11 hidden gems on Netflix worth a watch

The choice of films on Netflix is mostly dire. It's nearly all from the last ten years or so and nearly always mainstream as hell. There's very little depth or breadth in the choices and foreign or older films are more or less non existent. If you look closely there's a few gems in the mix but you really have to search for them. So i've saved you some hassle. Here's 11 crackers worth your time that have always lurked below the radar.

Eight Men Out

The story of the 1919 baseball scandal and the young men's lives who were ruined by it. John Sayle's morality tale is a cracker and one you'll be hooked by even if you haven't a clue about the sport. Plus the cast is unreal, all of them looking very baby faced.

Phase IV

Intelligent ants begin to wage war on humanity. Yes I know this sounds idiotic but it's actually a really clever and tense bit of sci-fi horror/allegory that despite being well over 40 years old still looks brilliant. One of the first in the wave of animals Vs humans films so popular in the 70's. 


Tank Girl

Lori Petty. Malcolm McDowell. A big tank. Mutant kangaroo men. Inter-species love. Post apocalyptic fun. This film is bonkers. But its also great fun and a very early example of a far from mainstream comic being adapted to film. Petty as the lead rocks it. Makes most modern comic book adaptions look very anaemic.

Blow Out

A foley artist working on a film is in need of a perfect scream and happens upon a car crash and soon finds himself embroiled in political scandal and running for his life. Brian De Palma's thriller is wickedly dark and exciting and John Travolta is in great form. John Lithgow's baddie will give you nightmares too. 

Mean Creek

6 teenagers go on a boat ride up the titular creek. Bad shit happens. A tale of everyday life and how it can go bad in the blink of an eye. Like Stand By Me crossed with River's Edge and every bit as good as that sounds. Add in great acting and this is a must see.

Johnny Guitar

Vienna owns the town saloon & maintains a love/hate relationship with the ranchers that frequent it. A unique western, 1 of the first headlined by a woman and one that's surreal and oddly poetic while still hitting all the beats you'd expect. Joan Crawford is an amazing lead.

Cool World

A cartoonist finds himself transported to a world he thinks he's created but it's denizens are having mixed emotions about him being there. A strange and surreal film but on filled with some great ideas and visuals and a soundtrack up there with the best of them. Yup, that is a baby faced Brad Pitt.

Frailty

An ultra religious man believes god has put him on Earth to kill demons and he ropes his young sons into his work. Is he insane or is there actually something supernatural going on. The late Bill Paxton's directorial debut is a cracking little thriller and has a story line that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Daughters Of The Dust

The stories of three generations of an African American women as they prepare to leave the island their ancestors were slaves on and move to the mainland. Julie Dash's film is an amazing one, dreamlike, poetic, harsh but beautiful and packed with amazing performances.

The Birdman Of Alcatraz

The story of Robert Stroud, a man guilty of murder who manages to turn his life around in prison by becoming an expert on ornithology during his life sentence. A thoughtful and soulful film that is very far removed from the traditional idea of a prison film and one that's carried by an immense performance from Burt Lancaster.

Lifeforce

This one is nuts. Sexy space vampires invade London. That's all you need to know. Oh it's from Cannon pictures so it's as loaded up with gratuitous violence and nudity as you'd expect. Give it a go. I guarantee you'll never have seen anything like it. You might even love it.

Ghost Stories

I love a good horror movie. As a teen it was the blood and guts of stuff like Friday The 13th or Demons that would appeal but as I get older it's the spookier stuff that I prefer. The films that create a terrifying ambience that worms it's way into your head and that don't feel the need to splash gore around as a cheap way of scaring the audience. Films like The Witch or It Comes At Night that wrap you up and suffocate you. Even non horror movies like Under The Skin - that beach scene, jeeesus, or We Need To Talk About Kevin can do it for me. They just created that perfect mood. Then recently reviews for Ghost Stories started appearing. A spooky modern anthology tale that didn't rely on the red stuff for it's scares. Oh yes. Count me in please.

Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman) is a debunker of the supernatural and star of a TV show where he shows up psychics and mediums as the frauds they are. One day a paranormal investigator long assumed dead contacts him and tasks him with researching three cases that he himself could not solve. The first about a man (Paul Whitehouse) guarding an old psychiatric hospital, the second about a young man (Alex Lawther) travelling home at night and the third about an expectant father (Martin Freeman). Phillip dives in and soon finds things getting a bit too creepy for comfort.

A few moments aside I really liked this. It's a film that dredges up old memories of TV shows like Tales Of The Unexpected & Ghostwatch and the horror anthology films that used to abound years ago. It's atmospheric as hell and succeeds in creating a very unsettling feeling as the stories progress. It's set in a strangely drab version of England that oddly feels stalled in time. In some moments you'd be mistaken for thinking the film is set in the 70's or 80's and then all of a sudden a mobile phone appears and jolts you back. It's also filled with little details that you don't take much notice of at the time like crudely scrawled racist graffiti on a tunnel wall or kids playing with a dead seagull, things that only make sense later. All this atmosphere and these little moments have a brilliant cumulative effect as the film moves forward though making it a chilling watch.

It's also a clever and deeper watch than you'd realise. It's a film with interesting asides on faith, belief, unresolved trauma and guilt, things men generally don't deal with (there's a reason this is a very male dominated film). It doesn't bludgeon you with these themes but lines of dialogue and small quiet moments plant these seeds in your head and leave you thinking about them days after you've seen this film. There's not many films, horror or otherwise that can do that. Thankfully there's a smattering of humour around to break up the darkness. A very British smattering. An early mention of John Travolta will force a shocked laugh out of you and a picture of a famous puppet duo on a wall gave me a very nostalgic little giggle. I love when humour in a film like this feels organic and not wedged in as an afterthought.

It's a pity though when it falls back on the old mainstays of modern horror, LOUD NOISES and JUMP SCARES. Cheap scare tactics that the film just doesn't need. Some work (This is the first time a title appearing onscreen ever scared me) but most don't and nearly all are telegraphed by the swelling music. A scare you know is coming will nearly always fail. The creepiness in this film is relatable, being in the woods by yourself, a dark room, creaky noises in the night, that sudden and unexplainable feeling of being watched. Stuff we've all experienced and stuff that will guarantee goosebumps and why the writers felt the need to crowbar in unnecessary scares I'll never know. Some people will have issues with the ending too but for me it worked. It made moments I assumed would be plotholes make sense and it cleverly ties the film together as a whole.

Some cheap scares aside this was a cracking watch. It's cleverly written and well acted. Andy Nyman, who also wrote the film along with Jeremy Dyson, carries the film on his shoulders and does very well but for me Paul Whitehouse was best. I only really know him from his comedy stuff but his role as a traumatised nightwatchman really dug it's fingers into me especially in the scene where we first meet him. This film is clearly a labour of love from people in thrall to the horror genre. Horror fans will enjoy it but there's still plenty here for everyone. 

It's well worth your time and money.

A perfect pairing of sound & vision. Dazed and Confused's opening scene.

Long before Aerosmith became caricatures they used to make great music. Sweet Emotion was one of their classic songs and here director Richard Linklater finds the best possible use for it in the opening scenes of his 1993 classic Dazed And Confused.

You'll rarely see a cooler film intro than this. The opening lines of the song impeccably paired to the image of Kevin Pickford's Pontiac GTO pulling into the school parking lot in slow motion is just ......well it's just amazing. Rock music, excellent cars and a joint being rolled. A lovely encapsulation of the film in 30 seconds. Then the riff kicks in and we get introduced to the rest of the graduating class of Lee High School of 1976. The stoners, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds and the rest and somehow the choice of tune seems to compliment every single one of them.



It's a film where not much happens but it's all about the mood and this opening scene sets it perfectly. Dazed And Confused is on Netflix now if you haven't seen it before. Just you wait until you see the amount of famous faces who got their start in this film.

Give it a go. It rocks.

