Wallace & Gromit’s Jubilee Bunt-a-thon, 2012 – ★★★

Its 1 minute and 15 seconds long, and has approximately 6 gags in it. The plot is its the day before the queens Jubilee and Wallace and Gromit have agreed to make all the bunting for Tottingham hall. Which they do.

Thats it. Its inoffensive, pairing the lads up with the National Trust was always going to be a relatively good idea. Short, sweet, to the point…Could have had more cheese and trouser robots for me though…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wallace-gromits-jubilee-bunt-a-thon/

by tytdreviews

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2005 – ★★★½

2005 Would see Wallace & Gromit head to the big screen for their first feature length outing in ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ and it really does kind of feel like the culmination of nearly 15 years worth of trial and error in animation coming to near beautiful fruition.

The plot finds our lovable pair taking a turn at pest removal, specifically a sharp incrase in the appearence of bunny rabbits. These fluffy monstrocities are wreaking havoc on the local populations allotments and greenhouses ahead of the towns annual fruit and vegetable competition! ‘Anti-Pesto’ is the name and humanely removing bunny rabbits from gardens via a giant vaccume is their game!

While tending to a HUGE job on the estate of the RIGHT honourable Lady Tottingtons, Wallace strikes on an idea, what if he uses one of his OTHER new inventions (a machine that allows you to brainwash yourself or others) to brainwash the rabbits he’s captured into NOT liking vegetables,meaning they could all be re-released and the gardners and growers need not fear teeth marks in their giant carrots!

Well, of course the plan kind of backfires, when Wallace and a test rabbit called ‘Hutch’ end up having a bit of a ‘Runaway Brain’ moment, slowly turning Hutch into a Hutch Wallace hybrid, and turning Wallace into the most deadly Were-Rabbit!

Gromit cottons on fairly early to the situation, but with the town beying for the creatures blood and Wallace not being really aware of his near beastly side, will the pair find a way to restore law and order, or will Wallace find himself being stalked by Lady Tottingtons deviois suitor Victor Quartermaine?

And…I kind of felt myself in a bit of a love hate relationship with this one. Ultimately, it left me a little frustrated.

On the one hand, the script *feels* like a Wallace & Gromit script, which may sound obvious, but it IS a good thing that it does, ‘A Matter of Loaf & Death’ showed us what can happen when you make a Wallace & Gromit film without really fully throwing yourself behind the concept. This wholeheartedly WANTS to pull the audience into the scenario, and I think it largely succeeds with that. However, that doesnt mean its not without its flaws…

For a starters, as the longest running entry in the ‘Wallace & Gromit’ franchise, clocking in at 84 minutes and change, it really doesnt feel a comfortable fit. This felt like it should have been a 60-70 minute feature at most, and unlike ‘Vengence Most Fowl’ which is also feature runtime, this feels every bit as long as those 84 minutes are. It has some moments that are genuinely slow and not in a slowburn, pleasent way…in a ‘We have to stop the film to explain a bunch of stuff, so sit tight for 10 minutes…’ kind of way. Which really does hinder the pacing and causes the act structuring to feel a little wonky on the first and second acts…It manages to stick the landing with a genuinely well paced out 3rd act…but the build to that, I found to be a bit of a struggle.

Equally; this is really the start of the more ‘on the nose’ references to other films. ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’ would do this to frankly painful degrees. But here, we have references and parodies to ‘An American Werewolf in London’ , the Universal adaptation of ‘The Wolf Man’, ‘The Fly’, several Hammer films get a nod here…and…while they are a *bit* better handled here than in ‘Loaf’ I still really dont want to watch Wallace and Gromit to see it parody other movies, sometimes to an almost 1:1 degree. I watch these films for the charming ‘Northern England’ comedy that I appreciate because im a Northern Englander. I dont want them doing stuff that wouldnt feel out of place in a ‘Minions’ movie…

