Review: How to Make a Killing

Despite the always topical "kill the rich" plot, How to Make a Killing is a surprisingly old-fashioned film, and not just because it's an off-brand remake of 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets. It's a done-in-one story built around the charm of its leading man, with the kind of plot that appeals to people worried about making a living rather than slashers or alien invasions; whatever its failings, just having it in cinemas is cause for celebration.

Beckett Redfellow (Glen Powell) should be living a life of luxury and ease. Unfortunately, while his mother was born into the insanely wealthy Redfellow family, he was born out of wedlock, his mother disowned by the family patriarch (Ed Harris), his father a musician who died of shock at the birth. 

Before his mother died she tried to bring him up right - or at least, able to walk amongst the wealthy without disgracing himself - and with a drive to make something of his life. While that hasn't really happened (as an adult, he's a suit salesman) there's still hope. The Redfellow fortune is held in a trust, and Beckett is still in line to inherit everything... just so long as the rest of the family die ahead of him. 

This seems somewhat unlikely, until a chance encounter with former crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) reminds him that money can buy happiness and that his own personal happiness is only a string of seemingly accidental deaths away.

Seeing a number of idle rich idiots being stuffed in the family mausoleum keeps things ticking along nicely, while there's just enough actual emotion going on away from the murders to provide some stakes beyond "will he get away with it" - because, as the film opens with Beckett on death row, it seems somewhat unlikely he will.

A kindly uncle provides both a leg up and some family guidance, while a seemingly heartfelt romance between Beckett and one of his dead cousin's exes (Jessica Henwick) gives Beckett a lot more to lose, and a reason to maybe hit the brakes - which the cash-strapped Julia may not be on board with.

Powell is once again a charming leading man playing a character who doesn't quite give him enough to work with. He's never quite convincing as a multiple murderer - which is fair enough, as his character is meant to have doubts pretty much from the start - but the lack of real steel in his performance does weaken things just a little.

Likewise, the "kill the rich" plot delivers when it comes to comical chumps (one-scene standouts include Zach Woods and Topher Grace), and Beckett's encounters with his feckless relatives are some of the best scenes in the film. But a tiny bit more venom wouldn't have gone astray either: these are the parasites that ruined his life (and no doubt many others) after all.

But overall this delivers plenty of old-style entertainment in a slick modern package, a nicely dark-hearted tale with plenty of twists and turns and a cast that's easy on the eye. There may not be a lot beneath the surface, but How to Make a Killing is more than just a way to kill time.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Scream 7

Tired and sluggish, Scream 7 really does feel like the seventh movie in a series. Which is a shame, because whatever the flaws of the last two Scream movies they at least had a bit of forward momentum. 

This, on the other hand, is just more of the same, and not even more of the recent same; when you can't come up with a decent angle for the increasingly pointless meta-speech about how the current wave of killings relates back to the limitless world of horror movie sequels, it's probably time to call it quits.

After an opening that serves largely to remind audiences that the opening sequences are usually the best part of a Scream movie (as director, Kevin Williamson does show some chops when it comes to staging the stalk-and-slash sequences), we get to the plot. 

Only kidding, there isn't one: after a bunch of scenes designed to establish that Sidney (Neve Campbell) is not over her trauma but also that she let everyone down by not letting her trauma force her to show up in the previous Scream film - and that she has an all new teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May), who comes with a group of murderable friends - the latest Ghostface starts killing.

Aside from all the plot baggage, the Scream movies have a few other consistent elements. For one, Ghostface is not superhumanly invulnerable; they almost always get knocked down and smacked around before a kill, so much so that it's now common knowledge that a fight isn't over until you shoot whoever's wearing the Ghostface mask in the head.

The other is that the identity of Ghostface is a mystery: the Scream movies are whodunnits. This is a real problem when you get to the seventh film in a series, because there is a very clear hierarchy in place. 

Legacy characters who have survived one or more Ghostface attacks (that's be Courtney Cox's pushy journo Gale Weathers, back for what is basically an extended cameo) are pretty much in the clear; boring newcomers who nobody cares about are the ones to watch out for. Which makes the "mystery" something to be waited out rather than engaged in: it's not going to be anyone interesting, so let's just run the clock down.

