Film Review: Overlord

"This Is Our Greatest Achievement. With It, We Create Super-Nazis; A Thousand Year Army And It's Thousand Year Soldiers..."

Mixing together a plethora of talented filmmakers, Overlord, the latest from Son of a Gun director, Julius Avery, sees the combined forces of producer J. J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and screenwriter, Billy Ray (Captain Phillips) for a live-action R-rated adaptation of an idea originally coined by both Abrams and Ray and then polished over by The Revenant screenwriter, Mark L. Smith. Whilst not strictly groundbreaking within a world fascinated with the notion of Nazi zombies as made famous by the hugely popular Call of Duty video game franchise as well as the 2009 Norwegian horror, Dead Snow, Ray's script sees a band of American brothers on the eve of D-Day drop into the heart of German occupied France in order to destroy a radio tower situated within the confines of a remote village under siege by murderous Nazi soldiers who all fall under the wing of Pilou Asbæk's (Game of Thrones) villainous and horrendously vile, Captain Wafner. Whilst it is easy to suggest Overlord is essentially Saving Private Ryan meets 28 Days Later, the genetic combination is surprisingly accurate, and with Avery attempting to prove that even the scariest of monsters fail to come close to the horrors of Nazi rule during the second world war, the Australian's latest is a ripe, over the top and extravagantly violent B-movie which although slips occasionally in trying to balance horror with history, is still a thoroughly entertaining slice of monster mayhem. 

With an opening act which attempts to embody the horrifying uncertainty of warfare, Overlord begins by dropping the audience head first into one of the loudest set pieces of the year, eerily evoking the sound of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk by bombarding the senses with gunshots, hysterical mayhem and the screams of young soldiers being senselessly massacred by the unseen threat of the Nazi war machine which hovers below them. As soon as the key characters become grounded however, the central heroic group led by Wyatt Russell's (Everybody Wants Some!!) eerily cold and focused team leader, find themselves in dangerous territory, and whilst they swiftly become housed by Mathilde Ollivier's feisty French prisoner in an effort to save them all from certain death, the first hour or so focuses much more on the war aspect of the tale then I would have expected, portraying a Nazi regime with no care for humanity whatsoever as our band of heroes slowly come across the secret experiments operating in the same church in which their mission target awaits. With the moral compass of the movie led by the good hearted and rookie presence of Jovan Adepo's (Fences) Boyce, his performance is one of the few shining lights of optimism in a movie riddled with gruelling nihilism, whether it be a jump scare reminiscent of the infamous shock set piece from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive or particular narrative decisions reminiscent of a similar mode of torture used in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Overlord is a truly nasty movie, albeit in the good sense, and whilst come the concluding act the screenplay falls into horror genre conventions and becomes increasingly predictable, Avery's latest is a mightily enjoyable monster mash with levels of gore rarely seen in movies which make it onto the big screen.

Overall Score: 7/10

Film Review: Ingrid Goes West

"Hashtag: I Am Ingrid..."

In a week in which every single cinema in the county has been asked to cram its' screens with the toxic waste of Justice League, thank the heavens for a film in the ilk of Ingrid Goes West, an interesting, blackly comic contemporary stalker drama with a cracking lead performance from Legion star, Aubrey Plaza as the titular social media obsessed Ingrid Thorburn. Directed and written by big time debutant Matt Spicer, the movie depicts an Instagram fixated dreamer who relocates to Los Angeles after the death of her mother in order to seek out Elizabeth Olsen's social media star, Taylor Sloane and become part of her excessively independent lifestyle which she shares with Wyatt Russell's hipster husband, Ezra. Beginning with an opening act which straight away highlights the aggressive nature of Ingrid's obsession and to what end she may go to in order to combat her rage and discomfort at being isolated in a world riddled with people's wishes to be noticed, Ingrid Goes West goes on to explore the contemporary issue of social media excess and the notion of a life based solely around the viewing of society through a small shiny screen.  

With Black Mirror vibes aplenty and the likes of Single White Female a sure inspiration, with a name drop in the narrative necessary to cement such, Spicer's sure footed direction allows the movie's key players to bring all round top notch performances, from O'Shea Jackson Jr's Batman obsessed screenwriter to Billy Magnussen's hateful steroid fueled junkie, all of whom acting as catnip for Plaza's character's downfall into complete and utter obsession with a character who is the epitome of everything wrong with society's quest for avocado on toast and early twentieth century sociological literature. Whilst Spicer's movie does involve elements of jet-black comedy and ironic societal comments, most of Ingrid Goes West's healthy ninety minute runtime is played particularly straight faced, accumulating in a concluding act which although is admiral in what it's attempting to say, doesn't exactly pay off, but with a brilliantly kooky and unpredictable leading performance from Audrey Plaza, Ingrid Goes West is a highly enjoyable ideas laden social drama which reminds that you don't always need a big budget to win an audience around. 

Overall Score: 7/10

Film Review: Table 19

"What If You Came Here For A Different Reason Today...?"

Famous for appearing in a supporting role within the epitome of marmite movie-making in the form of the Twilight franchise, the fundamentally annoying figure of Anna Kendrick is the type of leading star which I just can't comprehend how she has managed to successfully integrate herself into the mirage of contemporary cinema, particularly in the genre of comedy-based dramas in which her latest release in the form of Table 19 seems to adhere to, due to the basic fact that she simply doesn't have a comedic bone in her body. Harsh much? Sue me. What we have with Table 19 therefore, the latest release from director Jeffrey Blitz, a character perhaps most famous for his directorial duties on the American adaptation of The Office, is a movie in which the void of motionless performances and the quiet desolation of cringe-inducing silence is so vast and multi-faced that for Table 19 to class itself as a romantic comedy is a complete and utter insult to not only its' audience but towards its' cast too, who unwittingly attempt to turn a dour narrative into something worthwhile. As you might be able to tell, unfortunately they do not.

After accepting an invitation to the wedding of her former best friend's brother of whom a relationship is seemingly a thing of the past, Anna Kendrick's unbearable leading character tries her hardest to offer evidence as the best on-screen sober drunk girl at a wedding I can remember seeing in recent years, annoying each and every audience member from start to finish with her whining cries of self-loathing and self-indulgence which involves a strange sub-plot regarding a pitiless and immature response to childhood amongst an overall narrative which literally has nothing memorable or imaginative from the outset. With characters who act as simply cannon fodder for Kendrick to spit at in anger regarding her truly first-world problems, Table 19 can only be regarded as a sold enough example as one of the most boring romantic comedies I can remember, with my respective cinema stoked in silence for a painfully slow 90 minutes in which on-screen jokes were greeted unanimously with sighs and glances towards the nearest clock face to see how long it was until the torture was nearing its' end. Table 19 is a ugly, self-obsessed and wholly repulsive movie which has nothing redeemable about it whatsoever. Avoid. 

Overall Score: 2/10