Writer and Director Don Mancini adds another chapter to his 20-year-old Child’s Play franchise with The Curse of Chucky. Fiona Dourif plays Nica, a disabled woman mourning the recent death of her mother. Adding to her woes is her sticky beak sister, Barb (Danielle Bisutti) who wants to sell off the family home and cart Nica off to the nearest care home. Whilst at the house, Barb’s young daughter finds comfort in a very familiar doll that was mysteriously mailed to Nica before her mother’s death.
2008’s Seed of Chucky appears to be a thing of the past as Mancini has stripped the humour of the previous two Child’s Play entries to the bone, making this instalment less knowing and more about Gothic horror. Something which will no doubt appeal to fans of the original 80s schlock-fest. Of which there a few nods to. Brad Douriff returns as the voice of Chucky, whose one liners seem out oddly out of place against Mancini’s moody backdrop. Acting as both a sequel and reboot to the franchise, Curse of Chucky also works as a perfectly good standalone movie.
Polished and bloody, Curse of Chucky doesn’t reinvent the slasher film, but it does reinvent the franchise.
St Elmo’s Fire, Joel Schumacher’s third film, received fair to middling reviews when it came out in 1985. It even received a Razzie nomination, but then what doesn’t? Push forward 30 years later and it’s fair to say that the only thing holding it together now is a sense of nostalgia for the brat pack and Rob Lowe’s smouldering eyes. Oh, those smouldering eyes.
When looking at films from further than yesterday, there is a temptation to wash your hands of how it looks through modern eyes; whether that be by metaphorically burning it all down or turning the other cheek with a mumbled ‘Life was different back then’. There is also an option to scream wildly that PC culture is ruining everything and why can’t we all just enjoy films for what they are, ya goddamn snowflake! However, that is not an option one should eagerly grab for.
Even if one was to put themselves into an 80s frame of mind – a time that, lest we forget, gave us Soul Man – there’s very little heat in St Elmo’s Fire to warm yourself by. Starring the Brat Pack, the film takes us through the lives of a group of friends, who are just trying to make their way in this crazy, mixed-up world.
There’s Billy (Rob Lowe), the former frat boy stuck in filing marriage. Kirby (Emilio Estevez) wants to be a lawyer but spends his days viciously hounding Dale (Andie MacDowell), a medical intern. Jules (Demi Moore) loves cocaine, sleeping around and her stepmother dying. Alec (Judd Nelson) and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) are stuck in a song and dance where the former cheats on the latter because she won’t marry him. Wendy (Mare Winningham) seems like a decent sort and, as a result, the film doesn’t seem all that interested in her. This leaves Kevin (Andrew McCarthy), an insufferable prig of a journalist, who continually boils everything, from love to education, down to be a horrible manmade construct designed to fool us all into being nice to each other. As if, somehow, that’s possibly the worst that could ever happen in Kevin’s miserable, over-opiniated life. Oh, he’s the worst.
What I’m suggesting is these are not people you would share a bottle of water with, let alone nearly two hours of your life. And, after a particularly smug opening that sees everyone laughing at Billy nearly killing himself and Wendy in a drink driving accident, the film really ramps up the problematic issues. Perhaps the biggest offender is Kirby who borders on psychopathy in his pursuit of Dale. Starting by showing off his Bambi eyes, Kirby slowly evolves into a full-fledged Patrick Bateman who thinks nothing off driving up a snowy mountain to rip his ‘loved one’ out of her cabin. It’s a bizarre and unnerving series of events made all the more repugnant when Dale admits to being ‘flattered’ by his actions. Squint and you’ll still struggle to see who this whole affair is aimed at: Teenagers or sociopaths?
The cast try their best to give the leaden dialogue the zip, zap, pow of a Billy Wilder flick, but their attempts are limp. Whilst they all learn something new about themselves come the credits, the audience realises they’ve learnt nothing about any of them. Interestingly enough, John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club came out the same year as St Elmo’s Fire, sharing a large majority of the same cast as well. I’m not saying that The Breakfast Club, with it’s moral of ‘if you want to win the guy, just change everything about yourself’, is a monument to quality film-making, but at least it had the good grace to be fun.
Eat Locals (2017, Dir: Jason Flemyng) – ‘Essentially, Eat Locals is like Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, except we’re supposed to be rooting for the monsters, not the armed forces.’ Read full review here.
Mr Holmes (2015, Dir: Bill Condon) – ‘…a testament not only to an iconic literary character but to the human spirit.’ Read full review here.
Run For Your Wife (2013, Dir: Ray Cooney) – ‘Slow, idiotic, offensive…’ Read full review here.
The Films that Changed My Life: James Pillion – I produced this episode of the FilmInk podcast. Check it out here.
The Grinn (2017, Dir: Matthew Kalamane) – ‘…whichever way you slice it, it still comes across as tired and listless.’ Read the full review here.
They (2017, Dir: Anahita Ghazvinizadeh) – ‘…a well-meaning piece of work that suffers from an unfocused story.’ Read the full review here.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018, Dir: Martin McDonagh) – ‘Three Billboards is a cracking start to cinema in 2018.’ Read full review here.
The Second World War has recently ended and in a remote Sussex cottage lives a crotchety old man, who wants nothing in life than to live out his final years tending to his bees. His name is Sherlock Holmes.
