Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

 

In the 1980s, Claire Redfield and her older brother Chris are children living at the Raccoon City Orphanage. Claire befriends Lisa Trevor, a disfigured girl who has been experimented on by Dr. William Birkin, an employee for the Umbrella Corporation.  Birkin oversees the orphanage and takes children for his own experimental research. Claire escapes from Birkin when she is selected to participate in one such experiment. 

In 1998, Claire returns to Raccoon City in search of Chris, whom she wants to warn about Umbrella's experiments.  But Chris, now a member of the Raccoon City Police's "STARS" team (basically, think SWAT) isn't home.  He's at a diner with his colleagues; one of whom, rookie Leon S Kennedy, notices that the diner's owner has blood coming out of her eyes.

Yep, Claire's made her return to Raccoon City at exactly the wrong time, with her warnings about Umbrella Corporation experiments coming too late to prevent the apocalyptic mayhem of zombies, monsters and evil conspiracies that is about to lay ruin to the whole place.  Claire and Chris and Chris's STARS team buddies all soon find themselves in a desperate battle for survival.

Welcome to Raccoon City represents a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise at the cinema, jettisoning the increasingly muddled chronology of the six Milla Jovovich films in favour of ... well, an entirely new muddle, to be honest.

I've never played a Resident Evil game but a little reading online informs me that this movie essentially structures a composite plot from the first two games. This was a mistake that leads directly to the film's core problem: there is too much going on and not enough happening, both at the same. 

A significant contributor to this issue is that the cast is too big.  The script tries to wedge in too many "iconic characters" from the game series, resulting in none of them getting to actually do anything very interesting because the movie simply doesn't have time for that.  It's too busy introducing them all, and giving them each their own plot-lines (and their own "big action scenes") to give them time to just be people we get to know and want to see succeed.  Which is a shame because there are several actors here whose other work I have enjoyed in other projects.  With more focused material, they could have made this a far more engaging watch.

The film makes other odd scripting choices, as well.  For instance, Leon S Kennedy, a recurring protagonist of the video game franchise, is presented here as an incompetent putz.  He's frequently incapable of performing even simple tasks, and on several occasions acts in the kind of ways that would normally mark a character as "destined to die".

I'm also not a fan of the score.  It is rather over the top at times.  There's also a recurring effort to "ironically" juxtapose popular songs with scenes that feel thematically opposite.  This can work really well when done sparingly, but the frequency of going to that well here came across to me as a case of "trying too hard".

Welcome to Raccoon City falls short of the first Milla Jovovich Resident Evil film in pretty much every regard. Technically I guess some of the CGI is better, but it's been 20 years, so it should be! Even then, the basic designs are not especially interesting. The final monster in particular is completely generic.

Ultimately, very forgettable stuff.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Season 1 (2022)

 

Thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, Middle-Earth was in a time of relative peace.  The fallen god Morgoth has been cast down by the might of Elves and Men.  His Orcs are scattered, and his great lieutenant, the dark lord Sauron, is missing, believed dead.

Believed dead by most, that is.  The young Elven commander Galadriel is one of the few who believes that the dark lord is still lurking, rebuilding his strength for a new conflict.  Galadriel's insistence on this point, in fact, drives a wedge between her and the other elves at exactly the time they need to be unified: the light that sustains their people is dwindling, and the days of the elves in Middle-Earth may be dwindling.

Meanwhile, in the bucolic lands of the Harfoot people, the lives of these small, secretive nomads is disrupted by the arrival of a stranger, a man who looks human but who fell from the sky like a star ...

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attracted considerable controversy when its first trailers appeared, as bigots frothed and ranted about the casting of non-white actors.  The usual pack of hateful clowns tried to review bomb the series as a result, and also harassed the actors online.  Neither the actors not the show deserved this, of course, but decency is not a factor in the behaviour of racists.

I do think The Rings of Power does have some issues, but none of these are the casting.  The actors are consistently good in their roles, because of course talent has no relation to skin melanin.

Instead, the show's biggest issue is its pacing.  The plot development in the earlier episodes is rather too deliberate and slow, while the intermittent ambitious action sequences feel like a not-very-successful attempt to inject more verve into the pacing.

