Julia X (2011)

This film begins in a way I expected, a woman (Julia, I guess) gets chatted up in a café by a date she met online. He turns out to be a serial killer and abducts her. She tries to get away but is re-captured. She is then driven out to an old oil well where he disposes of the body of a dead naked woman that she shared the van with.
She gets away and starts to fight back. Eventually she turns the tables and captures him. It gets weird after that. She has a sister. There are flashbacks to her child abuse. I can't really go on without spoiling the story but I was intrigued as to where the film was eventually going. It confused the hell out of me, not necessarily in a good way either, I found the sister's behaviour extremely odd. At one point she also entices a neighbour into the house and restrains him blindfolded in a chair directly opposite the serial killer. She does this for no apparent reason. In a later part, she also puts a pair of wire cutters in the serial killers hands, allowing him to free himself.
This is a strange film. It's another film that has a bit of an identity crisis due to a confused script. Not exactly rubbish and not good either, somewhere middling for this attempt. I think there was some attempt at humour but with the child abuse elements, you could hardly laugh at this.

Don't Look Up (2009)

This was a bit of an odd film. It told the story of a film maker making a film that was unfinished from many years ago. It isn't a documentary film or anything like that. I thought it was a bit of mix of different films blurred together to tell a story that wasn't very interesting. The not looking up of the title relates to some stills of the original movie that show a woman holding a candle and looking up. The part where the main character visits an ex-girlfriend just feels slightly like its in the wrong film and it's not clear sometimes whether he is just having a seizure and is dreaming or not. The effects are mainly just CGI and are pretty bad but probably just a reflection of the type of effects possible in 2009. I don't think the scares were very creative in this film, so were mainly based around the special effects. I was dissatisfied with this film, I can't say I was disappointed though because I didn't have any expectations to begin with,

Crawl or Die (2014)

I watched this film this week, I started it about 3 times without being sure I was actually watching it from the start, the premise is explained a few minutes into the film. Not that there is much premise to it. It is set in the future sometime, a "package" must be delivered safely by a crack team of special forces operatives. It sort if gives a nod to Aliens or a multitude of other films like this. Probably Aliens is the closest though.
Amongst the special forces is a blonde with a partly shaved head, her name is Tank. Don't know why and it's never explained. The package is the last fertile woman alive, the team are to deliver the package to a lab on Earth 2. earth 2 turns out to be inhabited by a predator and it starts to kill off the team of special forces. The remainder of the team enter a series of narrow tunnels with the predator pursing them and killing them one by one as they protect the package.
The film uses very confined sets and abridged storytelling, the action is largely just grunts and noises as they squeeze through tunnels. I don't know why the tunnels are there, I think they are going through the tunnels to get somewhere but I wasn't sure where that was.
I wasn't surprised, horrified or terrorised by the film. Infact if anything, I was a little bored I've got to be honest. I watched it until the end and despite feeling uncomfortably claustrophobic during most of the last half, I can't say I was sorry it ended.
Probably not a film I would watch again, not awful but not much happens and the ending isn't anything special either. I can't even tell if the acting was any good, there was so little dialogue. I imagine the actors faces were not faking the effort it took to get through the tunnels.

Dark Summer (2015)

I watched this film on Friday night, start of the weekend. It's set in the US and is mainly about the house arrest of a teenager who seems to have been guilty of stalking a fellow pupil, a girl. It is a slow film generally, set mainly in the house. The boy somehow is able to circumvent the Internet prohibition and gains access to the net. He has a couple of friends who visit him, one of whom is clearly in love with him. I don't know why, I found the lead actor rather annoying. There is no explanation of why he was infatuated with the girl he stalked and rather unbelievably she skype calls him and proceeds to commit suicide while he watches. She then seems to haunt him in his house. Or is it his mother's house? Why was he alone and she not there? So much was left unexplained in this film. I just got the sense of this selfish boy who was self-absorbed and didn't really need the friends he had got. I just don't get why they were his friends and what they got out of the situation. I found this quite a frustrating film in the end and was glad when it finished. There were probably only two jump scares in the film. The ending wasn't that surprising either. No recommendation from me for this one.

