Zoolander, Love and Friendship and The Darkness

Zoolander is a cult hit and has many fans despite it’s somewhat offbeat humour. Personally, I never really cared for it and I care for Zoolander 2 even less. Both Derek (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) have been out in the wilderness for years (both literally and figuratively) as a result of the collapse of the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good but are brought out of retirement by Interpol agent Valentina Valencia (Penelope Cruz) when numerous celebs are murdered.

Thursday Movie Picks #116: Cults and Secret Societies

A new Thursday Movie Picks for you this week, and this week it's Cults and secret societies. Please visit http://wanderingthroughtheshelves.blogspot.co.uk/

Hell or High Water

 

Hell or High Water is not a dissimilar film to the Coen’s No Country with Old Men with its grizzled cop, sudden explosions of brutal violence and bleak and cynical outlook on the modern day American West where two brothers are forced to rob banks to pay off the mortgage on their ranch that the bank is about to foreclose. These two brothers are divorced dad, Toby (Chris Pine), and convicted felon, Tanner (Ben Foster), who decided to rob the banks of Texas, hot on their heels are two cops (played by Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). 

Sing Street

Due to the recession and his parent’s financial difficulties, Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) moves to a much rougher school where he becomes the target of tyrannical teachers and boisterous bullies but luckily for him it appears to be the case that apparently musical talent impresses girls (I have zero talent let alone zero musical talent). So, in order to impress this gorgeous girl, Raphina (Lucy Boynton), who hangs outside his school, Conor lies about being in a band so Conor, and group of mates, start a band and invite her to be in a video.

Blair Witch

Back in 1999 The Blair Witch Project made quite a lot of noise, rumours circulated that the film was real and the actors actually died whilst making the film. Even I vaguely remember hearing about a ‘real’ horror film despite being only 8 or 9 years old at the time. Obviously, it wasn’t real and film’s success was perhaps due to the masterpiece of marketing (the infancy of the internet helped the film become a massive hit) even if the film went on to influence horror for the greater part of the following decade.

Sausage Party

In a supermarket various food products have established a whole world of their own with different cultures and personalities but just one belief system, a belief in the utopian Great Beyond. Frank (Seth Rogan) is a sausage who believes in the Great Beyond and he wants to escape to this Utopian world with his love, a bun named Brenda (Kristen Wigg). However, everything is thrown into chaos when a jar of honey mustard (Danny McBride) returns from the Great Beyond and proclaiming it a lie. In the ensuing chaos (a crashed shopping trolley) both Frank and Brenda are standard aisles from home.

Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising

The sequel to Bad Neighbours, titled Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising, is pretty much a rehash of the first film (why change a winning formula?) but the ‘antagonists’ of the piece are sorority girls rather than a fraternity. Mac (Seth Rogan) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) are trying to sell their house and have found some buyers but the neighbouring house is brought by Sorority. With the house in escrow (a thirty-day period where the buyers can pull out at any time) the behaviour of the sorority girls has to be good, but it turns out they’re just as bad as the guys and both Mac and Kelly have to go to war once again.

Don't Breathe

Three teenagers, Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette) and Money (Daniel Zovatto) all have dreams of escaping the impoverished suburbs of Detroit, Michigan to live in sunny California. They need money and their next target might be the chance they were waiting for. Their target is a blind man (Stephen Lang) who lives in an empty neighbourhood and just so happens to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in his house. An easy task, surely? But things quickly spiral out of control.

Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins is like the Eddie the Eagle or Eric the Eel of the musical world. Both Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eddie were treated somewhat as a joke in their respective sporting fields (ski jumping and swimming) but went on to gain respect and a loyal following despite being critically lambasted in newspapers. 

Ranking the films from Frightfest 2016

After some pondering I thought it’ll be a good idea to rank the 25 films I saw at Frightfest 2016. Obviously, number 1 is the best film I saw. I’ll update this list as I see more films from this year’s festival when they’re released on DVD/VOD.

Looking at list I seem to have been rather positive throughout most of the festival as I positively reviewed 19 of the 25 films I saw.

Frightfest 2016- Day Five

Reviews for the final day can be found here. My review for Train to Busan, which deserved it's own page, can be found by clicking this link

Frightfest Closing Film - Train to Busan

Train to Busan was a runaway success in it's native country of Korea where it smashed Box Office records. The film is released in October (in the UK), but I was lucky enough to see this at Frightfest and it's quite clear that they saved the very best to last.