To that end, I need to talk about ‘Hutch’ as a character, While a vital mechanism to the plot. and the character did make me properly laugh once. AS a character he feels terribly out of place here and emblematic of a wider problem this film has. Which is that it essentially cherry picks several moments from the shorts and redoes them, but not as good as they were handled in the shorts. Hutch essentially being a redux of Shaun the sheep from ‘A Close Shave’, theres a plane sequence that harks back to the various plane sequences from ‘A Close Shave’…the breakfast machine from ‘The Wrong Trousers’ is referenced MULTIPLE times and at one point, is actually ANOTHER key plot device for the film. Its bad enough that this film has bad parodies of good movies in it, but when its stooping so low that its essentially REDOING it’s OWN ‘best bits’ but not as good…Well, I took umbridge with that…

This is also the first time that the wider town that the pair live in is explored. Wendy was obviously introduced in their last outing, but up until this film, she was the only other human character we’d seen…Here, we have a whole village! and apart from Victor and the Vicar, they’re all TOTALLY unremarkable and really quite rather dull…In fact, Victor and the Vicar only really work as characters because Victor is playing an amalgum of Christopher Lee Hammer/Amacus roles and the Vicar is essentially a parody of Dr. Pretorious from ‘Bride of Frankenstein’…Its nice to see archtypes like that on screen again…But Im still not sold on if they work here.

Beyond the script…I really dont have a lot more to say honestly, the direction and cine here is pretty good! Not *quite* the same calibre as the shorts or ‘Vengence’ but, its a studio production, with studio money and given the time and effort that goes into making these things, I have to say even when it doesnt feel particualrly ‘inspiring’ its still BLOODY impressive.

The performances are all pretty solid, Peter Sallis probably gives his final ‘good’ turn as Wallace here, and Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes both delight as Victor and Totty respectively. they bright, give great vocal ranger performances and the animation marries up to their delivery perfectly. Thats not to do a disservice to the rest of the cast who are all fine enough, but I do feel like the above are really the ‘best’ of this.

And finally, the soundtrack! which…well! it’s ‘Wallace and Gromit!’ big brass band orchestral pieces from tail to snout, its well timed, sounds inkeeping with everything that came before it…it’s probably not a *great* sign that, if you had told me this score was just made up of tracks from the shorts with no original music, i’d have believed you (given this was an entirely original scoring…) but hey it fits the bill and does the job…I cant complain.

All in all? I think out of all the films, this ones kind of the middle of the pack. If you’ve never seen a Wallace and Gromit movie, it’s probably a rock solid introduction, as if you start with the shorts, your likely to feel a bit spoilt by the time you hit this one. This? isnt their best outing in my opinion, but has more than enough good stuff going on in it that It feels at home with the better entries in the series. I really quite enjoyed it, I just wish it was shorter. and I kind of wish i’d checked this one out sooner, given its been 20 years since it came out…ah well, we live and learn. Worth checking out i’d say! go grab some cheese and crackers and enjoy the bunny carnage!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wallace-gromit-the-curse-of-the-were-rabbit/

by tytdreviews

The Children, 1980 – ★★★½

What happens when you mash together ‘The Village of the Damned’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ and ‘The Toxic Avenger’?! well! You get ‘The Children’ a regional cult horror classic that mixes campy surrealism with a genuinely unsettling premise.

The plot? Well, due to deregulation, two slackers at the small backwater town of Ravensback’s local nuclear facility completely forgot to secure one of the radioactive pipelines, which in turn causes a rupture, leading to thousands of liters of radioactive mist to seep deep into the surrounding woodlands. By the time the leaks at ‘Critical mass’ its chucking out time at the local elementary school, and while taking the kids of Ravensback home to their parents, the school bus drives head on into a cloud of the mysterious deadly fog. Transforming the children into mindless pale zombie like beings with jet black fingernails who’s touch causes any living recipient to burst into a radioactive smoke and fry alive.

A short time after the incident, the ever clement ‘Sheriff Billy’ passes by the now abandoned bus. He decides to investigate, but only finds the school kids possessions and the hat of the bus driver. Concerned; He decides to visit some of the parents in the area to see if the kids have made it home, only to find that a majority of them are in fact missing…Leading to the beginnings of a suspected manhunt to find the kidnappers who’ve taken the children.