Wolf Creek 2

I enjoyed this return to Wolf Creek and the crazy Australian who likes to chop up bodies and torture backpacking tourists. Now I'm familiar with the character I didn't find this as disturbing as the first film. I did feel sorry for the German couple at the beginning and I thought that they would be the central victims in the story but instead it was the Englishman and history graduate. That was a surprise, I enjoyed that part. If "enjoyed" is the right word! Sorry to everyone, if that's a spoiler!
This film belongs to the same genre as Hostel and Saw, about some evil whacko who kills because he enjoys it. Like a butcher, humans are just meat to be carved up. No sense of conscience about them. It's hard to imagine someone like that but they must exist because you read stories like it in the newspaper. The story of poor Becky Watts from Bristol in 2015, for example, in which her step brother and his girlfriend murdered her and chopped her up. An awful and harrowing story but one that was true. So these things do happen in real life.

Phone upgrades

Well, it's been two years since our last phone. It has gone relatively quick but I must say I am glad to move on from my old phone. I had a Moto E. It has been a good phone but suffered from a lack of internal memory (8GB was once a massive amount of storage space but today it doesn't cut it). I have no doubt that I will feel the same about the phone I just got and that has 16GB. Other than the space, I thought it performed quick even though it was 3G and was good for phone calls.
My new phone is a model up from the Moto E, infact in reality it is probably several steps up from the phone I have because the Moto E is now on the 3rd generation.

Other members of my family are on the same contract and they got different phones to meet their specific needs. My daughter got the iPhone she has been hankering for over a year. My wife got a phone with a good camera, the Sony Xperia E5. My son's eyes lit up when he saw the Alcatel Pixi 4 6" but he was blinded by it having such a big screen. The shop assistant was helpful in explaining that the phone had a big screen but the processor was underpowered. Eventually, he decided to go back to the phone he thought he'd be happy with, the same Sony as my wife.

Dr Strange (2016)

I watched this film at the cinema with my son. Just the 2D showing. It was enjoyable and typically well produced as you would expect from a Marvel film. Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a good performance in the title role. He is an arrogant surgeon who thinks he knows it all. Until he has a car crash and looses control and sensitivity in his fingers. He felt that only experimental surgery would save him but the only person who perform the procedure turns him down. So in desperation, Dr Strange turns to oriental medicine but he is very sceptical. He has to have his mind opened to new impossible possibilities. His has to forget all of his training and education and begin learning everything from scratch again. It is a challenge that doesn't daunt him and after a rocky start he begins his new education and starts to progress.
The film has some really impressive visuals effects. Buildings are turned on their sides and collapse into each other, in a similar way to they did in the film Inception. I think some sequences were very trippy. Overall, anyone who enjoys Marvel films will like this one. I think we shall see more of Dr Strange in other Marvel films, as an origin story, this film is a good one.

Orc Wars (2013)

I watched this film but I can't work out why I recorded it. It's not a horror film and I'm not usually interested in fantasy films. So, anyway the film has a different title in America as there it is called Dragonfyre: the Worldgate Sentinel. It's a bit of a blend of orc verses military commando. There are lots of things that go unexplained that the viewer is just supposed to accept, like the fact that the estate agent just joins in and kills orcs with a sniper rifle. Like the princess. Like the gang of hooligans in the car. Like how White Feather escapes to fight another day. Like they ask a blind man to drive an armored car. Like why the real estate company didn't notice all the weapons in the basement of a farmhouse they were selling. To be honest, the acting in the film is quite poor and the script is awful. They orc makeup looks like it was borrowed from the Lord of the Rings, copied I should say. Just awful, don't bother watching it.

The Possession (2012)

I watched The Possession this week, it was made in 2012 and is a story about a family who have broken up and the two girls spend time with their mum and their father separately. There is a strange part at the beginning which has a woman thrown around a house by some invisible force. In the room there is a wooden box.
One day the girls are with their father and are at a yard sale of belongings from the woman's house and one of them is the box, which seems to call out to the younger of the girls. She wants to buy it and her father allows it. However, there was a strange sequence in which the young girl holding the box walks a little bit away from the sale on her own and the old woman who is in a nursing home sees her through the window and even though she is in bed and all bandaged up she screams at the girl and bangs on the window.
So, this is a story about possession. The interesting aspect is that the possession in question is by a dybbuk which is a dislocated spirit that wants to take over the body of another person.
I think it's well made and is a good film. There are some parts that are genuinely creepy. It is worth a watch and comes recommended.

