30/04/14 After (2012)

Currently watching this so can't really call either way if it's any good.

Two young people are on a bus, it crashes. They both wake up at home the next day and they're the only people left in town. We think they're ghosts.

I'll come back later to let you know if we're right.

Actually, I probably won't bother.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1799508/
Score/10

Perkin.

29/04/15 Hungerford (2014)

A sci-fi horror that cost less than many films spend on sandwiches yet manages to be better than most of them.

Good effort, young people.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3552892/
7/10

Perkin.

27/4/15 The Girl Is In Trouble ((2015)

Expecting a generic crime film where all problems are solved by guns, this was much, much better. Solid story, good dialogue, excellent acting and only a few problems resolved with bullets.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706625/

7.7/10

Perkin.

27/04/15 Residue (2015)

Originally a feature-length pilot for a show that didn't get made according to IMDB. Although IMDB does have a listing for a show with the same name, with the same cast playing the same characters that people have claimed to have seen. So it probably did get made.

Anyway, on New Year's Eve in a future London (basically the same as the current one but with no daylight, apparently), a nightclub explodes.

One of the people who dies is the daughter of a local cop. He could have saved her, but he was busy sitting in a Mk1 Granada drinking and getting mashed off his balls on drugs. Which he buys from a dealer who is also London's most clued-in, omnipresent, all-knowing police informant/tour guide.

The other main players are some guy who works for the Home Office, whose accent travels more than most long distance pilots, and his girlfriend who is a photographer. Because films need that. Someone who 'works' as a photographer. That's original. Why are they always the type of photographer who take wanky pictures of the dispirited urban underclass or symbolic cityscapes and all that? In reality, out of the small number of people in the world who do take photos for a living, most of them work from small, barely afforded studios, where they have to maintain a pretend enthusiasm for awful family portraits whilst a child does a shit on their pastel blue backdrop. Or something.

Anyway, about a month after the explosion, some people start acting a bit funny and killing people or mutilating themselves. Something was released in the attack on the nightclub which is influencing their behaviour. Plod, Home Office, and shutterbug all find themselves involved in the increasingly bizarre mystery behind the explosion.

The acting was mostly good (enough), the locations were impressive, the horror moments quite spooky, the effects good and Mk1 Ganadas are bloody lovely. However the script was woeful arse, really terrible in places. 

That'll do.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3328442/

5.9/10

Perkin.

27/04/15 Of Silence (2014)

A man's wife has died so he sells his scuba diving company and stays at home to sit down a lot. He might've had something to do with her death, I couldn't tell. The ghost of his wife is haunting him, in an almost menacing and scary way, which would be suggestive of some level of guilt/involvement in her passing. Or maybe she was just a right arsehole who is still getting on his case from beyond.

If that wasn't enough, his house also seems to be haunted by some demonic Pumpkinhead tribute who is related to/nothing to do with (again, couldn't tell) the whole wife thing.

For the first half of this film, I thought the main fella's performance was quite good. He's docile, numbed, isolated and haunted (in both senses). However, by the end of the film I was strongly suspicious that the actor (also the writer/director) was possibly just asleep, so immobile and placid is his performance. One part in particular, when supposedly at peril of imminent death, his face portrayed the same amount of emotion as someone experiencing a stress-less bowel movement whilst pondering the colour beige.

Not awful, but fossil-paced and void of anything engaging.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1405413/

4.4/10

Perkin.

26/04/15 Dark Vision (2015)

A supernatural reality TV show try and win a contract/competition by streaming live spookyness from a cave that's haunted by some guy who enjoyed killing people back in the days of The Plague.

Being alive back then must've been bloody awful. You got, like, one day a year off work from your terrible job where you sat around in a straw house wearing clothes made of leprosy, drinking ale with bits floating in it, eating a grey lump of diseased bread, giving thanks to the landowners who would probably not hesitate in using you for winter fuel if the logs ran a little low.

You probably couldn't read or write, you gave half you meagre wages back to the person you worked for as payment for the one-room hovel you live in on their land. Potatoes were a luxury for the wealthy, so you had to peel a rodent for an imitation one.

Music was performed on instruments that both looked and sounded like a stringed shed.

If you were luck enough to reach your mid-twenties, at least one limb had probably withered away or burst and you were likely to soon die through easily preventable illness, being hit by a sword, drowned for being a witch or eaten by a bear.

You were also expected to attend worship 400 times a year where you handed over the rest of you wages and gave thanks for your existence whilst being told you were a sinner for possessing genitals, eyes and whatnot.

"Keep describing the poor this way, nearly there..."

All of which leads us in no way back to the film. The acting's so hammy these people probably piss gammon, the camera work and effects are competent at best, the location becomes a little repetitive and the story's nothing original. However, it's one of those 'honest' films that doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is and I'd much rather watch ten films like this than another single 100 million dollar superhero toy advert with Audi product placements and sparkle-toothed cretins blandly spouting their McDialogue.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2463524/

5.5/10

Perkin.

25/04/2015 Educating Rita (1983)

Never seen this before although I remember it being a big deal when it was released.  The fashions look horribly dated but the story is still a good one, as is the script and the general message.  Michael Caine's grumpy professor is arguably one of his best performances (but this of course was before The Muppet Christmas Carol ;) ) and Julie Walters plays her part perfectly.

Being an Open University student I was interested in this for the OU factor although it is largely irrelevant and barely mentioned. Distance learning has now changed massively with a majority of it happening online but reading some fellow students posts on forums sadly the attitudes of some husbands to their wives undertaking courses has not improved (none of that goes on here at Plop Towers of course).

8/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085478/

Podd