Little do the townspeople know, the children have only one thing on their minds, and it involves rendering the majority of the town a burnt up radioactive slag heap. Thus kicking off 2 remaining acts of cat and mouse drama where the Sheriff and townsfolk try to piece together why their fellow citizens are suddenly and abruptly winding up dead in random places looking like they’ve fallen into a nuclear reactor, and how this could possibly tie to the dissapearence of the children!

On the bluray release for this, theres an introduction from Lloyd Kaufman who (tongue in cheek) suggests that the same radioactive chemicals that create ‘The Children’ are the exact same ones that made Toxie from ‘The Toxic Avenger’…and the more I think about that, the more I actually kind of do want that to be the case. The idea that the barrels of toxic waste Melvin falls into in ‘Toxie 1’ are from the cleanup operation from ‘The Children’ not only feels kind of satisfying, but given they both use identical effects for the radiation burning. It feels like this film slots in quite nicely, and that Toxie is some kind of spiritual sideways sequel/spin off to this. I mean, these kids just got a lungful, Melvin got swirlied in it…

Given this was a first time watch, I cant say hand on heart that I absolutely LOVED ‘The Children’…Its quite slow burn and the kills in it are spaced out a little far from each other. But what this film does have going for it is a very unusual and unsettling vibe that really helps carry the thing for the majority of its runtime.

The scripts plot itself is fun, killer kids movies can kind of go either way, but ‘The Children’ seems to know what side of the fence it wants to sit on in terms of tone, and that really helps keep things quite light and able to shift between some more humerous comedic moments and very dark sequences.

I really enjoyed just taking in the ambience of this film honestly, strange choices like having characters like the identical, balding, horny twins ‘Frank & Hank’ were just, oddities you didnt really see that often in films like this at this time…Not unless it was a fully fledged comedy horror.

The characters themselves get a pretty nice range to work with, they almost go for a ‘dream-like’ quality to the characters, everything feels a bit…off for lack of a better word. the characters behave in the same way characters would in a dream, saying things in strange tones, doing things that dont feel like they make sense , but they KNOW it doesnt make sense adn they’re going to take you along for the ride anyway.

In fact, other than the aforementioned pacing issues (long drawn out sequences of folks just chatting about random stuff that doesnt really help progress the film), and the fact the film seems to spend a bit too long in the second act trying (and fumbling) to set up all the chess pieces for the finale. I actually really quite enjoyed this. Its a film that knows what it is, knows what to aim for and, for the most part achieves it.

The directions pretty nice, the directors seeming ‘go to’ for suspense is quick cuts married up to slowed down footage. ‘Friday the 13th’ did this quite a bit and came out about a month before this film did, I get the feeling there was inspiration from that on this to a degree. But honestly? Who can say. ‘Gentle’ is probably the way i’d describe the direction on this one. It only really goes manic during the actual kill sequences, and outside of that, it kind of feels like Sheriff Billy is giving us a tour of Ravensback. Which means lots of very nice and idillic sequences of the surrounding woodlands and the mountain ranges…Does this creative style suit a horror? I dont 100% think it does. But! that IS what gives this film a bit of distinction, because its the contrasting ‘tour guide’ vibes to the direction married up to shots of childred irradiating their parents to death that makes it feel so dream like and strange.

To that end, the cine is solid. as mentioned it all feels a bit ‘Tour guidey’ but the location work is largely rich, deep and well composed. Its nice to see a film barely out of the 70s not afraid to embrace colour and the coding therein. But rather upsettingly, it looks like only the first 2 reels have survived in a condition that allows the remastering process to get the best out of them. With the later reels becoming increasingly more damaged and ‘red’ to the point that all that lovely colour and depth is lost, and we end up in a reddy brown murk up to the end credits.

As for the edit? its rock solid pretty much, a couple of pacing issues on cuts is about as bad as it gets, the film (for the most part) breaths easy on sequence structuring, and it seems like a good amount of B-roll was captured for this one. Which I think was essential, especially for the kill scenes to help really bring them to life.