Previous parts

Kickboxer
Grosse Point Blank
Mean Streets
Watership Down
Casablanca
Zodiac
Jackie Brown
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Deliverance
The Omen
Copland
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The Mission
Before Sunset
Carlito's Way
A Knight's Tale
Platoon
Before Sunrise
Rushmore
An American Werewolf In London
Dazed And Confused
Boogie Nights
Raging Bull
Almost Famous
Once Upon A Time In The West
Goodfellas
Last Of The Mohicans

Repeal the 8th

Vote yes to repeal the 8th amendment to the constitution on the 25th of May.

Don't be a gowl. Don't be on the wrong side of history.

Give people a choice.

Trust people.

Don't make others suffer because of your own beliefs.

Vote yes.

Michael Inside

Oz. The Shawshank Redemption. Maze. Scum. Undisputed. Orange Is The New Black. Cool Hand Luke. Papillion. Wentworth. Hunger. The Great Escape. Prison films & TV shows are always good. They appeal to our basic instincts. The ones that want to see blood and love a bit of tension. We love seeing broken people rise up and fight back against the system. The innocent fella plotting his escape. The political prisoner who's decided enough is enough. What we don't see much of are the stories of the normal prisoners, the people who just want to do their time and keep their head down. In recent years we've had A Prophet and Starred Up and now we have Michael Inside. A new Irish film written and directed by Frank Berry.

Michael McCrea is a young man living in West Dublin. He lives in the same house as his Grandad but they are incapable of communication. One day a friend of his asks him for a favour and soon Michael finds himself on his way to the big house. A place he is totally unprepared for.

Michael Inside is a superb film but one that will upset and anger you. It's bleak as hell and a desperate indictment of modern day Ireland showing it really is no country for young men. It's about a side of crime that rarely makes the news. The tiddlers. The people on the periphery of the drug trade that get paid the least but seem to suffer the most. Nearly always young men with little to no parental interaction or supervision who are desperate to be part of any group that will welcome them in and in they go willingly despite knowing where this road will lead them. These tiddlers end up in our jails which are cesspools of criminality and come out worse than they went in. It's a vicious circle. One telling piece of dialogue cuts to the heart of the problem with our justice system in Ireland. "Your sentence starts when ya get out." (paraphrasing but you get the point). Prison offers no rehabilitation. You wear the mark of your incarceration forever. You'll find it impossible to get a job, hard to go abroad etc so why not just fall into a life of crime full time when you have no other choice? 

It's a film that will break your heart. From the opening scenes there's an underlying unease about it and that unease grows throughout the story until it leaves your guts in knots near the end. Dafhyd Flynn as Michael is excellent. He doesn't say much but you can clearly see his emotions swirling across his face. He's a slight 18 year old who already wears the scars of the drug trade on his soul. He's a criminal but not a malicious one. It's his own silliness that gets him in trouble. He can't communicate with his grandad who he lives with and makes bad choices for friendship to fill the hole inside him. He's like so many of us Irish men, going about with that blip in our psyche that stops us from expressing ourselves. He could be any young man walking down the street. He could be your son, your younger brother.

It's a suffocatingly tense piece of film-making. It's a prison film that thankfully mostly avoids the cliche's of prison films. It's brutal in places but never gratuitous. The threat of violence hovers over every scene both inside and outside the prison. Once inside the one piece of advice Michael actually acknowledges from his Grandad (Lalor Roddy, great) gets him a vicious beating and it's here Michael meets David (Moe Dunford, brilliantly brooding and intense and fast becoming one of our best actors). During their first interaction you hope David will be like Red from Shawshank and take Michael under his wing. But real life is a cruel and mean place.

It's not perfect. Films rarely are but it's good points far outshine it's very few bad ones. One relationship feels unearned and kind of comes out of nowhere. It's something that could have done with a wee bit more fleshing out but it's a small moment. It all sounds fierce harsh though doesn't it. Well that's the point. It's less dramatic than last years Cardboard Gangsters but it's point is the same. Crime doesn't pay. There are no winners here. Beware. It's the kind of film that will worm it's way into your head. It's an old tale but because it's set in places we know with people who's accents we recognise it strikes a chord. We empathise with Michael and despite his actions we care what happens him. Any film that can make you feel for it's characters is a success in my book. I can't wait to see what director Frank Berry does next. 