Around episode four, however, the show's disparate threads begin to coalesce and the story picks up impetus.  It's helped greatly in this regard by Morfydd Clark's great performance as Galadriel, as she slowly begins her metamorphosis from brash, arrogant warrior to wise, far-seeing leader.  The deeper I got into this first season, the more and more engaged by The Rings of Power I became.  Which is honestly the reverse of my experience of Peter Jackson's films.

One thing the show gets right from the very first moment, however, is its production values.  It looks and sounds amazing throughout.  Having recently re-watched the Lord of the Rings movies, it's very evident how much film effects have improved over the two decades since they came out.  The Rings of Power consistently looks more convincing and more fully realised than the films.  The only exception to this is that it is a bit more lax with its use of forced perspective to make its dwarven characters look shorter than the elves with whom they interact.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is something of a slow burn, but once it gets going it works well.  Give it your time.

Redline (2009)

 

On the planet Dorothy, the Yellowline car race is nearing its conclusion.  Yellowline is the final elimination race for qualification into Redline, the most popular, most high octane, most dangerous race in the galaxy.

Only two of the racers in Yellowline will matter to us: idealistic young female driver "Cherry Boy Hunter" McLaren, who wins the race, and "Sweet" JP, who could have won but whose mob connections insisted he finish second.

But then the announcement comes that Redline will be held on Roboworld, a planet of militant cyborgs whose President has threatened to kill everyone involved with the Redline if they pollute his planet.  A couple of the participants drop out, rather than deal with this extra danger, and JP gets his chance to win the Biggest Race In The Galaxy after all.  Assuming that is, and he - and anyone else involved in the race, including "Cherry Boy Hunter" - lives to see the finish line.

This Japanese anime has frenetic and highly stylised animation.  It uses lots of very dark shadow splashed into high contrast with neon colours and blinding whites.  The character designs are also generally wild and visually arresting.  Ironically, the major exceptions to this are the main characters of JP and McLaren.  JP's design is pretty much just a 50s greaser with a massive pompadour, and McLaren's is a fairly generic anime tomboy.

The visuals also put a lot of emphasis on depicting the enormous speed of the race, and in delivering spectacle as a whole.  The film has won a lot of critical praise for this - and it does do it well.  Unfortunately, I think it does so at the cost of the plot and the characterisation.

Now you might be thinking "Plot?  It's a racing film.  Does it need a plot other than 'how will the main character win?'." And that's a fair point.  Ironically enough, though, it's Redline's failure to narrowly focus on that storyline that costs it in the plot stakes.  The script introduces a wide variety of sub-plots and side stories that take up a significant amount of screen time, and which don't deliver any real forward movement in the main plot or in the development of the major characters.  The resulting lack of character depth, in particular, is a real problem.  They're very basically sketched and have minimal motivation.  As far as I can tell, we're supposed to care about JP because (a) he's the main character and (b) he had a rough childhood, while McLaren's main personality traits are "idealistic and attractive".  Their under-developed personalities meant I did not much care about either them or the outcome of the race.

If you like high octane animated spectacle, Redline might well be for you.  But it didn't really rev my engine.

Rise of the Predator (2014)

 

The Blackjacks are an elite team of private military contractors.  Their latest mission comes from a powerful venture capitalist named Cromwell.  He has lost contact with his high security energy research facility, located somewhere in Kazakhstan.  The Blackjacks need to enter the facility, find the chief scientist, and extract him safely.

To help locate the scientist, Cromwell provides a psychic named Lisa Westbrook.  This is merely the first signal that there's something unusual about this apparently straight-forward extraction job.  And sure enough, once the Blackjacks get on site, they find themselves in a desperate battle with an extra-dimensional monster that the scientist's research accidentally unleashed.

If the above summary sounds like a very generic SF/horror monster movie, well that's because this film - which is also known as SEAL Patrol - is indeed a very generic SF/horror monster movie.  A fact that is probably tipped off by the coattail-riding use of 'Predator' in the title.

The big problem here is the writing, which is plodding and meandering, despite the brief, sub-80 minute runtime.  There are a lot of sequences that smack heavily of padding, as the film desperately tries to fill time with content that doesn't need it to show the monster itself.  Probably due to financial constraints.

A particular example of this kind of padding is a sub-plot about the scientist's daughter.  She is missing, presumed dead.  But then the Blackjacks find her alive!  Huzzah! ... and then two minutes later she is killed off.  So glad we had that time together.