As for the performances? Gil Rogers and Martin Shakar as Sheriff Billy and one of the childrens father John Freemont play a fantastic double pairing. Billy is a warm and professional character type, we spend most of the movie with him and because he’s given a good range to work with. we as the audience warm and want to invest in him. and Gil plays that with JUST the right kind of charisma to really help sell you on the portrayal. He’s delightful. Martin by contrast is approaching things from a much more fraxious position (as his kids missing) but equally gets a decent range to work with, and essentially pairs up with Billy well, getting to effectively play deputy the Sheriff, allowing him to do things that the Sheriff cant legally do, but will look the other way in this case. He’s fab.

I dont generally comment on child actor performances, so I’ll keep my opinion on the children in ‘The Children’ brief. But I liked what they did, and I think they did it well for the most part. As for the supporting cast? Excellent. just, excellent. This feels like a pretty nicely fleshed out town. I could believe all these characters actually existed. they’re all given just enough complexity to make them interesting, but they leave enough unsaid that makes you really want to know more. Its the perfect position to leave your audience in, because I really DO want to know more about ‘Frank & Hank’ or the diner waitress, or the general store lady. they all have a charm to them that really makes me wish we’d spent a bit more time with them. which is just the right place to leave it.

And as for the soundtrack? It sounds like a rip off of the ‘Friday the 13th’ score…again, the two films came out with about a month gap on each other. But ‘Friday’ would have likely started advertising WELL before this thing got a release, so I could FULLY believe they scored this with ‘Friday’ in mind to try and get ahead of what they believed would inevitably be a ‘good thing’.

And, for the most part it works! it feels a bit cheaper than the ‘Friday’ score, but its largely orchestral and synth pieces that drop in exactly when they’re needed, are perfectly punctuated across the runtime…and while I dont personally gel with this score, I cant deny that it does absolutely work for this film, and that its been handled well.

I really quite enjoyed ‘The Children’ I feel with a couple more watches it could easily gain another half star on the overall rating. I think it would pair up quite well with something like ‘Village of the damned’ or maybe even something a bit harsher like ‘The Beast Within’

Definitely worth checking out if you like creepy children in your horror, and an absolute must see if you like cult horror with a slight surreal edge.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-children-1980/

by tytdreviews

America’s Deadliest Home Video, 1993 – ★★★½

A movie so ahead of its time that the ‘Found Footage’ genre at this point basically consisted of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ and ‘The McPherson Tape’. ‘America’s Deadliest Home Video’ would predate even the GENRE titling of ‘Found footage’ by *at LEAST* 5 years. And the fact that it comes out as such a fully formed idea right off the bat is honestly quite impressive.

The film came about when the director was working in an edit studio and stumbled on a VHS tape consisting of 2 hours of unedited vacation footage of a young couple heading to Vegas to see a concert. He got so wrapped up in the story of this raw footage, that he started to wonder if there was something to the concept of making a movie that felt just like the tape he’d found…and thus, this film came to be.

The film is presented in its entirity as a ‘found footage’ piece and follows ‘Doug’ a young ‘CRAZY’ guy who’s just picked up his first video camera, and is just messing around with it. Unfortunately while messing around, he accidentally finds out his wife is cheating on him, so in a spur of the moment act of impulse, he steals their van and decides to go on a cross country journey of self discovery.

And its all very twee and by the numbers for a while until, while stopping off at a quarry to recount memories of his father. Doug accidentally sees something that he shouldnt. and winds up hostage to three armed and VERY dangerous criminals who are in the midst of a spree.

When the gang realise that Doug isnt an immediate threat, AND that he has one of those new fangled video cameras with him, the group decide to take him along on their crime spree as a bit of fun. And slowly they begin to warm to him a bit, and Doug begins to open up to them…Its a bit of an unconventional realationship as the gang still continue to murder him regularly, but they also rely on Doug to help film their sprees for prosperity and eventually even try to involve him in some of their fun.

But actions have consiquences, and soon tension begins to mount within the group, things get taken too far and we hurtle into a 3rd act where emotions get the better of our group, and things turn bloody.

I tried to go into this one as blind as possible, and came away somewhat pleasently surprised as a result. The whole film is essentially presented as if someone was just stop/starting a camera while doing a travelogue, and barring one moment right at the very end of the film where they kind of spoil the illusion by having the camera cut into footage being shot by a professional camera team. I think they recreate that feeling of ‘vacation’ footage really well, with only minor flaws really.