There are numerous pastiches of Sherlock Holmes to be found in literature and film. There’s the steampunk revisionist adventures of Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law. The bawdy slapstick of Without a Clue saw Michael Caine pretending to the super sleuth. Meanwhile, Young Sherlock Holmes stretched the patience of the heartiest champion of Doyle’s canon. In fact only this year, William Gillete’s 1916 feature Sherlock Holmes was rediscovered and given a home release. Yes, there are many portraits. Most of them sharing a common theme of Holmes in his prime. Which is what makes Mr Holmes immediately stand out from its forbearers.
Played by Ian McKellan, we see the great detective now out to pasture. His once coveted memory failing, he takes to writing names of those people he forgets on his shirt cuffs. He hides himself away from the gawping eyes of those who recognize him from the stories by his late friend, Dr John Watson. As a tonic to the numerous fabrications he found in Watson’s work, Holmes has taken to writing up a case he feels was particularly egregious with the facts.
McKellan is simply exquisite as the sleuth. No longer going up against Moriarty, his greatest enemy is the onset of dementia and a feeling of guilt for a case long forgotten. Using flashbacks, McKellan also plays Holmes in a manner we may be more accustomed to. Ageing but still pompous, this ‘younger’ Holmes is in his element as he cracks the case of a missing wife. The conclusion of which now escapes him in his winter years.
It would be amiss to overlook the virtues of McKellen’s co-stars, Laura Linney and Milo Parker, who play Holmes’ housekeeper, Mrs Munro and her son, Roger respectively. Their scenes together are beautifully written and acted as the mother tries to remind her son of a deceased father he’s too young to remember.
Like the book it was based on – A Slight Trick of the Mind – the second set of flashbacks that see Holmes travel to Japan after the Hiroshima bombing feel superfluous. Whilst Holmes’ interactions with Tamiki Umezaki (Hiroyuki Sanada) eventually tie into the film’s themes of forgiveness and loss, it feels like it overeggs the pudding.
However, we shouldn’t let trivial matters get in the way of the facts. Mr Holmes is a wonderful, emotional portrait of a character that will be dear to many people. The delicate touch of the screenplay and the strength of the performances on display are a testament not only to an iconic literary character but to the human spirit.
It’s fair to say that Danny Dyer plays to type. The great mockney of all mockneys is not known for his chameleonic performances; he’s never going to be mistaken for the Lon Chaney of his generation. We shall never hear the following words uttered: ‘And the Academy Award for Best Actor goes to… Danny Dyer for his performance in Wat Choo Looking at Bruv.’
So, when he took on the lead in the big screen adaptation of Ray Cooney’s bawdy farce, Run for Your Wife, we all crinkled our brows and went ‘derp?’ After all, based on previous performances, Dyer is to comedy, what Liam Gallagher is to wit and reasoned debate. Isn’t that right, our kid?
And it looks like my chin stroking and feverish worries are justified. Like Big Ben chiming on New Year, Dyer hasn’t let us down. He is dreadful. But that’s like swimming in the sewers and worrying about the turds that surround you, when one has dropped into your mouth. Run for Your Wife just doesn’t work artistically, amusingly or even ironically.
Directed by Cooney himself, the film sees Dyer as a Landahn cabbie, who manages to hold down two marriages through meticulous planning and talking through his arse. Wife one (Denise Van Outen) believes he does night shifts, whilst wifey number two (Sarah Harding) believes he works during the day. Which, just to digress for a second, doesn’t make a blind lick of sense. Anyway, helping a bag lady from being mugged (Judi Dench says ‘fuck’. Chortle!), Dyer is knocked out and spends the night in hospital. With his schedule out of whack, he runs around trying to stop everyone, from his wives to the police, from finding out about his bigamy. All whilst being helped by his dopey neighbour played by Neil Morrissey. If only The Vanishing Man had caught on, eh Neil?
It is fair and justifiable to say that the plot to Run for Your Wife is absolute balderdash, with jokes set up in a manner we haven’t seen since A Few Best Men. When Morrissey is given custody of a chocolate cake and told to look after it, you sit there like prisoner of war waiting for the depressing inevitability of it all.
Run for Your Wife harks back to a particular age of cinema. An age that saw the Carry On movies in their last death rattles, big screen adaptations of TV programmes where the whole cast go to the Costa Del Sol, and sitcoms dressing racism up as the loony left getting their knickers in a twist. In Run for Your Wife, Christopher Biggins and Lionel Blair play a couple, one of whom wears women’s clothing, and that’s the joke, apparently. It’s the kind of knuckle dragging stereotyping we thought couldn’t be topped by Shame’s ‘Having sex with gay men is terrible, right?’ ending.
But it gets worse.
The final act of the film sees everyone running around with their pants around their ankles and being accused of being gay or a transsexual. And we really need to focus on that verb, ‘accused’. The number of times Dyer and his motley crew puff out their chests and go on about how they luv the birds is frankly embarrassing. You could argue that you’re supposed to laugh at their protestations, but we’re pretty sure that’s a weak argument. The joke seems to be: pretending to be gay equals hilarious. Imagine being gay?! Ugh!
Presumably in an attempt to lend the film some credibility, the whole sorry affair has been swaddled in numerous cameos from the Ghost of Light Entertainment. There’s a reason why the night sky was dark whilst filming Run for Your Wife. All the stars were here. Russ Abbott, Bernard Cribbins and, in hindsight, an ill-judged Rolf Harris are just some of the faces cropping up to persuade you that you’re watching comedy gold. When Andrew Sachs, dressed as a moustached waiter, pratfalls his way into the lap of Anthony Head, you don’t laugh. You just wish you were watching Fawlty Towers.
Slow, idiotic, offensive and downright insulting to logic, Run for Your Wife is 2013’s answer to The Room… But without any of the fun.
John Noonan 