Terror (1978)

Ok so I'm always a little excited to watch British horror films from the 70s. When the titles came on I got even more excited when I saw that Glynis Barber was in this film, I remember she played a beautiful blonde detective in the series Dempsey and Makepeace and she played Soolin in my favourite sci fi tv show Blake's 7.
Sadly, the film Terror from 1978 doesn't live up to the film's title. It employs a lot of good actors but the script is so poor its laughable. There are a few minutes of a topless exotic dancer thrown in for no good reason and one character runs a film studio where the worst software porn movie ever made is being filmed. The porn film is apparently being produced by just a single camera operator who is also the director. The scenes jump from urban streets in one cut to windy, wet, wild woods in the next cut. It's just meaningless, I could go on but it is so bad. And worst of all, it is not scary. There are a few bloody scenes but even these are poorly handled. I can't think of anything in the film that would lead me to recommend it. Not even beautiful Glynis Barber's presence redeems it, sadly.

Exit Humanity

I watched the film Exit Humanity this week, it took me several sessions to finish it. I didn't feel compelled to watch it all in one or two sessions, I think it took me four sessions. The film does organise itself into several chapters, the chapters of the main characters journal as he goes through a zombie nightmare at around the time of the American Civil War.
I felt the story was too long and not enough was happening in it. I didn't really like any of the characters in the story. The zombies were slow moving (like the film) and the bad guy wasn't developed well enough to really care if he was defeated or not.
There was a lot of groaning and wailing and shouting but not a lot of action.

Reykjavik Wale Watching Massacre

I watched this film expectantly this week, Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is in it for a short while. He was born in Reykjavik apparently.
I thought the film started fairly decently but then it sort of went downhill as I could see it was becoming a more typical slasher style film. The special effects in the kills are quite good, one guy is harpooned in the water. The other members of the party become less and less likeable. I don't really understand why but the characters behaviours suddenly became unbelievable and the film decended into a sort of satire of itself. I felt it was a bit of a waste and that there was something worth exploring in some of the characters, rather than simply killing them off.
I would watch it again for a bit of fun but its not the film I thought it might have been.

Lovely Molly

I saw this film this weekend and have to say my low expectations were completely unfounded. I think it was because I had seen two so so films that didn't do anything for me. This film is a good one. It was made, apparently, by Eduardo Snachez who was one of the makers of the Blair Witch Project.
Lovely Molly follows a young couple who move into a big house that turns out to be the Molly's family home after the death of her father some time before, it's not quite clear how many years have passed since the father died. There is no mother mentioned, unusually.
So Molly and her partner move in and we learn that her partner are not a wealthy pair, he is away a lot driving trucks and she is a cleaner. She is very pretty for a cleaner and should have gone into modelling instead! Anyway, I was reminded a little bit of The Entity while watching the film. Something about Molly being attacked physically by a supernatural entity we learn is her father. She has a sister, who tries to help. What's interesting is that Molly seems to have had a drug problem in the past. The sister doesn't help this because on Molly's birthday she gives her some marijuana.
So, as Molly's behaviour gets weirder her partner and sister both suspect she is using drugs again. It gives the story an interesting angle. I really thought there were very good touches in this film, I'd argue touches of genius. I rate this film very highly, it is creepy. Exactly what I want from a horror film.

Laid To Rest

I watched this film this week. I found it a very frustrating film mainly due to the main female character. I just found her really annoying, she couldn't remember anything and insisted on taking the most stupid course of action at most turns. There is a killer character that is central to the plot (if you can call it that), who wears a chrome skull mask, which is completely unexplained. So many frustrating things about this. It is a slasher movie that seems to string together a series of set pieces at frequent enough intervals but really I found it quite bizarre. At one point a young nerdy man who tries to help them contacts the police department by emailing them. So, there are touches of humour in this film but ultimately it's not a good film and not really worth it in the end.