The scripting is rock solid, really nice fluid plotting, the act structuring is messy, but here it works in the films favour, presenting the carnage with unknown gaps of time in between meaning we never really know how long this is going on for.

In fact, for the most part i’d argue that if I HAD just found this on a blank tape in the wild and I had NO idea what this was, at least initially I’D have thought it was real…which is pretty impressive honestly.

There are however some tells, the dialogue is probably the biggest issue, some of the lines are a little *too* polished in places to feel like they were spur of the moment. there are conversations that read like a Tarantino script, which…if this was aiming to be theatrical, would have been fine. But here mark clear tells that this is staged. The total like of flubs or fumbles too dont help the films case as noone speaks clearly and perfectly 100% of the time…

The characterisations are solid, but a little *too* convenient. everyone stays in their character lanes a little *too* closely, we have a group of people in a very stressful situation, but they all maintain the archtypes we’re introduced to in the beginning and they dont really move out of those typings for the full runtime, which is a bit of a shame as, its well known that stress can cause people to be unpredictable and act off character, which would have almost certainly enhanced this film. I mean, whats here still works fine. And there are enough twists and turns throughout to genuinely keep folks interested. But I just wish there’d been a bit more range.

To that end, another thing that works in this films favour, but may not ultimately lead to the best viewer experience is that the pacing is a bit scattershot and by the end of the 2nd act it all starts to feel a little bit repetative. for the most part the film moves at a real clip and keeps a good pace, but there are moments where they slow down, I assume to give the audience some time to sit with the characters when they arnt being goofy or psychopaths actively. And I feel like those moments could have done with another pass through to really get them optimised…They’re nice moments, but they dragged quite a bit at times and it left me slowly gliding over to my phone while they just…did their thing.

Beyond that? the directions immaculate. In fact, i’d go as far as to say this is probably one of the most convincing and best looking ‘Found footage’ movies of the genre. shots are clearly carefully planned and structured to look as close to a novice messing around with a camera as possible. That may be taken as derogatory given this was a professional film maker behind the lens. But I cannot stress enough how hard it is to make something look INTENTIONALLY like a novice is working a camera when your a trained professional. It takes real skill, because, if you actually GOT a novice to try and make this, they’d overcomplicate it. Its one of those moments where you need to be an expert of the craft to be able to understand the mechanisms that ‘keep it simple’.

With that being said however, the cine is a bit of a mixed bag. I love the intentional fumbles, the wobbliness of the camera, the fact that non of the shots are straight and that the majority of the film is either handheld or balanced awkwardly on whatever is at hand, because…in real life, it would be pretty much. But there are handful of shots here that, much like the dialogue, are just a little too polished and well structured, and again, those moments really did pull me out of the film, because I noticed when the rule of thirds on composition was being set up (mainly because the film DOESNT do that very often) because inevitably it meant that something big was about to go down, and they needed to frame it appropriately, because NOT doing it may mean the shot was missed, leading to audience confusion…Like, I know WHY they did it. But it could have maybe been a bit more conspicuous.

Performance wise? for SOV? this is actually pretty solid! I was really impressed by all our players and thought they did a really good job! they have a great physical energy and (for the most part) delivered their lines in a believable way. The issue here came from the dialogue itself, which, as mentioned was at times a little too polished…meaning the deliveries felt a bit unnatural or theatrical for this kind of a production. Cant fault the cast really for that mind. But it did stop things from really getting up to the next level.

No soundtrack either for this (for obvious reasons) but the soundscape presented again is super naturalistic, feels solid and the dialogue is clean, clear and nicely captured. I didnt miss a word!

‘Americas Deadliest Home Video’ is frankly a must see of ANY fans of the SOV subgenre. and is especially important to see for any ‘found footage’ fans. While it IS imperfect, I think this is probably the strongest entry in the genre (at least up to the mid 2000’s) that i’ve seen. An immersive experience and genuinely entertaining. You can find this via ‘Terror Vision’ who’ve put it out on a jam packed bluray filled with goodies. And I highly suggest you nab a copy while you can.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/americas-deadliest-home-video/

by tytdreviews

Road of Death, 1973 – ★

Barely a movie. This thing is BARELY a movie, and almost certainly not worth the cost of the celluloid it was printed on. ‘Road of Death’ was one of the first films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and quite honestly, its a training exercise more than it is an ACTUAL movie.

