Birds of Prey (2020)

Birds of Prey or Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn as its also known is the spin-off to Suicide Squad which was a major disappointment. It wasn’t as bad as some people would have you believe but neither was it the best. The film sees Harley Quinn separated from The Joker who gets dragged into a race to find a valuable diamond and save a young girl from Ewan McGregor. The film does a lot of back and forth in terms of timeline and establishing characters and its similar to what was done in Suicide Squad but this film does it better because the characters are more interesting and the film has a better flow to it.

Lets get this out of the way, Margot Robbie is really good as Harley Quinn. Sadly she was side-lined in Suicide Squad and Robbie shows what she can do in this movie. She beats people up, gets to deliver some amusing lines and more than holds her own as a leading lady. Ewan McGregor is clearly having the time of his life playing Roman Sionis. Even with the at times OTT acting, I still found the character to be an effective villain for Quinn. His death was quick brutal and shocking and summed up the film perfectly. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is also very good as The Huntress. Her story was interesting and being quite handy with a crossbow made her character stand out. I thought that her alter ego name being something different before settling on The Huntress was funny and well handled by Winstead. She’s a really good actress and she stood out for me other than Robbie in this film.

The scene where Quinn goes into the police station and starts firing glitter bullets and brightly coloured tear gas at the officers is one of the best scenes in the movie. The whole movie has more colour in it than in any film set in Gotham that I have seen since the Joel Schumacher Batman films. It always felt like they were going for a different vibe than in most DC/Marvel films which was quite nice and shows more life than in a Zack Snyder film. Most Snyder films range from grey and black in tone to being films are the epitome of style over substance.

Birds of Prey is an enjoyable film. If I had one issue with the film then it would be that it felt too restrained. It seemed to be leaning towards Deadpool in terms of tone let everytime it seemed like it was becoming DC’s version of Deadpool then it reigned it back in. Hopefully in the next Suidicde Squad we see more of Harley Quinn because she’s a very good character and shouldn’t be in Suicide Squad 2 just to make the numbers up.

Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

Brahms: The Boy II is the most recent example of a film that shouldn’t really exist. The first one was a decent horror film that was trying to cash in on the popularity of the Annabelle films but managed to make something that was good enough on it own merits. What it wasn’t was asking for a sequel however money will dictate whether something will have a sequel or not. The set up of the film is that after a home invasion where Liza gets attacked and the son Jude becomes mute, they move to the country into the guest house next door to the house used in the first film. Jude finds the boy and as the film then becomes a battle to separate Brahms from Jude.

Lets start with the positives. The performances are good. Katie Holmes does well as Liza. I haven’t actually seen her in a film since Batman Begins 15 years ago. I know she’s been in films since then but just not in one I have seen. I thought that once the story moved to the guest house, she got a bit better and stronger. Christopher Convery is also good as Jude. He to convey quite a lot of emotion without speaking and he manages it well. It’s difficult for child actors to be taken seriously but I have noticed recently that they are casting some good young actors like Roman Griffin Davis in Jojo Rabbit and Jackson Robert Scott in The Prodigy. I thought the best performance came from Ralph Ineson who is one of those actors who appears in everything. He plays Joseph who at first seems like he is just there to deliver exposition but its revealed that he is a sort of minder for Brahms. Its also well directed. I thought the some of the shots were quite nice and they made the house seem a nice if slightly creepy place to live. It does rely on some jump scares but there were a couple of red herrings where you think there is going to be a jump scare but there isn’t so I liked that.

The main problem that I have with this film is that it completely ruins all the good things from the first one. In the first film the doll is just a creepy doll and the truth of the boy being in the walls of the house was a nice twist. In this film they decide that the doll has a soul and chooses people that are damaged. When the dad smashes the head of Brahms, there is this weird alien looking thing which doesn’t make any sense to me.  Another thing was when it was revealed about Joseph’s true identity, I didn’t really care I just thought it was a fairly clichéd plot twist. Then there is the cousins that pop up for about five minutes that don’t really add anything to the story. Jude has a nephew who keeps calling him mental and when he get skewed by the broken crocket stick, I thought that he deserved it because he was being horrible. Also at the end there is a moment where Jude has the mask on and its clear they are going to make a third one which is even less necessary than this film. One final issue is that Liza finds a code on Brahms is foot and enters into a website and it doesn’t work. Most people would try and reverse the code but for narrative reasons, she doesn’t do this until the final act of the film. I don’t spot these things but even I wondered why she didn’t try it the other way. Had she done that then the film would have been over 40 minutes early. 

On its own merits, Brahms is fine. It looks nice and has good performances but if you question why it exists and compare it to the first Boy film then it completely falls apart. If it’s on Netflix or on TV then watch it but don’t seek it out because you aren’t really missing anything.

Fantasy Island (2020)

Fantasy Island or Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island as the BBFC Certificate has it sees a group of irritating people arrive on an island where their fantasy comes true and after a while things go wrong. The rules are stated at the beginning which is that people are only allowed one fantasy and it must be seen to the end. 

The problem isn’t that all the characters are extremely irritating even though they are. It took me five minutes to come to that conclusion and that I wanted them all to meet a grizzly death. The fact that three of them didn’t was a source of annoyance for me. The problem isnt that despite setting out the rules, the film decides to change the rules. Even though they were told that once a fantasy starts it can’t be stopped, Gwen gets to change her fantasy when it turns out to be too good. Another convenient change comes right at the end when Brax is told that the fantasy he went through was his brother’s and that he gets his fantasy which is to bring his brother back. 