On the plus side, when we do finally see the monster, it's actually a reasonably good design.  A shame then that it does very little while 'on camera', presumably again due to those financial limitations.

If you're really hankering for an SF/horror monster mash, there are much better options.  Including some movies that are technically worse, but at least have more chutzpah.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

 

Centuries ago, the peaceful and prosperous sub-continent of Kumandra was ravaged by the Druun, evil, dark-colored spirits that turn every living thing in their path to stone.

Kumandra was saved by the magic of the Last Dragon, Sisu, who created a powerful magic gem to drive away the Druun.  She then disappeared, and the human tribes who were left behind began a power struggle over the gem, splitting into five kingdoms: Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon and Tail.

The Land of Heart manages to retain control of the gem, and five hundred years after the Druun war, its leader hopes to re-forge an alliance of all the human peoples.  He invites the other leaders to his kingdom.  His daughter Raya shares her father's idealism, and she takes this as an opportunity to befriend Namaari, Princess of the Fang.

Namaari's motives for the friendship, however, are not as sincere as Raya's.  The Fang attempt to steal the gem, and in the ensuing battle, the gem is shattered into several pieces.  The protection over Kumandra fails, and the Druun return, devastating the Land of Heart and sending the other tribes scurrying back to their homes, each with a fragment of the gem as a limited form of protection from the Druun.

And that's just the first twenty minutes of the film!  The bulk of the movie is actually set six years later, as Raya - who survived the Druun thanks to her father's self-sacrifice - seeks to reunite the various parts of the gem and restore the land's protection: a quest which will, as you might expect from the title and the image above, lead her to finally locate the Last Dragon, Sisu.

Raya and the Last Dragon does a good job of packing a lot of exposition into its opening quarter hour or so.  Some of that is done through voice over narration, but more is done with exposition and expressive animation.  You'll definitely feel Raya's sense of betrayal when she realises that Namaari's friendship is not sincere.

In terms of its main storyline, the film perhaps feels a little formulaic.  You'll probably not be surprised to learn that the success or failure of the struggle with the Druun will ultimately come down to whether or not the five tribes can (symbolically, at least) overcome their mistrust of each other and work together.  That motif is pretty obvious from the outset.  I don't necessarily think that that's a problem in and of itself, but I did find the execution of it a smidgen overdone and heavy-handed.

On the plus side, the film has plenty of amusing sequences, nice animation, and a talented voice cast.  Solid stuff, though some scenes might be a bit intense for very young viewers.

Red Notice (2021)

 

Two thousand years ago, Roman general Mark Antony gifts Egyptian queen Cleopatra three bejeweled eggs as a wedding gift symbolizing his devotion.

Over the centuries the eggs become something of a talismanic prestige item for both wealthy collectors and the thieves who like to rob them.  The most notorious examples of the latter are a shadowy, possibly fictional figure known as The Bishop, and the irreverent, wise-cracking Nolan Booth.

Booth makes a play for the first of the eggs, but his ingenious scheme is interrupted by FBI Special Agent John Hartley.  Despite Booth's best efforts, Hartley manages to capture him and recover the egg - but the item then vanishes from custody. So when Hartley's credentials suddenly fail to check out, both men find themselves sent to a Siberian prison.

It seems The Bishop is definitely not fictional, after all; and it is she who has engineered this whole situation.  The two men will have to put aside their differences if they want to break out of prison, recover the egg, and turn the tables on her.

Of course, that will be easier said than done, with plenty of mad cap action and 'surprises' along the way.

You'll notice I put 'surprises' in quotes, and there's a very simple reason for that: I don't think that anything that happens in Red Notice will actually come as a surprise to any remotely savvy audience member.  It's a very by-the-numbers film in terms of both plot and characters.

As you can see from the image above, those characters are played by three talented actors.  Alas, the film doesn't give them anything but the most basic version of their most familiar archetypes.  Dwayne Johnson is big and stoic; Ryan Reynolds is quippy and sarcastic, Gal Gadot is sultry and dangerous.  These are roles they could all perform in their sleep.

This is very much undemanding, unambitious, "comfort food" film-making.  You'll probably be tolerably entertained for most of the run time, but it's definitely all very much a grab bag of familiar tricks and tropes cobbled together in an undemanding formula.

