Under the Shadow (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Under the Shadow (2016) – B. Anvari

Set in Tehran during the ‘80s (near the end of the lengthy Iran-Iraq war), director Babak Anvari uses the ghost story genre to raise questions about gender roles in society (a critique that applies not only to the Middle East).  When her husband, a doctor, is called to duty in the warzone, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left to take care of their young daughter, Dorsa, on her own.  All seems fine (apart from Shideh’s stresses and the sexism directed against her) until a missile strikes their building, neighbours begin to flee the city, and Dorsa loses her favourite doll.  Soon, Dorsa is reporting that another woman promising to be a better mother has been talking to her. Shideh herself begins to see things moving in the apartment. One of the remaining neighbours begins claiming that there is a Djinn in the building, supposedly invited by the mute orphan she has taken in.  Indeed, the ghost appears in a full burka (or chador but we don’t see a face – perhaps invisible in there!) threatening Dorsa even as Shideh knows they must flee to the basement bomb shelter. In the end, apart from a few solid jump scares, the film is less scary or spooky than it is thought-provoking,  Not surprisingly, Anvari filmed this outside of Iran and its censors.   

Creepy (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Creepy (2016) – K. Kurosawa

After a case goes bad, Takakura leaves the police force and becomes a criminology professor.  But when a former colleague asks for his assistance, he can’t help but get sucked into investigating a cold case (the disappearance of three members of a local family), despite his wife’s hope that he would stay out of it.  In fact, he and his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi) had moved to a new neighbourhood to get a fresh start after he changed careers.  However, their new neighbours are distinctly unfriendly or awkward and weird.  Nevertheless, Yasuko grows closer to their strange next-door neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) who may be harbouring a secret that links him to the cold case.  Despite this intriguing set-up in line with earlier genre successes from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (e.g., Cure, 1997), the subtitles let me down (seemingly created using Google Translate) and I suspect that I missed some important nuances.  For example, Yasuko’s motivations and behaviour seem to alter strangely without notice – although this may be due to some mysterious powers exerting influence on her (not unheard of in Kurosawa’s films which often include spooky and supernatural elements, hence this title).  I’m sure things must be much more coherent for native speakers.  (That said, Kurosawa has not always wanted to connect the dots in the past).  So, if you can find a proper source, this is likely a solid entry in the morbid serial killer police procedural genre.

  

A Dark Song (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Dark Song (2016) – L. Gavin

Very spooky and sinister (and punctuated by my DVD player abruptly spitting out the disc at a particularly scary moment 85 minutes in).  Sophia (Catherine Walker) who harbors grief (and hate?) in her heart hires Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram) to help her perform an occult rite (based on Crowley) that will allow her to summon her guardian angel and speak to her dead son.  The rite involves months of gruelling and painful sacrifices inside an old mansion (surrounded by a ring of salt, of course).  First time director Liam Gavin expertly manages the tone and suspense, keeping things creepy even when nothing is happening – it is the air of expectation (and the shadows) that keeps viewers glued to the screen.  Will anything really happen or are these people simply desperate and confused? (Solid acting keeps us unsure).  And then, of course, things start to happen.  I missed about 60 seconds of the darkest moments, I think, due to the damaged disc – I don’t think things became too gruesome or sadistic (but I guess viewer beware).  The end reminded me of Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture (1991) -- which I should certainly watch again – conjuring up a reset of your expectations. Worth a look, esp. for the Halloween season.

Hue and Cry (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hue and Cry (1947) – C. Crichton

Yes, it’s corny at times and doesn’t scale the heights that the best Ealing comedies do, but if taken as a picture for kids, it certainly does the trick.  Amon watched this with me and, although the plot might become elusive at times for an 8 year old, there are enough fun moments to carry the day.  Harry Fowler plays Joe Kirby who discovers that a gang of crooks are using a weekly comic book (called The Trump, no less) to communicate through code about their next evil deeds.  Kirby tracks down the serial’s writer (Alastair Sim) and the publisher before he latches on to the evil mastermind (much closer to hand than expected) and uses an army of boys to dispatch him and his mates.  This is the part that Amon liked most.  For me, the most absorbing element was the location shooting in bombed out London of 1947 – everything seems destroyed but the kids run amok in the rubble.  Those were different times.  Worth a look, particularly if you are an Ealing completist.