Scream 7 does try something slightly interesting with all this, as presumed dead former Ghostface Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) makes video calls to Sidney ranting about how he's back from the grave to kill her for what she did to him. Everyone pretty much immediately says "wow, deep fakes are pretty good these days", though there's a bit of real world evidence to muddy the waters. But at least having Lillard back does give some small dramatic heft to the otherwise pointless mystery.

Having burnt through and burnt off the previous film's reboot energy, this is really just going through the motions. Nothing new or original's being said, none of the new characters are fun or interesting and the returning ones are a pale shadow of their former selves. Campbell seems like the only one really committing to it all - as well she should, as this is basically a showcase for her character - but beyond "hey, I'm not dead", there's not much left for Sidney to say either.

The big appeal of the first Scream was that it mixed in a whole bunch of comedy and commentary on top of a decent slasher film. The decent slasher film part is pretty much all that's left; every scene where someone doesn't die feels like it's slowing things down.

- Anthony Morris 

 

 

Review: Crime 101

Crime once again rules the streets of LA, though in the case of Crime 101 it's the good kind of crime - committed by a professional who plans things down to the smallest detail, points a gun but never gets violent, only robs people who are fully insured. He's even got a good reason for his one-man crime wave. Well, he thinks it's a good reason.

When a gun misfires in his face during yet another high stakes, supposedly low risk heist, our professional thief - let's call him Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth) - starts to re-think the risk versus reward balance in his current line of work. For his fence (Nick Nolte) this signals a lack of nerve; time to bring up the next generation of violent criminal (Barry Keoghan) to keep the money flowing.

The only cop who suspects Davis even exists (his MO is basically leaving no evidence behind, which makes proving his existence a little tricky) is Lou (Mark Ruffalo, really going for it), an extremely shabby detective who is making no friends on the force with his wild theories, and no friends at home with his habit of conducting business on the toilet.

What exactly Sharon (Halle Berry), a high-end sales executive at a very high-end insurance firm, has to do with any of this is a mystery, though she seems to be struggling a little at work and work does involve a lot of very expensive things so it's not hard to figure out where this particular subplot is heading.

What distinguishes director Bart Layton's film from all the other attempts to remake Heat is that a bit of thought has been put into proceedings (it's based on a novella by crime author Don Winslow). Some of the plot dots are left for the audience to connect; not every single thing we see on screen is explained. The heists aren't overly complex, but they're planned enough to feel plausible.

There's also a bit more going on with the characters than usual. Some of them are getting on and are a bit worn down by life; Davis swings between being smooth and professional on the job (basically being Chris Hemsworth) and awkward and unsettled in his down time. His reason for crime is personal in a way that inspires pity more than respect; he's not really someone you'd aspire to, even if he does drive a lot of fancy cars.

What connects the central characters aside from the plot is that they're all in roughly the same position in life. They've been working at their job long enough to expect respect, only to discover their hard work doesn't mean shit; not only are they replaceable the second they stop delivering but oh look, here's their replacement right now. This message is what the experts call "timely".

All this is good stuff; unfortunately, when your movie goes close to two and a half hours, you also have to deliver a few thrills to keep your audience awake. People might talk about the performances or the late night mood of Heat, but the reason why it's still being ripped off thirty years later is because of the amazing shoot-out sequence in the streets of LA. Crime 101 does have the occasional car chase or armed robbery, but you won't feel the need to move towards the edge of your seat.

What this aspires to - and largely achieves - is a kind of mature crime vibe, a noir-ish tale of people pushed into situations they didn't choose because of circumstances and a general sense that the rich folks up on the hill don't want to share. What it lacks is any real sense of desperation to kick things into high gear and give what's going on some serious stakes.

Nobody here is living on the edge; everyone could walk away and still live an okay life. America turns out to be a place where you might as well do crime because you're going to be shat on either way. 

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Wuthering Heights

As novels go, Wuthering Heights has enough going on for a whole series of adaptations. What modern audiences expect - deranged passions on the wild and windy moors - is only a part of the action. One of the better jokes in this latest movie adaptation comes when Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) returns as a wealthy man after years away, and then just sits around smirking and refusing to say where the money came from. Nobody watching really cares about any of that background stuff: get back to the brooding and smooching, post haste.