Haunted (aka It's In The Blood)

Last week I watched this film. It tells the story of a family ripped apart by tragedy. It's a story told in the present and in the memories or flashbacks of the father and the son who are the main characters. October is the son's name and he has returned to his father who remained at the family home as the sheriff. I wasn't sure which country it was supposed to be set in, I thought it might be Australia but it could be any back woods small provincial place.
The father and son go for a trip into the woods to shoot a rifle and have a bonding session. October learns to drive the car and shoot. He seems to have been studying medicine as well. However, the nature of the tragedy and lack of communication between them since it happened doesn't make it an easy time. The father thinks he sees something in the woods and fires his gun, knocking him backwards and down a ridge where he breaks his leg badly exposing his bones.
The thing in the wood hunts them, October sharpens branches and makes some kind of trap. While this fight against something supernatural in the woods is going on the father and son are having flashbacks to the tragedy that befell them. It seems that October and his sister were unnaturally close and that the deputy sheriff had his own desires for the sister, who rejected him.
I won't spoil it by saying any more. This felt like a slow film, I wasn't too sympathetic to either of the main characters. The awkward communication between father and son did soften with the worsening of their situation. There were still long moments of not talking. I thought it was interesting and well made despite this. Not sure I'd sit through the whole film again though, having said that.
Something was weird about the title, it seems to be known by It's In The Blood but was advertised as Haunting, so when I was searching for it online I had hard a time trying to pin it down. I had to look through all the films on the Horror Channel website to find it.

Farewell September, welcome October

September ends this week and we move into October, one of my favourite months. It is not as cold as winter but the change in temperature is nice as out come jumpers from the back of the wardrobe and the heating comes back on. Windows need to be closed at night and the leaves on the trees start to turn orange.
At the end of October there are the half term school holidays and the clocks go back on the 30th, bringing lighter mornings (for a short time) and dark afternoons. Then Halloween at the very end of the month, a time of year I enjoy with all the related dressing up and theme events.

We Are What We Are

I watched this film this week. It concerns a family (a dad, 2 daughters and young son) who start the film with the death of their mother. The family seem to be very religious and sort of backwards in an Amish style way. Living in modern society but not having many of the modern day trappings of technology. However they do own, and the father drives, a car. Apparently, according to Wikipedia it is a remake of a Mexican film. I wonder what the original was like? The story revolves around a family tradition of doing what it must to survive, born out of a flood many years ago. The flood story seems to have been written up in a bound diary/journal that is regarded with bible-like respect. We gather the mother was previously the cook and the father the hunter. The game in this case being the unfortunate humans who every year have to be slaughtered so that the family can keep the tradition alive. The question why is not, to my recollection, really addressed. We just have to believe it.
There is an elderly doctor in the film, whose own daughter mysteriously disappeared years ago. He has been doing a lot of research and has a dossier of other deaths in counties outside of the nearby area and sees a pattern. Unfortunately the local police think he is just grieving and not letting go and seeing patterns that aren't there. His suspicions are further aroused by finding a bone in a local creek that runs by the home of the family. He believes it is a human bone and as he studies it further suspects it has been scraped with an instrument of some kind.
The doctor does further research. The family behaviour is erratic when the son has a fever and they have to bury their mother. The doctor notices a hand tremor in the father and does further research into something called Kuru, which is a disease afflicting a tribe in Papua New Guinea who had it because they were cannibals.
It doesn't end well for the father but I won't give any more away. It is a fairly slow paced film but one that is well made and builds well to its climax, which is pretty good. It's certainly not a bad film. The acting is pretty good and so is the story. Worth watching again in the future at some point.

Inside

I watched the film Inside this week, it's an Irish horror film. It is one of those found footage films, told posthumously from the perspective of the camera person. A man goes in to a pawn shop and tries to sell something but the manager only wants to give him so much, so they negotiate some money and a camcorder. The film follows the man who watches the footage on the camera he has just acquired.
A group of girls are celebrating a birthday and inexplicably they decide the place to go is a disused office building down some side streets of a city. They break in and start having a party. Unfortunately the party is violently interrupted by some men, I think they might be homeless men. It's not clear why the men are in the building but they start to attack the girls in the party but are interrupted. From then on the film follows the survivors as they try to escape and evade whatever it was that attacked the attackers.
Not a bad film, it manages to the action going without ever feeling over long or too slow. The acting is pretty good from what seem to be a group of unknown actors. The story is quite unsettling and stays with you for a while.