Reservation Dogs, Season 1 (2021)

 

Bear, Cheese, Willie Jack and Elora are all indigenous teenagers living in rural Oklahoma.  They  have a collective plan, inspired by the long-held dream of their deceased friend Daniel, to put together enough money to move to California.  To finance this plan, they engage in a variety of fairly minor time criminal activities.

Of course, even the best laid plans can go awry.  And it's safe to say that the quartet's plans aren't always the best laid to begin with.  They'll have to struggle with various challenges as they pursue their goals.  There's the law, of course, given their illegal activities, but also the antics of their often-eccentric friends and family; the arrival of a rival gang looking to muscle in on their turf; and most fundamental of all, the long-unspoken question: "Is Daniel's dream actually my dream?".

Reservation Dogs is a solid comedy-drama.  I was tempted to call it "quirky" but that may simply be my cultural biases showing.  The show is written and directed entirely by indigenous creators, and what seems quirky to me may simply be unfamiliar because I'm a middle-aged middle-class white guy, and I'm used to almost everything on TV coming from a similar background to my own.

I can however say that I enjoyed the show.  The cast are talented and make their characters empathetic and likeable, while still being flawed and human, and the show touches on serious issues and questions without ever feeling like its drifting into polemic.

It's likely that the show's sense of humour won't be for everyone, but I encourage everyone to at least give it a try: it's definitely a show with a different kind of voice than we usually see on TV.

Underbelly: Razor (2011)

 

Sydney, the 1920s. In a possibly unique situation, the two most powerful figures in organised crime are both women. Kate Leigh runs the illegal 'grog shops' - illicit businesses that sell alcohol after the mandatory closing hours - while Tilly Devine runs the brothels.

Kate and Tilly have never been friends, and as their list of personal grievances with each other increases, and pressures from other quarters increase, they each take more and more dramatic actions to (a) preserve their own criminal enterprises and (b) take down the other woman.  Hiring triggermen, equipping their respective gangs with straight-razors (from which the series takes it name) and quietly tattling to the police about each other's activities.

Each season of Australian 'true crime' series Underbelly recounts a particularly notorious - or at least salacious - period of criminal activity.  The first season was particularly controversial because it came out at a time when the real-life crimes were still being prosecuted.  It was actually prohibited from screening in the state of Victoria for seven months because of it.

Razor is ably anchored by strong central performances from the leading women playing Australian-born Kate and UK-born Tilly (though both actors, ironically, are from New Zealand).  It needs that anchor, I think, because the actual narrative is a little meandering with many secondary characters who rotate in for a few episodes, then disappear again.

Razor also continues a trend, originating in the second season, of containing a considerable amount of incidental sex and nudity.  I suspect this came about as a way to maintain notoriety and 'edginess' in the absence of court orders and injunctions.

Ultimately, if you have an interest in true crime shows, this will probably scratch the itch fairly well.

The Rezort (2015)

The zombie apocalypse happened, and we won.

It was by no means an easy victory, and some people still suffer from the effects. These effects may be physical: there are still refugee camps dotted in several parts of the world, for instance. Or they may be psychological, as is the case of the trauma still felt by Melanie Gibbs. But for most people, the war is in the past and it is time to rebuild.

Of course, people being people, not all of the ways that humanity chooses to 'rebuild' are particularly constructive. An example of this is 'The Rezort', an elite tourist destination where you can pay to shoot zombies within a strictly controlled, safe environment. It's mostly a playground for the wealthy, but it's sometimes recommended as therapy for those, like Melanie, who are still struggling with their memories of the war.

It's probably no surprise that those strict controls and safety don't last long once the movie starts.

If you're thinking "that premise sounds kind of like Jurassic Park but with zombies instead of dinosaurs" ... well, actually watching The Rezort is certainly not going to change that impression. The broad strokes of the two films are definitely similar, right down to a hacker attack that leads to the inevitable carnage.

But not every work of fiction has to be original in its basic outline.  Execution matters a great deal.  And The Rezort does pretty well on the execution front.  The cast is capable, the zombie make-up and action are solid, and the plot - the basic premise of creating a 'zombie safari theme park' aside - never demands you accept any particularly absurd actions on the part of the human characters.

If you're a zombie movie fan, this is definitely worth giving a look.

Rabies (2010)

A young woman is trapped in a sealed pit, deep in the woods.  Her brother Ofer, unable to get her out, promises to find help.

A park ranger and his wife are conducting rounds of a nature reserve in a forest.