It all began years earlier at gloomy Wuthering Heights, when the drunk dad (Martin Clunes) of Young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) brought home a waif (Owen Cooper) that she promptly named after her dead brother Heathcliff. Cathy's former bestie, Nelly (Vy Nguyen), a mix of companion and servant, is rapidly stuck in a "Friendship ended with Nelly, now Heathcliffe is my best friend" nightmare while the near-feral (at first) boy and the somewhat extroverted girl run riot.

Years pass, their bond grows, and while they both kind of sort of understand that getting married is not the done thing, they are also sneaking around watching the servants have vaguely BDSM sex using whatever's handy in the stables. Can masturbation out on the moors be far behind now that Cathy has grown into a young woman (Margot Robbie)?

Things eventually come to a head when the wealthy new neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and his somewhat quirky ward Isabella (Alison Oliver) spot Cathy hanging around the other side of the fence - well, lying on the ground, as her spying has resulted in a minor injury that requires them to take her in for a number of weeks. Not long after she returns he proposes, and she explains to Nelly (Hong Chau) that look, while Heathcliff's a great guy, marrying him would be beneath her... and the eavesdropping Heathcliff storms off before hearing the part where she says she will always love him. Oops.

The years go by with no sign of Heathcliff, Cathy settles in to her new home while her drunken loser father boozes away what little money he has, and then suddenly Heathcliff is back with an earring and he's bought Wuthering Heights. Of course, there is no way he and Cathy can get back together, especially when he decides it'd be fun to marry Isabella and chain her up like a dog. With her consent, of course - Heathcliff might be arrogant and tormented, but he's also very big on consent. 

Things continue to happen, but at some point it's hard not to notice that the wind seems to have gone out of Wuthering Heights' sails. Director Emerald Fennell (Saltburn) never quite figures out where all this is going, leaving this as little more than a collection of scenes that often work but sometimes don't, and then it just fizzles out in an ending that wraps things up just at the point where (if you know the novel, or even the Kate Bush song) things should be getting interesting.

Nothing here is remotely realistic, and yet (aside from the costumes and sets) it never quite leans into embracing the excesses of the story. It's not quite a YA adaptation, but it's nowhere near as transgressive as it likes to think it is. The opening scene is young Cathy and Nelly sniggering at a hanged man's erection, and it doesn't get much more mature than that; a later scene where we get a lengthy plot synopsis of Romeo and Juliet suggests that was as much inspiration as anything else. 

Worse, the emotional extremes are largely watered down: Heathcliff glares and smirks and wears black a lot (unless it's raining, then it's time for clingy white shirts) but he's no threat emotionally or physically, while at worst you'd call this Cathy flighty - though the constant disapproval of Nelly tries to suggest she's a fool to herself and a menace to others. 

Both Elordi and Robbie give good performances, but both seem oddly restrained. Their roles should play to their strengths; Elordi was excellent in the recent Frankenstein, playing an even more brutish and tortured Gothic lead, and Robbie's work as Harley Quinn had an unpredictable quality that would have been handy here. They make for a convincing couple but not much more - they match each others' energy, but that energy never really spins out of control.

These are hardly fatal flaws, and there is a lot of good in this adaptation. But its strengths are scattered throughout, coming through in isolated moments (the juxtaposition of Heathcliff's scars from childhood beatings with Cathy's bare back being laced into a corset) and stray glances. It's pitched as a story about a love that could not be denied, an overwhelming passion that swept aside everything in its path; it ends up being just two people groping each other in the back of a car*.

- Anthony Morris 

 

*okay, a stagecoach parked on the moors. Considering the couple are sneaking around at the time, it seems fair to ask: did Cathy drive it out there? It wasn't Heathcliff, as he's the one who gets out and walks away.

 

Review: Send Help

Few things are more satisfying to watch on the big screen than the tables being turned. Trouble is, on its own it's not quite enough to build a feature-length film on - and once you start adding in backstory and nuance and so on, you start to dilute the raw pleasure of seeing someone get their own back. The trick is to somehow complicate things in a way that builds on what we've come to see rather than water it down. As tricks go it's not an easy one to pull off.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is very good at her job. Unfortunately, she doesn't quite grasp - or care - that just being good at your job isn't enough to get you moving up the corporate ladder when you're mostly known for bad jokes, ugly shoes, and smelly tuna fish sandwiches. 