Crawl

I watched a film called Crawl this week. It is set somewhere in Australia but it could be anywhere, the location isn't that relevant to the story. An unpleasant bar owner hires a Croatian killer to kill an old man who runs a garage and auto shop. It isn't very clearly established why killing him was necessary but the important thing is that the Croatian plays a big role in this film. He is played by an older actor and does a good job of portraying someone to whom killing is a business rather than a personal thing.
The film is slow paced and I would say was a thriller rather than a horror film. There is nothing supernatural in this story. The tension is kept wound up tightly, there is surprisingly little music in the film, what there is seems quite sparse. I don't know if this is a deliberate thing or not. Not sure it works entirely, having watched The Entity recently I know that sound/music can play a massive part.
At the end things get a bit bloody but its not a gore-fest.
Overall, this wasn't a bad film, I'd have to be in the right mood to want to watch it again though. There are some things that happen and you think the story will come back to but it doesn't. So, it is slightly frustrating that some of the characters aren't developed as much as you want.

 

The Entity

Last night I watched the film The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey. She plays the single mother of three children who just one evening finds herself attacked in her own bedroom by an unseen force. The film steers a course between the terror of her attacks and the ineffectual hypotheses of the psychiatrist to the hope of the paranormal psychology team. It's a very clever film I think, I like the relationship she has with her best friend and the relationship she has with the man in her life is also well played, particularly towards the end of the film. I have watched bits of it in the past but this time watched the whole film and was very impressed. It's not easy to watch in parts, her attacks aren't very pleasant and the sound design is excellent and really helps add to the chilling atmosphere.

The Shallows

Last night I went to see a film called The Shallows. It is set somewhere beautiful and tropical where the surfing is fine and the beaches are golden. A woman is dropped off on her own because her friend has a hangover and she goes surfing. She joins couple of guys already enjoying the surf. The guys leave and she stays out a little bit longer.
She strays into the water where a whale has got stuck on some coral and has been attacked. Then she is also attacked. She barely survives but fortunately she is training to be a doctor and manages to swim to safety and is able to treat her bitten leg.
It's an Australian survival horror film and I thought it was quite a successful one. Blake Lively gives a strong performance as the woman who fights to stay alive. This is the sort of film that wouldn't have been made a few years ago. It has a strong female main character who is intelligent and brave and strong. She is also beautiful and feminine.
The plot is fairly predictable but it is fun to see how she problem solves and fights to survive.

Nude nuns with big guns

I watched this film last weekend as well and I was expecting that I'd have to turn it off after a few mins. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the film. It is a ridiculous film, don't mistake me but have you never heard the expression "so bad its good"?
There are a number of incomprehensible things about the film, why are the nuns nude? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of packing drugs into suitcases for the priests who are in league with Hells Angel gangsters. The Hells Angels henchmen include a big black guy that rapes to order an old nun who has taken a vow of silence so that she gives up her vow to reveal what she saw. In another scene a family pull up at the same gas station that they're at and he rapes the wife while the husband is humiliated and the daughter is in the back going to get raped next. All couched in a questionable comic-ish way.
There are plenty of boobs in the film and some nun on nun lesbian action but not quite as many big guns as I was expecting. It is a revenge film I guess and has a Wild West theme to it. Pure fantasy and a strange one at that. It's not a film that leaves you wanting more however once you start watching it sort of drags you in and keeps you there waiting for the next ridiculous scene.
Apparently there were two companies claiming copyright for the film who were suing a large number of bit torrent users for illegally downloading it prior to its release.
Would I recommend this film? Er not really sure, it's probably just down to personal taste, it will be repugnant to probably half the population at least!