The main problem is that its very dull. I was waiting for something to happen and for people to get killed off but the film doesn’t do that and instead takes a very long time to set up the main twist of the film that everyone bar Melanie who brings everyone to the island to exact revenge because they were involved in her boyfriends death. That would have been a much reveal had it happened 30-40 minutes earlier. At 1 hour and 49 minutes long, its way too long and suffers from a lot of padding. Even with multiple characters the film doesn’t seem to know how make it all work. All the performances are fairly wooden even when Melanie’s true identity is revealed I didn’t care because the film had long past point of me caring. Roarke spent 95% of the film playing the villain and refusing to disobey the island and then he gets one speech from Gwen and five seconds later he decides to change his mind. That’s the quickest character change I can recall. 

Fantasy Island is one of the worst movies I have seen for a while and the worst I have seen at the cinema for many years. Even Cats was more entertaining and the flaws with the film kept my attention. Fantasy Island is just a mess from start to finish and even Michael Rooker cant save this turkey.

The Invisible Man (2020)

The Invisible Man originally started as being a part of the Dark Universe but when The Mummy bombed in the way it did, the Dark Universe got shelved and Johnny Depp was suppose to play the titular character. However they decided to continue with the idea and instead decided to turn into a story of an abused girlfriend/wife who at the beginning of the film decides to escape and two weeks later he apparently kills himself but she thinks he has faked his death and is trying to ruin her life by convincing people she is mad.

This is loosely based on the novel by H.G.Wells and he doesn’t actually get credited and that’s probably for the best because I think this film has a rather loose association to the novel which isn’t a bad thing. I have no issue with a film distancing themselves with a familiar novel as long as they do something different with it and they do with this film. 

I think that Elizabeth Moss is very good as Cecilia. She plays vulnerable and in complete control very well and flips from one to the other with ease. Aldis Hodge was also good as James. He was the one person who a) doesn’t die and b) helps Cecilia. I thought that Michael Dorman was quite creepy as Tom because it was clear something was up with him and I thought that he was actually in with Adrian.

The effects used in this are very good. The fight that the invisible man has with Cecilia in James’ house is quite rough and I like how the camera would look away at something almost making you think something was there or was going to happen when nothing does. If you have seen a Blumhouse film before then you would know that when the camera holds onto a particularly thing for more than two seconds then something will appear in the darkness or in the corner of the screen but that doesn’t happen her which was a nice play on expectations.

There are problems with this film. Firstly it asks you to take a leap of disbelief with certain things such as how easy Cecilia is able to escape and how long she is able to avoid being caught. There were a couple of moments where I thought that logic wasn’t being used but things were just happening to progress the plot. Apparently there was about three seconds cut from the scene where Cecilia self-harms which I could believe because it was quite a grim moment. It’s the only moment which made me look away which I suppose was the point.

The final act sees Cecilia trying to get Adrian to admit that he was the one terrorising her and not Tom. This doesn’t happen and moments later an invisible person cuts Tom’s throat and there is meant to be a question mark over whether it was Cecilia who put on the suit but bearing in mind that James was in the car, the only person it could have been was Cecilia. The final shot of Cecilia walking out was a good moment and it seems to suggest that this may not be the last time we see her (forgive the pun!).

Overall I quite liked this film. I think that whole relationship abuse aspect was perhaps a bit too much but it served a purpose and I think that this is a good adaptation of a very well used idea. This isnt your typical Blumhouse film but I think that this was an enjoyable film to watch.

Color Out of Space (2019)

Colour Out of Space is a Lovecraft story which is something that has never really worked for me. Previous Lovecraft films include Black Mountain Side which looked lovely but wasn’t the best film I didn’t really understand what was going on. This film has Nicolas Cage which was enough to get me interested in the film. Set up is that something strange arrives at this family and things start going wrong.

Nicolas Cage plays Nathan who is the father and someone who at first glance is slightly strange and you are probably thinking ‘Of course he is, its Nic Cage!’ but compared to where he ends up at the end of the film, hes quite tame at first. Joely Richardson who is someone I haven’t seen in a film for a very long time is quite good as Theresa who seems to be in the stock trade business. She seems quite distant really from the main story but she does become quite close to her some Jack in every sense of the word in one of the most grotesque images I have seen in a movie for quite sometime.

The other children Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) and Benny (Brendan Meyer) come and go through the film but its Lavinia that has the more to do because she’s the first person we meet and tries to do spells which have various degrees of success. I thought that the story could easily have lost Benny because doesn’t really add anything and the film wouldn’t have lost anything if he weren’t there. There are other things that don’t really work for me aside from Benny. I thought that Ward served very little purpose and Tommy Chong as Ezra didn’t seem to be there for any other reason that we need someone who is clearly barking mad but by the end of the film will seem one of the saner characters.

The film looks really nice. As the film progresses, the grass starts to change colour and by the end it’s a great visual. Inside the house there are lots of triangles in the walls and in various other places and the house is a character in the film because each room looks really good and becomes important to the story. Despite this being a Lovecraft film, I understood what was going on and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I don’t think I would have liked it as much had it not been for Nicolas Cage but ultimately it’s a very nice looking movie if slightly strange and at times quite gory.