Still, her boss was willing to overlook all that and bump her up to Vice President... until he died and his smarmy son Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) took over. Being exactly the kind of bro you'd expect, he plans to show Liddle out the door - once she's outlived her usefulness, of course. There's a big overseas meeting coming up, so all he needs her to do is polish up some contracts on the flight over and then she's done.

One somewhat gory plane crash later and the two of them are washed ashore on a deserted island as the only survivors. Bradley has a busted leg; Linda has a newfound love of life, because as a wannabe Survivor contestant and all-round survival nerd, she's finally in her natural habitat. Building shelter, finding food, looking a whole lot healthier - she takes it all in her stride. Bradley's desire to keep on treating her as an underling? Not so much.

One of the many pleasures of this highly entertaining film is that both leads have a little more going on than you might expect. Linda is the heroine but like all oppressed nerds, she can take things a little too far; Bradley is a jerk, but he's not entirely stupid and it's possible he might learn the error of his ways. There's enough (unstated) chemistry between the pair to suggest another avenue down which things could go; both actors go all out whether they're lording it over the other or trying to make a human connection.

Director Sam Raimi (working from a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift) is up to his old tricks (who else would throw a completely random rotting corpse into a jump scare?) and he cranks up the energy here to create a story that never feels like it's just two people hanging around on a beach. Mostly because there's also a crumbling path running along a cliff. Oh, and some poison berry bushes. And what's that noise coming from the forest?

But this is mostly a battle of wills between two mismatched characters who really shouldn't let their guard down around each other. It's never really a fair fight, but you don't get to the top of the corporate ladder without learning some tricks - unless you're a nepo baby who inherited your position, then you're pretty much screwed.

- Anthony Morris 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

What life is left in the zombie genre? 28 Years Later had a few harrowing scenes involving those infected by the Rage virus, then left that behind for a thoughtful look at loss on both the personal and social level. The Bone Temple takes it a step further, suggesting that the only thing left of interest with the franchise's not-quite-dead is the humanity they may retain. Don't worry, brains do get eaten; it's just presented as something the zombies should grow out of.

When we last saw pre-teen lead Spike (Alfie Williams) he was being grabbed by a crazed gang of deadly Jimmy Saville fans. Now he's presented with a choice: if he wants in, first he has to take an existing member out. Overseen by the big boss Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) - his name is not the only misremembering of the past the gang will commit - Spike does end up becoming the latest Jimmy, though he's not all that happy about it.

The gang is your typical bunch of post-apocalypse psychos, roaming the countryside preying on the more civilised, reminding us that the instant society collapses the only possible way to survive is to become a murderous killer taking what you want and relishing in sadism and torture. Only it turns out there's slightly more to them than that.

Sir Lord Jimmy is clearly a nutter, but he's also a Satanist, and his brutal belief system springs (somewhat logically) from the assumption that the carnage unleashed on Great Britain by the virus was the Devil claiming his territory. Acting in the usual way we expect apocalypse survivors to go about is here shown to be a ridiculous and deluded overreaction to events; despite what endless seasons of The Walking Dead tried to teach us, treating everyone you meet as your enemy is to see the world upside down.

Over in the other main plot, Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) keeps getting visited by the local infected Alpha - who he dubs Sampson (Chi Lewis-Parry) - because he's become hooked on the sedatives Kelson blow-darts him with to keep him from attacking. A strange friendship gradually develops, as the morphine mellows Sampson out and Kelson starts to wonder if other drugs could suppress other effects of the virus. In between getting high with his new stoner buddy, of course.

The two plotlines eventually converge, though not in a way that you'd easily predict. These colliding worlds result in what is quite possibly the scene of the year, in which Kelson (for reasons), puts on an insane one-man show set to Iron Maiden's 'Number of the Beast' that is stunning to watch whether you're a near-feral teen who's never heard recorded music before or just someone watching it take place on the screen.

That scene alone is worth the price of admission; the rest of the film is a surprisingly low-key and thoughtful take on being caring in the face of destruction (plus some people are skinned alive). Director Nia DaCosta (working from a script by Alex Garland) keeps the visuals slightly more straightforward than Danny Boyle did with 28 Years Later; if it never consistently hits that film's manic highs, solid storytelling is nothing to complain about.

It's message is slightly blunter too, but as the middle film in a planned trilogy it needs to lay things out. The monsters here are those who see other people as nothing but prey; the infected don't have much choice in the matter, whereas choosing to be a monster turns out to be a pretty good way to be devoured by monsters in turn.

Also Sampson eventually puts on pants, which turns out to be an essential part of his character development. Guess civilisation does have its downsides.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Hamnet

How hard is it to tell a sad story about a young couple whose child just died? What about if it's also the origin story behind one of the most acclaimed English-language plays of all time? And it features two of the finest actors of their generation, especially when it comes to conveying inner pain and turmoil? If that sounds like a lot to take in, don't worry; director Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, The Eternals) will hold your hand every step of the way.

Agnes (Jesse Buckley) is something of an outcast in her rural Medieval community. Rumours suggest she's a witch; spending her spare time in the local woods with a hawk doesn't do much to dispel them. A Tutor (Paul Mescal) finds himself drawn to her. They share a kiss in a barn, and we all know what that means.

His family (mostly notably his abusive father) aren't keen on the marriage. Her brother, who is responsible for her by law, is also dubious but trusts her judgment. Despite their love, the Tutor's writing doesn't go well, and he decamps for London while she remains behind. She has twins; one is stillborn, but revives. Things go well for a time, then don't.

It's a 500 year spoiler to reveal that young son Hamnet dies; these scenes of disease and death are the high point of the film, largely because they involve things that are actually happening in front of us. When the Tutor goes back to London to work - because by now his family are living in the biggest house in town, Will got to pay the bills - Agnes is increasingly unhappy that he doesn't seem to share her grief. 

Then word reaches her that his latest play is not a comedy as she'd thought, but a tragedy titled Hamlet. Keen to correct her husband's spelling, she heads to London, where numerous falsehoods are dispelled.

One of the big advantages Hamnet has, and it takes full advantage of it, is that while most of its audience will have a rough idea of what Hamlet is about, it's not a Shakespeare play that's all that easy to see. There hasn't been a mainstream film version in decades (unlike, say, Macbeth), nor is there an obvious classic version that's readily available (Romeo & Juliet).

So when this posits that the play ends on a moment of mass emotional catharsis that's basically a group hug... well, it is an early performance, maybe Shakespeare changed a few things later on. And while the ending of Hamnet gets a lot of mileage from the play - so much so that it's reasonable to assume some of the clumsier moments beforehand are there just so the ending will seem all the more impressive - in the context of the film all Shakespeare's prose really means is "sometimes people grieve in different ways".

There are moments, mostly early on, where Hamnet gives its characters room to breathe and its story a chance to suggest more than the obvious. Buckley and Mescal are extremely good at their jobs, which here increasingly involves remaining plausible while undergoing extremes of emotion, and Buckley is fearless -though occasionally we're reminded that fear isn't always a bad thing. If this was merely the story of a young couple struggling through loss, there'd be plenty here to recommend.

Taking a classic and then revealing the "real story" of its origin can be thoughtful and entertaining, though most attempts usually settle for obvious and pandering. The drive is always to explain away rather than go deeper; it's not enough to enjoy The Lord of the Rings, we have to be told that JRR Tolkien fought in WWI... in holes... against sinister forces in black... you get the idea.

Hamnet is the kind of film that never refers to Mescal's tutor as Shakespeare, so for much of the run time maybe this is just the story of some other Middle Ages playwright - it's not like England had a shortage of them - but opens with some text pointing out that at the time the names Hamnet and Hamlet were functionally the same. It flatters the audience's intelligence, but makes sure nothing goes over their head.

To its credit, Hamnet doesn't pretend that Hamlet can be boiled down to a play about a dead child written by a grieving father. Here, Shakespeare has turned his loss into one aspect of his multifaceted art; Anges, on the other hand, turns her loss into an unforgettable tortured freak-out while seeing a performance of that art. 

It's either a powerful statement on the depths of grief, or something that suggests she has never seen a play before and has no idea how they work. Which seems unlikely because her husband is William Shakespeare so let's go with the first one.

This is a film that gradually locks everything down, leaving nothing to chance or interpretation. Some subjects require this level of hand-holding: something as universal as grief, not so much. It ends up feeling both obvious and oppressive, peeking through a window at people pulled to and fro like puppets. All the world's a stage, as someone once said.

- Anthony Morris