Deadtime

I watched this film last weekend but didn't have time then to blog about it, hence this blog post. Erm, the British horror film Deadtime is bad. No other way to say it. It is a film about a has-been rock band about to fold when given a last reprieve in the chance of an opportunity to lock themselves away in a disused old building/music studio and make a video. I was a little confused whether they were recording music or making a music video or both.
Terry Christian and Leslie Grantham make brief appearances at the start of film. Happily they aren't on screen for long. The script quality was very poor. The cast performances were nothing to shout home about either. The aging front man of the band attempts to look hip and cool and dangerous and fails to pull it off miserably. It is embarrassing to watch.
The slasher-film action is sub-standard too. There are something like 11 murders and you just couldn't care less about any of the victims and even their manner of death is quite tame. The effects are all pretty lame.
I would not recommend this film to anyone.

The Hike

I watched the film The Hike this week. It is from 2011 and I have to say it is tripe. It starts badly and gets worse as time goes on. The cast don't really connect with the story, so you get the feeling they don't mean anything they are saying. This is a big problem with the film because the story sort of depends on you being tricked into not knowing who the bad guys are. This twist falls really flat when it should really make the film. It's very unfortunate. I wanted to like the film but it just did not deliver on the crucial fronts. The actresses are all gorgeous but that doesn't rescue the film and it's hard to tell whether they can really act or not.

Truth or Dare

I saw the film Truth or Dare yesterday evening. It is a film concerning a group of college friends who know how to have a good time and are at a party. A socially awkward young man who isn't in the clique but who fancies one of the girls chooses her as the person he'd like to sleep with in a game of truth or dare. Unfortunately her boyfriend doesn't see the funny side and takes it badly and the party gets intense when he challenges and then punches the young stiff. The story skips forward a year the friends are travelling independently to a party after their first year of university. It transpires that it is the birthday of the chap who was punched. It is set on his family estate somewhere in the wilds of the country, the guests are directed on foot to an old lodge building a walk away. It turns out that the friends find the lodge but it is only occupied by the brother of the awkward young man. He turns out to be a strong, fit soldier who has done several tours of some war zone. The man whose birthday party it is doesn't show because his flight has been delayed, that's what the guests are told anyway. I won't spoil it but the story is a good one. The film is pretty enjoyable, I thought the acting was good and the script was interesting and had a good twist.

Star Trek Beyond

I went with my son to see this film at the cinema last week and enjoyed it. It's perhaps not an epic film like the previous one was (Into Darkness) but it is still an entertaining movie to watch. It recalls the mood of the original TV series quite well, carrying on the tradition from the first two films. This film is directed by Justin Lin, JJ Abrams was filming Star Wars so wasn't available. I don't think Justin Lin is as exciting a director as Abrams.

Physical activity

I wanted to write a blog post about my recent experience with exercise. I have been a home worker for a long time now and I religiously work long hours at my desk, sitting down. As I've gotten older I have started to notice how stiff I have been getting. I have put weight on around my middle too.
To help remedy this, I could consider a gym membership but I don't think I would keep it up and those memberships can be expensive plus you have to wait for machines to become free and then try to look as if you know what you're doing even when you don't. No, a gym is not for me, much too public and would make me feel inferior compared to the other men lifting large weights and looking all sweaty. I just cannot see myself driving to the gym in the cold, dark winter months.
I purchased a second hand Pilates book from a charity shop and got a few exercise out of it. I also purchased an exercise mat from Argos for £15.99 and I'm very happy with it. I unroll it by my side of the bed, so you don't need much room for one.

I bought a resistance band and a wobble board from Tiger, less than a tenner for both. You can do so much with a resistance band, they are awesome things and very cheap (£3 I think). At first I wasn't sure about it but after a few workouts I am impressed. The colour is pink, which is slightly off-putting but it does the job. The other thing I purchased from Tiger (a great shop) was a wobble board (plastic, £5). You stand on the board and tilt it just using your feet or you can try and balance it in the centre without the edges touching the floor.

Lastly, I have purchased 2 kettlebells (£4.99 and £15.99) and this is all I intend to spend for a while on exercise. The other option I have is to go to the local park, which is great because they have machines to practice on. You also get the benefit of being in the open air. It is very public but the people in the park are friendly and keep themselves to themselves.

I wonder how long the equipment in the park will last with vandals. I think it is brilliant to have this equipment out for the public to use though. My local park has six areas where there are different sorts of machines. Absolutely great!