Four teenagers driving to a tennis tournament take a wrong turn and accidentally run over a man who staggers out of the woods in front of their car.

These three groups, as well as two others I haven't yet mentioned, will spend the rest of the film intersecting and interacting in various, rarely-productive, ways.

So .. this film.  Thirty minutes in, I was really enjoying it.  Decent interactions between the characters and a nice surprise in that the teenagers respond relatively sensibly to hitting the young man (who is Ofer, in case you hadn't realised).  Two of them stay with the car and call the cops - who wonder of wonders in a horror film, actually show up! - while the other two try to help Ofer find his sister.  I was excited.

And then the rapiness kicked in.  Oh boy.  Both the teens who stayed with the car are attractive young women, and one of the two cops is all about sexually assaulting them via a "search".  It's clearly not the first time, and it's also apparent that his partner - who we're disturbingly asked to find sympathetic - is aware of this and has covered for him in the past.  From then on in, I was frankly not in a positive mood toward the movie.  I could possibly have overlooked it if the second cop had been positioned as just as bad, given he is obviously complicit in the behaviour, but as noted, he's positioned as sympathetic.  Screw that.

Rabies (or Kalavet, in the original Hebrew) has a good cast (albeit working in a language I don't speak), and several good moments, but for my tastes they aren't enough to compensate for the awfulness of the gender politics.

Ridge War Z (2013)

 

A journalist accompanies three veterans to the site of the climactic battle of the war between the living and the undead. There, he asks the men to share their stories of the encounter, while the film asks the viewer to believe that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of a skirmish involving a whole six soldiers.

No, it's not any more convincing than it sounds.

Ridge War Z (AKA Gory Ridge) feels like it wants to be the quasi-documentary zombie war narrative that the World War Z novel also offered, but that the film based on the book chose not to be.

Perhaps, in more skilled (and wealthier) hands, this approach could have worked.  Here, with the script's clumsy, plodding repetition of the "war is hell" refrain, and the embarrassingly meagre zombie-fighting action it offers, the outcome is pure tedium.  I can't really blame the cast for this: they do a decent job, but they simply aren't able to get much out of the trite dialogue and weak action scenes.

Ridge War Z seems to earnestly want to be a thoughtful film about war that just happens to have zombies in it, but it lacks the ability to match this ambition.  I can't see that it will please any audience.  People who want a drama about war are likely to be turned off by the zombies, and those who are keen on undead carnage will be thoroughly unimpressed by the anemic zombie action on offer.

Re-Animator (1985)

Dan Cain has it pretty good.  He's a handsome medical student with a smart, attractive girlfriend.  And a new transfer student just rented the spare room at his house, so he's not going to have any trouble covering his rent, now.  Basically, as long as Dan avoids getting involved in bizarre experiments aimed at raising the dead, I am sure his life will be all sunshine, rainbows and puppies.

Good thing there's no chance his new room-mate, Herbert West, is experimenting in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, right?  And even if he was to do something like that, there's little chance it would lead to evil headless professors or rampaging undead hordes, I'm sure!

Re-Animator is a gleefully over-the-top bit of cinematic schlock.  I imagine the screenwriting team taking the motto "Subtlety is for cowards!" as they hurl viscera and nudity at the camera from almost the first shot of the film.  Our opening scene features exploding eyeballs and things are not going to get any more restrained from there.  The cast seem fully on board with the melodramatic excess, with Jeffrey Combs (as Herbert West) and David Gale (as the malevolent Dr Carl Hill) being particularly noteworthy in their enthusiastic hamming.

It's hard to argue that this is a good film, but it sure is a fun one!

Rough Night (2017)

College besties Jess, Alice, Frankie, and Blair reunite a decade later for Jess's bachelorette party.  It's the first time they've all been together in nearly three years, and their friendships are under some strain.  Jess's attention is focused on her run for state senate and her upcoming nuptials, and she finds Alice's desire to relive their college days very clingy and frustrating.  Frankie and Blair, meanwhile, are one-time lovers who have split up and gone in very different directions in their lives.  Throw in Pippa, Jess's Australian best friend that none of the others have met before, and who Alice obviously resents, and you've got a recipe for trouble even before they all take cocaine and then accidentally kill the male stripper they've hired to come to their house.