The plot? HA!. well, the plot is split into 2 halves with the final 10 minutes or so uniting the film together. Bearing in mind this film is 73 minutes long.

So the first half an hour or so introduces us to a biker gang, the leaders got a new girlfriend and in order to formally induct her into the gang, they have to do the initiation ceremony…Which here means the entire gang have to run train on her, but once thats done, non of the gang will ever try anything with her again AND she’ll have the full protection of the gang from then until the end…that plotline, in and of itself, is half the movie…

Now you may be asking yourself, well surely theres some drama? some complex plotting that makes that situation have tension, and intreague and suspense?!…To which I say to you, This is ‘Road of Death’ a first time film attempt by the guy who’d go on to give us ‘Guy from Harlem’ and ‘Supersoul Brother’…So no. what i’ve written above IS all that happens for that duration, the guys ride their bikes around, and sit in the grass flipping quarters…thats it.

The second half of the film is a *little* bit more interesting and follows a group of hippies? (I assume they’re hippies) the guys are all in a swinging band and the girls are all about free love and being one with nature. They spend most of their portion of the film talking about love, the future and what plans they’re going to get up to over the next few days. A good chunk of this is set in a nightclub while the guys reherse their act (and believe me, you’ll SEE them reherse…A LOT.)

Theres a ‘love in’ scene in what looks like some kind of motel room, and then they head out to the woods to go skinny dipping…and that leads us to the last 10-15 minutes of the movie, in which the biker gang spot the hippies and decide to ‘rough them up’ and ‘raise hell’. The hippies all end up injured and traumatised by the event leading one of the guys to go get a gun and do some martial arts on the biker gang, leading to a 5 minute finale which is literally the only part of this film worth watching, ending both predictably and with a thudding dullness.

This felt like someone testing their camera equipment out, who just so happened as a byproduct to discover if he cut all this together, it could be something approximating a movie.

The script is almost non existent, theres barely any dialogue, and what dialogue there is is basica and feels heavily adlibbed. It really wouldnt surprise me if it turned out that Rene on set just gave them a scenario and told them to wing it.

The pacings glacial, with only the final 5 minutes picking up pace to a ‘pedestrian’ level. Non of the characters are particularly interesting or complex, the film completely forgets half the characters even exist in the second half of the film, its going for a largely serious tone, but because its SO bland and uninteresting it somehow manages the feat of having a clear tone, thats so feint its barely decipherable.

The direction is poor, theres a handful of interesting creative decisions but 90% of the film is just locked off mid wide and wide shots that dont really offer anything new. Direction of the cast is painfully safe barring the bike riding sequences, cast members are bolted firmly to the ground or a chair while talking and very little movement happens on camera, with most scenes opening with the cast already in place.

The cine isnt much better, generic compositions with minimal B-roll, badly edited together, colour usage is largely accidental without any kind of coherent themes. the edit itself is rough, with cuts happening seemingly at random and the film really REALLY struggles to stay in focus. Not helped by an incredibly rough around the edges film print sourced for its recent HD remaster.

The performances are borderline ghostly, I dont mean that they’re eerie. I mean that they’re so feint and generic that Most of the time it felt like the cast were reading their lines for the first time the second ‘Action!’ was called. NOONE here looks or sounds good its cinematic sludge.

And the soundtrack was SO good, I dont even remember if there was one…given everythign above, im assuming there wasnt.

A painful movie to sit through, its a 73 minute flick that feels like 100. with an aimless and boring, dragged out plot. Poor direction, even poorer cine, performances that are dire in a way that cant even be enjoyed FOR their awfulness and a totally unmemorable soundscape. This would have been a half star had it not been for the final 5 minutes or so, and 2-3 moments that struck me as ludicrous across the runtime. That was *just* enough to stop me fully hating this movie. But by GOD it’ll be a cold day in hell before I click play on this thing again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/road-of-death/

by tytdreviews