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Inheritance (2020)
Badly cast, derivative, and pointless
You can always tell a movie is going to be stupid when Netflix tags it as "slow burn"; it's a sign that you'll want to turn it off but you should keep watching. Well, my advice is don't bother. This is a Frankenstein's monster of other, better, psychological thrillers but with any vestiges of sharpness blunted, and tension diluted.
On top of the perforated, unimaginative plot and plodding pace, the producers hired a casting director who was clearly on drugs; Lily Collins is a adolescent gravitas-vacuum whom we are supposed to believe is DA material; Simon Pegg as the cartoonish, Boris-Johnson-coiffured, psychopath, only works at all because it's such a profoundly weird notion. The rest of the cast seem to be made of random chunks of timber.
Don't bother.
Nick of Time (1995)
Astoundingly dumb in every possible way
Don't waste your time, really. And ignore the reviews that talk about the clever plot points in the second half - these people must be mentally incapacitated to have enjoyed this shambles. I foolishly gave it a chance after the first fifteen minutes, wondering if some semblance of thrill may emerge as the film progresses. It does not. It ended up being 90 minutes of me shouting "just shoot him!" at the screen.
Tip: if you blackmail someone, don't give them a loaded gun. This ludicrous plot could have been wrapped up in the first ten minutes if Johnny Depp's character had just shot Christopher Walken's character at the beginning, rather than spend an hour and a half faffing about in some of the most comically desperate set-pieces I've ever seen. Spoiler alert, in the end, he shoots him. And then that's the end of the film.
Behind Her Eyes (2021)
Potentially psychosis-inducing; I loved it.
You'll get the most out of this if you don't research it first. Taking a chance, I dipped my toe in and ended up binge watching the whole thing. There were periods where it moved slowly and, frankly, I get bored easily with the whole notion of beautiful people in awkward love predicaments, but there's enough off-kilter strangitude that it kept me watching. And after watching the final episode, I can tell you the investment paid off; my brain is buzzing.
Funny Man (1994)
Sick, weird, funny, and overall a treat.
This is a review from someone who has never really seen the point of horror films. Once you understand how movies work, the gore and violence just seems a bit silly...
But then there are horror films that do things to your brain, like triggering childhood fears, and creating new ones that you hadn't considered. This movie is as disturbing as it is ludicrous, and while it may not be as funny as Sean of The Dead, it preceded it by over a decade, and has moments that will genuinely scare people who grew up in the UK (no spoiler - but the club sequence is uneasy).
The fact that Scooby-Doo's Velma is included (albeit with a non-copyright-violating-pseudonym) along with Christopher Lee should let you know it's a treat.
P. S.
I love Viz.
Cosmos (2019)
Is this a spoof?
The BBC comedy series "The Mitchell and Webb [Look/Sound]" satirises screenwriters who feel confident about writing on topics they know nothing about. Their spoof screenplays are less ridiculous than this tragic attempt at science-fiction.
Low budget Sci-Fi needn't be this awful, which is evident to anyone who has watched "Primer". But this shambles starts off with a potentially good premise, and then destroys it with amateurish, heavy-handed attempts at humanity. It then puts the boot in with some awful attempts at being scientific. The corpse of a good idea is then perpetually desecrated with an embarrassing attempt at jeopardy, that embarrasses all parties involved.
RIP good idea.
Coming 2 America (2021)
Shameless fan-servicing: I loved it.
There is no doubt about what this movie is for: people who loved the first one, and wanted more of it. It's as if everyone involved got together and said, "that was so much fun, let's do it all over again!", and I mean everyone! It is stuffed so tightly full of references to details in the first film that you could spend the entire duration spotting them and still come out of it feeling like you had a good time.
A previous reviewer asked "Am I the only one that feels that these money grabs take a little bit of magic away from the originals?" and while I can see how someone could feel that, it wasn't my experience; it seemed to be more a celebration of the first than anything else.
This is not a sequel in the same way that Godfather 2 was a sequel, it's just a joyful answer to the question "I wonder how they're all getting on in Zamunda?"
Would it stand up on its own? I think it probably would; there's enough plot and silliness to keep you entertained even if you didn't see the first one - you'll just be missing out.
In a nutshell, don't think Empire Strikes Back, think Goldmember.
Operation Cupid (1960)
A masterpiece of dreadful cinema
Ever since I happened upon this utterly awful film one rainy afternoon on BBC2 I've wanted to re-watch it to see if it was as bad as I'd remembered. Unfortunately I didn't know anything about it apart from one actor who was vaguely familiar. There was one particularly woeful scene where said actor, whom I now know to be called Harold Goodwin, was dancing with a bunch of girls around a piano. According to my memory, after the tune finished, he exclaimed in a Lancashire accent: "oooh int it groovy!"
So after 40 or so years I discovered that Operation Cupid was the movie, and apart from the fact that the line turns out to be "It's a real groovy tune!", it's every bit as execrable as I remembered!
There's not a single aspect about this movie that makes it worth watching, apart from that fact itself. Ridiculous, dull and unfunny plot; shocking acting replete with Dick-Van-Dyke-style cockney accents; a posh, gullible old military duffer; a wicked devious gold-digger woman; and a clumsy Norman Wisdom type leading man (without any of the charm or talent of Wisdom himself).
The "comedy" attempts are sometimes actually funny, but for entirely the wrong reasons. There's a set piece with an electric fire that I won't describe, but if you tried to write it yourself based on that premise alone you'd almost certainly make a better job of it.
Only of interest to those who seek the purest forms of terrible movie-making.
Space Station 76 (2014)
A funny, wonderful play about suburban 70's life, set in space.
There are a lot of reviews for this movie that were seemingly written by people expecting to see "That 70's Show - The Movie", or perhaps "The Hangover - in SPAAAACE". That's not what you're going to get here.
Instead you will be watching a disgracefully under-appreciated comedy centered around the loneliness and detachment experienced when living in certain types of artificially constructed society. The fact it's set in a space-based society, as envisaged by people from the 1970's, helps to underline the sociological problems by placing the subjects in a sterile, low-entropy world - like some kind of suburban gated community... or something.
If you're coming at this from a SF perspective you also won't be disappointed. There are a plethora of terrific cinematic tributes to 70's sci-fi here, and an obvious love for the genre permeates every scene; look out for a cameo by David Bowman.