As you might imagine, panic ensues.  It was an accident, but will the cops believe that?  All of them have reasons they don't want to risk it, even before factoring in the risk of their narcotic experimentation being discovered.

Naturally enough, stress and cocaine do not make for good decision-making, and an escalating series of misadventures inevitably result, eventually drawing in the swingers next door as well as a number of other unexpected visitors.

Rough Night was not a great commercial or critical success, but I actually found it a fun film to watch.  Yes, it's frequently crass and silly, and pretty predictable, but it has a great cast who commit to all the zany shenanigans and it rattles along briskly to its conclusion without overstaying its welcome.  I had some laughs and finished the movie with a smile on my face.

If you do watch this film, be sure to stick around for Pippa's musical number in the end credits.

Robin of Sherwood, Season 2 (1985)

Accompanied once more by the lilting strains of Clannad, Robin of Loxley continues his struggle against the tyranny of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Also against Satanic Cultists, because this is MYTHIC Robin Hood.  That last element got the show in hot water with Professional Hater of Fun Things, Mary Whitehouse, because apparently you shouldn't show satanists as having actual magical powers, or at all.

As a kid, I loved the supernatural elements of Robin of Sherwood.  The mysterious figure of Herne the Hunter in his cool stag's head outfit, the sorcerous shenanigans of Robin's adversaries, and so forth.  As an adult I am more ambivalent about them, though definitely not for the same reasons as Ms Whitehouse.  For me, the issue is that when you have verifiable magic and supernatural forces actively at work in your setting, it stretches credulity and my sense of verisimilitude if no-one outside the core cast ever seems to acknowledge it.  "Magic is real" is great, but given that, surely the wicked Prince John should have a pet alchemist brewing potions for him, and so forth.

That quibble aside, I generally enjoyed this jaunt back to the days of my youth.  The production values are pretty good for UK show of the era (even if it's sometimes pretty obvious that the castles they're supposed to be living in are not exactly in prime condition), and the cast is solid.  I wish a little more was done with Robin's cohorts, though.  They are sometimes left a bit short of things to do.

If moody medieval adventures sounds like your kind of thing, check it out.

Redlands (2014)

"Vienna" is a model in Redlands, California, where she shares a home with her musician boyfriend Zac.  Vienna's day job at an office pays the rent on their place, and her lingerie and nude model work finances the "fun" stuff like studio time for Zac.  If you're thinking Zac sounds like a bit of a deadbeat boyfriend, well, you wouldn't be wrong.

Vienna's latest series of modelling gigs are with Allan, a divorced older man whose ambitions to be a photographer seem fairly prurient.  Still, either because she sincerely believes it or because he pays well, Vienna speaks highly of his growing skills and is keen to keep working with him.

Unfortunately, Zac is living proof she has very bad judgement when it comes to men ...

I'm not really sure what the point of Redlands is - other than to have Nicole Fox show off her admittedly impressive body, anyway.  I mean, I guess you can argue that it's a realistic account of what would probably happen to a young woman who is overly trusting of a creepy guy she barely knows, but I'm not sure what the entertainment value in that is supposed to be.

Credit to the guy playing Allan, though: he's pretty good in his role, even when interacting with some significantly less convincing performers.

Robot Overlords (2014)

When the robots came, the war lasted only eleven days.  Three years later, humanity lives under strict curfew conditions.  Everyone is permanently tracked with electronic implants and executed if they're found out of their homes.  Most people bear this with bitter resignation but a few collaborate with the robots, acting as their agents and enforcers.  It's never explicitly stated why the invaders need collaborators, but it may be simply because almost none of the robots we see can actually fit through a doorway!

In any case, a group of teenagers stumble across a way to (at least temporarily) knock out their tracking implants.  They use this newfound freedom to ... well, to sneak into boarded up shops and raid them for candy, which is a refreshingly "real" response from a bunch of youngsters who don't have any guns or military training.  No immediate transformation into deadly freedom fighters, here.  It is in fact the collaborators' insistence on punishing even the most minor act of rebellion that will ultimately force these young people to challenge their robot overlords ...

So I've seen this described as "slightly more sweary Doctor Who", and that's a pretty good summation of its tone.  It's clearly intended to be tween/teen friendly, given the focus on its youthful leads, and it hits some of the same narrative beats and British nostalgia spots that Who had a tendency for under Steven Moffat's leadership.  Which ... is not actually a selling point for me.

