirming British comedy thriller which finds death is very much a laughing matter.

Aneurin Barnard gives a thoughtful and deadpan performance as a depressed writer called William, who employs Tom Wilkinson’s avuncular assassin to kill him within the week.

The hitman himself has his own concerns and is resisting retirement, something he regards as a death sentence.

However when Freya Mavor’s attractive literary agent shows an interest in William’s work he rediscovers the will to live, but he has to run for his life in order to beat the deadline on his contract.

Former Dr Who Christopher Eccleston shows his gift for comedy as the foulmouthed head of the Assassin’s Guild, who has to ensure the small print is executed.

Debut director Tom Edmunds fills his script with wry observational humour and is emphatic on living for the day because after all, none of us are getting a refund.

THUNDER ROAD

Cert 15 90mins Stars 4

There’s a darkness on the edge of town in this melancholy, funny, excruciating and wonderfully affecting comedy-drama which takes its name from a Bruce Springsteen song.

However there’s barely any music in the film which is made in a naturalistic almost documentary style far removed from the wildly romanticised epic tune of The Boss, in a successful attempt to more realistically portray small town US life.

However the song is interpreted through the medium of amateur dance, which is certainly something I never expected to see.

Based on his 2016 short film of the same name, it’s the remarkably accomplished directorial debut feature of writer and star, Jim Cummings, who delivers a bravura performance of dignity, shame and sarcasm as a socially awkward local cop.

With his life shaped by his relationships with his mother, daughter, sister and ex-wife, Cummings uses his characters mental breakdown to examine the psyche of repressed, gun wielding white males and bring the state of the US heartland into focus.

 

SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER

Cert 12A 89mins Stars 4

Bill Nighy is a debonair delight in this charming, elegant, whimsical and unexpectedly moving gem of British comedy-drama mystery.

Sporting an initially distracting Scouse accent, Nighy plays a scrabble-loving tailor who is called to the morgue to identify a body which possibly is that of his missing adult son.

A sensitive veil is drawn across the detail of this gruesome errand, and leads to the elderly widower attempting to reconnect with his surviving family.

With great precision Bootle-born director Carl hunter, uses uniquely beautiful and highly-stylised set design and a deliberate sense of artificiality to bring an air of timelessness to this warmhearted and funny fable.

A uniformly excellent featuring Jenny Agutter, Sam Riley, and Alexei Sayle, are fortunate to work from the wonderfully droll and articulate script by Liverpool-born writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, who finds joy in the everyday and ordinary and whose love of words and language is in every line of delicious dialogue.

 

 

A CURE FOR WELLNESS

Director: Gore Verbinski (2017) BBFC cert: 18

 

Gore Verbinski administered shock treatment to Johnny Depp’s career by directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, and the magnificent mess, The Lone Ranger.

The appropriately named director now turns his hand to horror, with equally mixed results.

It’s beautifully designed on a grand scale, and stunningly photographed.

Brit actor Jason Isaacs is wonderfully measured as the governor of an exclusive Swiss sanitarium. Forever pale and interesting, Dane DeHaan is suitably cast as a young US executive sent to Switzerland to rescue his CEO from hydrotherapy.

In the vein of the venerable Hammer House of Horror, the story draws heavily on the European folktales which inspired Dracula and Frankenstein.

Distended on a diet of eels and red herrings, the constipated storytelling puts a strain on the audience. It needs a good dose of leeches. Movement in the bowels of the castle allows for a necessary and explosive purge of plot, providing great relief all round.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER

Director: Billy O’Brien (2017) BBFC cert: 15

There’s a beating heart full of love within this off beat and disturbingly entertainingly horror.

Young actor, Max Records, is terrific as John Cleaver, a bullied high school student works part time at the family mortuary and believes himself to have the potential to be a serial killer.

Veteran Christopher Lloyd has fun as his elderly neighbour and only friend.

But when John believes he’s discovered the existence of a real serial killer at large, his life takes a doubtful turn.

Due to the smart writing, assured direction and performances of rigid conviction, this is a macabre, small town joy.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

BEYOND THE GATES

Director: Jackson Stewart (2017) BBFC cert: 18

 

Rewind to the era of the video nasty with this lovingly made, entertaining and accurate homage to cult comedy horrors such as such as Fright Night and Re-Animator.

When two brothers return to their parents’ defunct video store, they find a mysterious interactive video cassette game movie called Beyond The Gate.

They realise it holds clues to their father’s disappearance, but are warned playing the game could cost them their souls.

There’s a healthy amount of camp fun among  the blood letting action and enough menace to give you the shivers.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

CHI-RAQ

Director: Spike Lee (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Anger is the defining emotion of Spike Lee’s films and there’s no denying the blistering power of his latest brash, sexy, and rap-filled essay on the state of the US.

Having produced, directed and co-written this satirical musical, he has updated a classical Greek comedy with an irresistible raucous energy.

As Lysistrata, Teyonah Parris is dynamite in an afro and high heels. Motivated by the shooting of a bystander, she persuades the women on both sides of the Chicago gang divide to withhold sex from their boyfriends as a means of preventing further violence.

Her charismatic criminal boyfriend Chi-Raq is one of the unhappy men. He shares his name with the gang-ridden south side of Chicago, an area more deadly to locals than Iraq to US soldiers.

Samuel L. Jackson has a ball a as zoot suited Greek chorus rapping straight to camera. Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett, Wesley Snipes and John Cusack form the backbone of a strong support cast.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Dog Eat Dog

Director: Paul Schrader (2016) BBFC cert: 18

Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe play a pitiful pair of ex cons in this vicious crime thriller. A kidnapping job offers a big pay day but life for the dim crims goes south when the wrong guy gets shot.

An agitated colour scheme, fractured editing and spiralling camerawork create a paranoid bad trip of a mood. Cage’s droll delivery and riffs on Humphrey Bogart add black comic notes to the confidently trashy and nihilistic sleazefest.

Strippers, swearing, shoot outs, drugs and dead bodies feature heavily as the script skewers the myth of the heroic American outlaw.

Adapted by Matthew Wilder, it’s based on book by Edward Bunker, a real life jailbird turned novelist who played Mr Blue in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Director Paul Schrader’s 1970s heyday saw him write the Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. He also directed the Richard Gere starring critique of Hollywood, American Gigolo (1980). This never hits those exalted heights but it suggest there’s life in the old dog yet.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett