Frightfest 2016 - Day Four

Sorry guys.. I was still suffering from fatigue. Five more films for you.

Frightfest 2016: Day Three

Sorry guys...this when I started suffering fatigue. Six more films for you.

Frightfest 2016 - Day Two

Here are reviews for the six films I saw on Day Two.

Frightfest 2016 - Day One

This year I decided to attend the annual Frightfest for the whole five days (instead of the two days I did last last year). This meant I saw 25 films (out of 70 odd) over the course of five days. It's not easy reviewing 25 films in the space of five days, and it's even more difficult trying to remember them. Anyway, here are the reviews for the film shown on the first day of the festival.

Thursday Movie Picks

This week’s Thursday Movie Picks, hosted by Wandering through the Shelves, are movies from Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and sometimes Finland and Iceland). 

Going Aganist the Crowd

The Going Against the Crowd Blogathon is hosted by Dell On Movies and KG’s Movie Rants. Basically, it’s a Blogathon to showcase the times you weren’t a sheep and went against the critical consensus as you are your own unique, individual person.  

Lights Out

In California, a family of three is being terrorised by an evil spirit that seemingly can only be seen in the dark. When the father is murdered by this monster, Sophie (Maria Bello) falls into depression and is regularly found to be talking to herself by her young son, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), however, Sophie is not talking to herself, but to the very same evil spirit. This has happened before, and it drove mother and daughter, Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), apart. Rebecca must find out the cause of this evil spirit's attachment to her mother before it destroys their family.

Notes on Blindness

Pete Middleton and James Spinney's deeply moving documentary is part drama, part documentary about theologian John Hull's descent into blindness. Much like Clio Barnard's The Arbor, the film uses actors lip syncing to actual audio recordings of the film's subjects, namely John Hull (Dan Renton Skinner) and his wife Marilyn (Simone Kirby).

The Huntsman: Winter's War

This sort of sequel/prequel stars Emily Blunt as Queen Freya who builds her own kingdom following the framing of her lover (Colin Morgan) who Freya killed as she believed that he killed her baby. After this massive betrayal, Freya flees to build her own kingdom and turns the Northern Lands into a frozen wasteland, in this frozen wasteland a heartbroken Freya bans all her subjects from falling in love. However, Huntsmen Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) do exactly this and when they are caught in the act they are sentenced to death. The pair try to escape, but whilst Eric is escape Sara is killed.

Victoria

For Victoria (Laia Costa) a night out in Berlin turns in a tumultuous one as she becomes entangled in a debt owed by a newly found friend. To pay the debt owed to one of Berlin’s most notorious underground criminals, the gang must rob a bank but without proper planning its doesn’t go entirely smoothly. 

Thursday Movie Picks #110: Movies About Crimes Gone Wrong

Welcome to Thursday Movie Picks Hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves, This week's theme is movies where crime goes awry. I committed a crime once that went awry, I tried to steal a lollipop and got caught and then banned from my local corner shop.

Note that there may be spoilers for The Killing

2016 Mini Reviews

There’s more than just a pinch of Rosemary’s Baby in David Farr’s feature debut The Ones Below where a woman (played by Clemence Posey), who has just recently given birth, is convinced that her neighbours are tormenting her, even the film’s 'lala' lullaby soundtrack bares a strong resemblance to the soundtrack in Polanski’s 1968 chiller. Rosemary’s Baby is not the only Polanski work that the film has some similarity, the uncomfortable dinner sequence is like something from Carnage and the London setting matches the setting of his 1965 film Repulsion. Sadly, however, The Ones Below isn’t quite on a par with the previously mentioned Polanski works. It certainly has its chills and tension but the film takes a disappointingly straightforward route with its narrative. Though the performances are good and they’re good enough to make this film chilling and creepy enough to be worth the watch. 

2.5/5

The Shallows

After the death of her mother, Nancy Allen (Blake Lively) is trying to find that special beach that was so important to her mother. With help from a local, Carlos (Óscar Jaenada), she arrives at the secluded beach. It’s a perfect place to surf, beautiful, tropical and almost empty, that is until she’s attacked by a severely pissed off Great White Shark. Unlike The Reef where the shark’s victims are attacked way out to sea, Nancy is tantalising close to shore but between her and the rock she clambered on, there is a shark ready to tear her apart should she swim to safety.

Suicide Squad

For those who haven’t seen Batman vs Superman, I’d take a few careful steps before ploughing on with this review...anyway after the apparent death of Superman, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sees fit to recruit a group of supervillains to protect the world from future Supermen with far more sinister intentions. These supervillains are Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez).

Jason Bourne

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) returns from the shadows and once again he is being hunted by the CIA. This time Bourne is trying to find out information on a special Black Ops mission which cost his father’s life. Meanwhile, business tycoon Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed) is about to introduce this super special social media platform which will have over a billion users. Naturally, the CIA see this a valuable resource for gathering intel.

The BFG

The film starts off in London, when in London is not apparent as modern day London seems to merge seamlessly with the cobbled streets that are more suited to Victorian London than the present day. In this timeless version of London, we are quickly introduced to a sleepless Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) who captures sight of the dream blowing BFG (Mark Rylance) and is quickly whisked off giant country where the land is populated by, as the name suggests, man eating giants. To defeat them, both Sophie and BFG seek the help of the Queen of England.