No Time To Die (2021 film)

 Category: Spy action-drama

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I'm going to say it - Daniel Craig is the best Bond to date. I simply love the gritty realism and the emotional vulnerability he brings to the role. Sean Connery is a close second in my book, and yes, this is the hill I will die on.

The Bond films up until DC's time in the suit have mostly been caricatures of what we think a smooth, suave British spy should look and act, and while Sean Connery and Roger Moore may have been great Bonds for their time, DC has added something not seen in the previous Bond films - and I love him for it.

Now, onto the film itself: the basic premise is that Bond is (yet again) retired, but he gets coaxed back in to action (yet again) after he finds the world is in danger (yet again) from a powerful bad guy with a grudge (yet again) so Bond and co hatch a plan to infiltrate the bad guy's secret lair (yet again). In other words, it's not anything that hasn't been done in other Bond films.

Drive (2011 film)

Category: Semi-romantic action drama.

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I first saw this movie some years back while on a 10 hour flight coming back home from overseas and just couldn’t sleep, but the bad noise insulation, crappy airline headphones and lousy in-seat displays meant I wasn't able to comprehend a lot of the movie - and especially the dialogue. Being sleep-deprived probably didn't help either, but two things that did stick out were the 1980s setting and the soundtrack. I fell in love with the soundtrack to the point I have it on my phone, and me being a child of the 1980s when things were less complicated and bureaucratic, I was able to feel a certain nostalgia.

Since that fateful evening turned night turned morning crossing time zones and jurisdictions, I've wanted to watch Drive again - even just to make sure I remembered half of what I watched was correct. So imagine my surprise when I re-watched via streaming that first, the movie actually made sense, and second, that the airline version was censored! 

Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022 film)

Category: Creature Horror/remake of established IP

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All I have to say is, way to shit the bed, guys.

Horror afficionados of the late 90s and early 2000s would remember the original Jeepers Creepers and the legend of the near-unstoppable humanoid creature that feeds on humans for 23 days every 23 years. There was a slightly campy quality about the original trilogy (even if the third was made 14 years after the second) and while humanoid creature horror is nothing new, Jeepers Creepers had enough going for it to…warrant a reboot?

Yes - a reboot was made. No - you're not missing much.

The plot goes as such:

You Cannot Kill David Arquette (2020 documentary)

 CATEGORY: Documentary

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I have been a professional wrestling fan since my youth, and I consider myself fortunate enough to have been an energetic teenager during the Attitude Era - a time period in Professional Wrestling history famous for risque storylines, energetic crowds and more than a hint of real-life drama behind the scenes that spilled out into the in-ring product. And the reason we got the Attitude Era was because of the fierce rivalry between the two biggest professional wrestling promotions in the world - World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW). In WWE, you had Steve Austin, The Rock, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker - and on WCW, you had Sting, Ric Flair, Goldberg and…David Arquette?

Yes. David Arquette. The dweeby late 90s actor who married the woman from Friends. That guy. That guy was in WCW. And not only was he in WCW…he even became their world champion!

The Nightingale (2018 film)

Category: Violent historical drama

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I previously reviewed Van Diemen's Land, a tale about British people in Tasmania doing bad things to and with each other partly fuelled by their hatred of the English, so in that same vein, I will now review another tale of British brutality in Tasmania, this time with women and indigenous people: The Nightingale.

The Nightingale is, simply put, brutal. It deserves its R-rating. It's not for the faint-hearted.

The basic premise of the story is that Clare (played with conviction and anger by Aisling Franciosci) sets out to take revenge against Lt. Hawkins (played by Sam Claflin, who you may know as either Finnick from The Hunger Games or Oswald Mosley from Peaky Blinders) the man both in charge of their convict settlement in southern Tasmania and who has the authority to grant Clare her manumission. A drunken incident involving Clare's husband ends up costing Hawkins a promotion, thus Hawkins takes brutal revenge on Clare and her family (long story short - two sexual assaults and two murders ensue) before he and his men set off on a journey to the town of Launceston to try convince his superiors to change their mind. Without any help from the remaining authorities or the townsfolk, Clare enlists an Aboriginal tracker Billy (played by Baykali Ganambarr) from outside the town to help her in her mission to chase down Hawkins and crew.

Van Diemen's Land (2009 film)

Category: Semi-violent historical psychological drama

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If you love slow-burn films, this one will be right up your alley.

Tasmania has been the setting and/or filming location for a number of pretty hard-hitting horror/suspense films such as The Nightingale or Dying Breed. Partly because Tasmania's brutal colonial history makes for compelling and horrifying stories with more than a kernel of truth to them, but also because the seclusion and sparseness of Tasmania affords plenty of opportunity to play out stories that require a natural isolation. And with both of those elements, the scene is set for Van Diemen's Land.

Van Diemen's Land (the name for the state now known as Tasmania prior to 1856) is loosely based on the true story of a group of British convicts (led by the Irishman Alexander Pearce) who in 1822 attempted to escape from both the harsh terrain of western Tasmania as well as the harsh treatment dished out by the English colonial masters, thus they hatch a plan involving crossing the island state to get to Launceston in order to get to the mainland. However, they soon find traversing the Tasmanian wilderness is no walk in the park, and if they can't catch food, they will have to resort to desperate measures to keep themselves going.

The Dry (2020 film)

Category: Modern Australian murder-mystery

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On paper, Australian cinema should be absolutely killing it - Australia has produced world-class talent like Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Toni Collette and so many more, but for whatever reason, Australian cinema just can't get bums in seats - maybe it's because Australian-produced movies are often so low budget that they look shitty in comparison to (and thus can't compete for attention with) Hollywood blockbusters; some Australian movies come across as if they were written by the bleeding heart brigade such that the castigation of the general audience permeates through (thus turning away the people needed to make a movie financially viable); or sometimes, Australian movies are just too fucking cringy.

For whatever reason, Australians just have a general apathy about Australian cinema. So much so that when the Australian press gets excited about an Australian film, it's strikingly weird - and right around the time when The Dry came out, it definitely had quite a bit of buzz around it. In this instance, the buzz was deserved - The Dry is a great movie.

The Dry is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Jane Harper, and stars Eric Bana as a police detective who goes back to his childhood town for a funeral whereupon he begins to investigate the apparent murder-suicide perpetrated by one of their own and against one of their own. 

Outback (2019 film)

Category: Survival drama

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Outback is an Australian survival drama that tells the story of an unreliable car, the hostile outback and a split-second decision to take a shortcut which all spell disaster for two British tourists.

The main premise of this film is that a man and his girlfriend to whom he planned on proposing find themselves lost in the harsh Australian outback while attempting a cross-country drive. The ratcheting emotional tension centering around the man's rejected proposal leads him to make a rash decision to make up time by taking a shortcut down an unpaved road at the suggestion of his GPS.

But no good deed goes unpunished as the GPS loops the couple on a featureless road with no obvious way back, leading to the second big mistake - getting out of the car.

Censor (2021 film)

Category: Psychological thriller with horror elements.

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Set in the 1980's during Britain's video nasty phenomenon, Censor tells the story of a woman's descent into madness as she struggles between her job as a government film censor while also masking the trauma of being complicit in her sister's death when they were both children.

Her descent into madness begins when she becomes convinced that her sister could still be alive due to a nugget of information revealed to her that only her and her sister knew. In her search for answer, she gets drawn first-hand into the world of low-budget, low-quality horror exploitation films and the sleazy people behind them. And this is a prescient fact because these films were not only made, but released in a manner to avoid government censorship.

But does Enid find her sister?