This might keep its intended young audience tolerably entertained, but it's not likely to hold the attention or interest of a more demanding viewer.

Robin of Sherwood, Season 1 (1984)

In 12th century England, the Saxon peasants languish under the thumb of imperious Norman overlords.  A few try to fight back, but they are over-matched by the weapons and armour of their opponents.  All seems lost ... but in the heart of the country, the supernatural power of Herne the Hunter stirs, seeking the right person to lead a new resistance.

When his gaze falls on Robin of Loxley, the ancient spirit believe he has found the one he needs ... and soon the legend of the Hooded Man begins to spread ...

My mother's side of the family comes from Nottinghamshire, so it was probably inevitable that I would grow up with stories of Robin Hood and the outlaws of Sherwood Forest.  When this show debuted, 10-year old me was pretty much the core demographic, and I was a faithful viewer.

Of course, things we like as kids don't always hold up well as adults, and this show was created and largely written by Richard Carpenter.  That's the man behind Dick Turpin, which was, shall we say ... not as good as my childhood memories suggested.

I'm pleased to say, though, that while it is not high art, Robin of Sherwood has aged considerably better than Carpenter's earlier show.  Robin's enemies are not as buffoonish as those in Turpin, and the overall tone is more grounded (despite the addition of supernatural elements).  I also like that it subverts a few expectations along the way.

Also, it has a baby-faced Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet.  Who knew there was a time Mr Winstone wasn't craggy ? :)

Rememory (2017)

Sam Bloom is driving when he's involved in the car accident that kills his brother, Dash.  Afterward, he is tortured by the fact that he cannot remember Dash's dying words.  So when scientist Gordon Dunn announces the development of a device that allows perfect recall of memories, uncorrupted by time or the influences of other experiences, Sam is understandably intrigued.

Unfortunately, the day after the announcement, Dunn is found dead in suspicious circumstances.  If Sam wants to recover his brother's lost words, he will need to unpick what happened to Dunn: not an easy task when he doesn't know any of Dunn's colleagues or collaborators.  And for that matter, how well does he even know himself?

Rememory is very much Peter Dinklage's film, and he does a fine job as the troubled but empathetic Sam.  He's got just the right touch of melancholy underpinning everything he does in the film.

And it's probably just as well that his performance is so strong, because this is a low key script that unfolds with a deliberately slower pace.  There are no fight scenes or chases here: just lots of not especially happy people having conversations they'd probably prefer not to be happening.  It isn't likely to be to all tastes.

If you're looking for a dramatic film with a more reflective air and slower pace, though, Rememory might fit the bill.

A Real Friend (2006)

Estrella is a socially awkward girl of about 10-12 years age.  She lives with her widowed mother in an apartment building and spends most of her time reading horror stories and watching horror films.  She's got no real friends, and instead uses the various monsters of her favourite media as her imaginary companions.  She's particularly fond of Leatherface, from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films (this movie never actually names him, but it's a very faithful recreation of the character).

Of course, the question is, are all of Estrella's imaginary friends as friendly as she believes them to be?  Or as imaginary as everyone else assumes?

I quite enjoyed this Spanish horror movie, but I'm giving it a not recommended for two main reasons.  One, because I think the people who will get the most out of it are hardcore horror buffs, and they'll probably see it regardless.  And two, because the ending didn't feel like quite the right one for the movie: I think something a bit more direct would have worked better.

Spectre (2006)

A man in his 60s returns to the village where he grew up.  He's drawn there by the mysterious delivery of a tarot card, which reminds him of the woman with whom he had an affair while he was in his late teens.  That he bears some emotional scars from that time is pretty evident: just how deep they are, and how they came about, is the subject matter of this film.

Spectre is not what you'd call an "in your face" kind of horror film, and in fact it is probably at its worst when it goes most directly for traditional "scary movie" tropes.  A bath overflowing with blood is honestly not something that still generates much in the way of chills for me.  The more understated moments of the film tend to work much better, particularly as they relate to purely human horror, rather than to any supernatural aspect.

Overall, I found Spectre a relatively watchable film in a low-key way, though I do feel it lacks a sympathetic lead.  Our protagonist is a callow youth, somewhat misogynistic youth, and his older self is so bound up by the events of the past that we don't see much difference in him.  There are also some (possibly unintended) thematic elements that I found a bit off-putting.