2016 summer olympics

The opening ceremony of the Olympics summer games is this evening, actually tomorrow morning at midnight. I am looking forward to the games, I haven't anything in mind to watch really, maybe the judo but I expect I will catch a range of different events. They usually introduce a sport I'm less familiar with, which is a good thing I think.
What I'm most looking forward to though, is seeing how the games are influenced by the culture of Rio and the Brazilian people who I imagine are very relaxed and friendly. The setting and environment are fantastic and very picturesque.

The Reef

Saw this film last night. It's set in Australia and concerns a group of four friends coming back together, two are a couple and two were a couple who had split for a time. One of the guys runs his own business delivering boats to rich clients. The other three are meeting him to go on a boat trip together. There is a fifth person who  has been hired as a captain's mate. Now, the film sets up nicely but you just know that trouble is on the way.  And the film cleverly uses the environment, so that the audience sees what a hostile environment the sea can be and how vulnerable we are, even in idyllic weather. I enjoyed this film, it feels similar to Frozen - about the friends stuck in a ski resort.

Eden Lodge

I watched this film this week. It used a lot of cliched tactics but was well paced and well acted. It managed to steer its own path through a story that has elements of Psycho and Wolf Creek but not enough of its own original slant. I've got to give mention to the beautiful actress Aggy K Adams who plays the character Pomona. What starts out well doesn't really carry on. Shame because a lot of good elents are here but are just not used well enough. If you fancy a bit of entertainment withou having to think too hard.

Diary of the dead

Surprised that George A Romero put his name to this rubbish. It is supposed to be shot in the style of an amateur film maker. It comes across as a Blair Witch wannabe without the authenticity of Blair Witch. Not a very good film.

Siren

I watched this film this week, it was a film I was looking forward to after seeing a couple of trailers. However, after seeing it I was a little disappointed.  I don't know why I felt so disappointed, could have been the lack of gore maybe? The climax wasn't very satisfactory, the end credits appeared and I just felt so what. I didn't particularly like the actors, the casting felt wrong to me. The girl on the island wasn't very scary. It is not a film I could recommend but its not a badly made film, it just doesn't have a lot going on that make you empathise. I would rather see Frozen any day. A film I was reminded while watching. There was not a lot of use of the environment as something to be scared of: more could have been made of the scenery, instead of it just looking idyllic. I guess I felt apathetic to the plight of the characters. The boyfriend character was particularly unappealing.

Splinter

I watched this Australian horror film this week. It was an interesting film in some ways. The heroes were the humans with their own weaknesses, sort of anti-heroes if you like. The villain was a type of fungus that attacks human flesh but in such a way that appears to be alive. I found some parts of the movie comical in an unintended way, not awful but my sense of humour was tickled. The sttings are sparse, most of the action takes place in a gas station. Effective camerawork and a good script help things along. All in all, I thought this wasn't a bad film.

New Prime Minister

Things have moved fast haven't they? Since my last posting about the leadership of the tory party the race has certainly been cut short to the point at which it was no longer a race but a win by default without even having to run. I think the official campaign ended on its first day. Andrea Leadsom faced a barrage of bad publicity and while rough water I thought she should have stuck it out and made a proper contest of it. However, she decided it wasn't worth it. Perhaps her she personally wasn't ready for it but I don't know who is ever really ready for a job like that one. So now Cameron had to leave number 10 viciously early and Theresa May is installed in his place. All very rushed and unsatisfactory.
We have a new cabinet as well. The changes have been quite far reaching, I was surprised that George Osbourne is no longer the Chancellor. I was pleased to see a good number of female appointments and infact it is good that we have female leader. I see Boris Johnson has got a job in the cabinet but Michael Gove hasn't and I'm glad about that because I felt like many others that he stabbed Boris in the back. However, I am not sure that Boris will make the best Foreign Secretary.
One thing I have noticed about Theresa may is that she isn't afraid of wearing angular shaped dresses made of dark material, I hope this trend I've noticed continues. It might be the only thing of interest about this new government.

France's pain

I really feel for the French people. The terror attacks in Paris last year and now the lorry attack in Nice have shown how ordinary everyday activities can be forever marred by acts of brutality and savagery. I don't know how the families of the dead cope with horrible events like these but I wish them the will to carry on and not let the bastard terrorists win. Driving a lorry into crowds of people and especially children is such a cowardly kind of attack. I hope we never see the like of it ever again. How can we protect ourselves from this kind of attack without constraining ourselves or living in a police controlled state? Man's inhumanity to man continues to disappoint and depress me.