 

Conflict (1945)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Conflict (1945) – C. Bernhardt

My PhD supervisor gave me a book called “Psychiatry and the Cinema” (Gabbard & Gabbard, 1987) and it’s a shame that this film is only relegated to a footnote.  Sydney Greenstreet plays a psychiatrist who seems pitched halfway between the Freudian psychoanalysts of yore and the cognitive behavioural therapists of today.  He suggests to Humphrey Bogart that obsessive thoughts can take hold of a person and need to be changed via talk therapy rather than surgery.  Of course, he doesn’t yet know that Bogie has become infatuated with the younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith), of his wife, Kathryn (Rose Hobart) – and when the opportunity arises, when he has the perfect alibi, Bogie does kill Kathryn.  Or does he? Over the course of the second half of the film, clues materialise suggesting that she is still alive since her body was never discovered.  Bogie feels as though he is going crazy as a result which drives him to the story’s inevitable conclusion.  Although Bogie did not always play the good guy, his portrayal of the killer feels a bit more regressive to his earlier heavy roles rather than his more complex and ambivalent anti-heroes of the future (i.e., Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948; In a Lonely Place, 1950). We don’t feel much sympathy for him.  Greenstreet, in contrast, does make for a avuncular and positively framed psychologist – not always the case in Hollywood films of the day.

 

The Invisible Man (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ½

The Invisible Man (2020) – L. Whannell

I realise this is a horror film but does it have to be so grim and depressing? Yes, it’s topical and relevant with the villain (some powerful Silicon Valley start-up millionaire), a bona fide example of toxic masculinity, gaslighting and controlling poor Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss), even apparently from beyond the grave. Except we are pretty certain, given the film’s title, that he really has just found a way to fake his own death and turn invisible, so as to better stalk his ex (who we see trying to flee his abuse at the start of the film, pre-fake death).  So, the film is simply a bunch of stunts where havoc (and murder) is inflicted by someone not there – cue special effects (which probably wowed everyone in 1933 but are pretty ho-hum these days).  And I guess there is a twist but I wasn’t encouraged to care enough to be intrigued or surprised by it, especially when a lot of the characters here don’t seem to stay in character anyway (i.e. friends and family suddenly turn cold). To her credit, Moss holds the film together and could be considered an example of an empowered woman (by the end, if not for most of the running time where she is a stereotypical “woman in peril”).  To conclude:  I wanted to like it, but could not.

 

The Gentlemen (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Gentlemen (2019) – G. Ritchie

After a few duds, Guy Ritchie has gone back to his trademark formula (Lock, Stock etc.) to offer up this easy-going action flick that is, well, all style and not much substance.  Sometimes that’s what you want but it isn’t going to inspire any deep thinking.  Matthew McConaughey is an American expat who has set up a very large cannabis syndicate in the UK, which he now wishes to sell.  However, the potential buyer and the competition are not particularly trustworthy.  We learn this because the story is told in flashback by Hugh Grant who plays a private detective who has been following the action and is now prepared to blackmail McConaughey by exposing him to the press.  He reveals what he knows to McConaughey’s loyal deputy (Charlie Hunnam) and the plot moves back and forward between the flashbacks and the interaction between Grant and Hunnam. Colin Farrell is good in a small well-defined role. It’s all a bit of fun but laced with profanity and sometimes derogatory slurs for ethnic and sexual minorities (why include this, I always think – it undercuts the fun).  As usual, the plot clicks into place with a few surprises -- but are surprises surprising when you expect them?