F

The other film I watched was called F. It is billed as a suspense chiller and it is very successful as a suspense film. It is set inside a school college and the main character is an unlikeable teacher there. He has been in trouble for his behaviour with students, he was headbutted at the beginning of the film by one, and is separated from his wife. Things are going downhill for the guy.
For reasons unexplained one evening the school is attacked by a group of guys in hoodies, a face is not shown for any of them. It is dark outside and they seemingly attack the remaining staff who are there at night at random. The main character's daughter is also at the school and he has to try and prevent her from being killed.
It is a strange little film, the ending is odd. The characters and setting are normal enough but it has a nightmarish, unreal quality to it, which I suppose is the intention of horror films. It's probably a little too strange to recommend widely but if you like suspense, it keeps a good sense of this throughout.

eXistenZ

I watched this film by David Cronenberg this week. I have seen the film before, I even remember it was at the cinema actually. The first time I saw the film it blew me away but it was something like 17 years ago now. That is a long time not to have seen a film a second time.
The story is a very interesting one to me. A famous games designer played by Jennifer Jason Leigh is making a special appearance to promote her new game. There is something slightly wrong and unsettling from the first moment though. The place they are unveiling the new game looks like a classroom in a school or some location that is very small considering it is a new game. The other unsettling thing is that the player is biologically linked to the game via a bio-port in their back. An umbilical cable then plugs into a console that is a moulded shape in flesh coloured latex. It is semi-erotic in that sense and the quiet, strange way that JJL portrays the character. The main male character is played by Jude Law who does a good job of playing a naïve young man who has to turn from being a marketing junior into a bodyguard. One neat idea in the film is a gun made out of bone that fires teeth. It was designed to prevent detection by metal scanners.
The film plays with blending reality with the world inside the game called eXistenZ and it does this very effectively in my opinion. To the point where the characters are not sure whether they are in the real world or not. I can recommend this film but I can also see that a lot of people might be confused and turned off by the subject matter of virtual reality games.

The Witches

I watched the 1966 film The Witches this week. What a surprisingly good film I thought it was. OK there felt like the Horror Channel were showing a cut version for some reason but still I did enjoy it more than I thought I would. It is a higher class of film than a few other more modern films I've seen recently. I think for the time, it would have been more shocking than it is today. There were some sequences that if it were made today would be much more graphic and terrifying, however I think the ideas are still frightening. I liked this film, it's certainly not everyone's cup of tea though. Joan Fontaine plays a wonderful part in this film, a Stirling performance in her last major theatrical role in film.

Thunderbirds

The new CGI version of Thunderbirds is being shown on Saturday morning kids television. I have watched a couple of episodes now. I have to say that unfortunately, I am not impressed. This is disappointing to me because I have been a fan of Thunderbirds for a long time. I just don't think the new series is very well scripted.
This is in stark contrast to the CGI version of Captain Scarlet, which I thought was excellent and a shame that only two series were made.

Conservative party leader vote

After David Cameron chucked the towel in after losing the EU referendum he thought he'd win comfortably, Britain was in danger of Boris Johnson or Michael Gove becoming the Prime Minister. This would have been bad beyond imagination.
Well, now the conservative party members can choose the next Prime Minister, some 150,000 members. I don't know the demographics of this membership. I don't know what to think about the candidates. I don't know enough about Andrea Leadsom (below, right) and although I have heard of Theresa May because she is the current Home Secretary, I have a gut feeling that Leadsom would make a better Prime Minister. There are some dirty tricks being played by the papers though, it is clear that The Times and Murdoch owned papers are trying to discredit Leadsom.
Time will tell.

Deadpool

I finally got around to watching this film tonight. I thought it was a good film, the humour was the best part of it. Lots of little jokes littered throughout it. I enjoyed the dialogue of Deadpool and the breaking of the 4th wall technique, used to good effect. It covers the origin of Deadpool, so I expect there will be a sequel. The special effects were very good.