Go see this. It won't cheer you up but you'll leave your cinema thinking. And as always it feels deadly to support an Irish movie.

10 films worth watching on TV this week

Two Lovers   Sat   7/4   TG4 @ 21.45

Leonard is a Jewish man living in Brooklyn. Suicidally depressed and suffering badly, his life takes a sudden turn when he meets two very different women. Director James Gray's third collaboration with Joaquin Phoenix is a dark watch in places but it's ultimately a rewarding one as well as being an interesting insight into Jewish American culture. Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw are both excellent.

Contraband   Sat   7/4   E4 @ 22.00

A criminal who has gone straight finds himself dragged back into a life of crime to repay a debt owed by his brother to a mobster. The things we do for our family. A cliched story it may be but it's a very entertaining one thanks to strong acting from a fine cast and an entertainingly twisty and turny storyline. Mark Wahlberg has fun as the lead and Giovanni Ribisi plays the boo-hiss villain to a tee.

Kisses   Sun   8/4   RTE2 @ 00.30

One day a young boy and a girl run away from their troubled family life and escape into the city centre of Dublin for an adventure that is both exciting and terrifying. A film that finds a strange type of beauty in inner city Dublin, going from black and white to colour as the kids experience their first bit of independence. Kelly O'Neill and Shane Curry as just perfect as the leads. A gritty, warm, scary and lovely Irish film that's well worth a look.

Honeymoon   Sun   8/4   The Horror Channel @ 01.05

During their honeymoon in a secluded cabin by a lake, things start going odd for newlyweds Bea and Paul after a midnight walk. It's hard to talk about without giving too much away but this is a psychological/sci-fi/horror hybrid that's very good indeed. And one that some people may find very offputting but if you can stick with it you'll be rewarded with a tense little cracker. Rose Leslie & Harry Treadaway as the leads are both spot on.

The Searchers   Sun   8/4   TCM @ 12.30

John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a man searching for years for his niece who has been kidnapped by a Comanche war party. But what are his intentions? A gorgeous looking and highly influential western (one shot of Wayne framed by a doorway has been homaged in dozens of films and shows), well acted by all especially Wayne and Vera Miles. One of the finest, most thoughtful westerns ever made 

Triple 9   Mon   9/4   Film4 @ 21.00

Convoluted guilty pleasure time. In order to pull off a difficult heist, a criminal gang decide to murder a cop in order to create a distraction that will pull police away from them. Oh, and the criminal gang are also cops. Dun-dun-DUN! A wildly silly and overly complex plot aside this is actually pretty good fun and boasts an amazing cast including Kate Winslet, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Gal Gadot.

The Hills Have Eyes   Mon   9/4   The Horror Channel @ 21.00

A family take a shortcut across the desert and soon find themselves fighting for their lives in the middle of an old nuclear testing ground. A rare remake that outshines the original and a blisteringly violent watch that will test anyone with a nervous disposition. Alexandre Aja directs with panache and a solid cast including Ted Levine, Emilie De Ravin & Aaron Stanford inject a nice believability into proceedings.

The Skeleton Key   Wed   11/4   Syfy @ 21.00

Caroline is a nurse working in a hospice in New Orleans. Of course it just happens to be an old spooky hospice that has a very dark past. An enjoyably atmospheric blend of Southern Gothic horror and supernatural silliness with a strong cast that carries it past the hokier moments of the story. Kate Hudson is good value as the lead and John Hurt and Gena Rowlands give proceedings a touch of class.

Bachelorette   Thur   12/4   Comedy Central @ 22.00

Three women are asked to be bridesmaids for a woman they used to laugh at back in high school and once again risk ruining her life. Will they rally and do the right thing? A mean spirited, coarse and refreshingly gritty take on your usual romcom flick with a great cast including Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, Rebel Wilson and a wild Isla Fisher as 4 women each struggling with their own issues.  

My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea   Fri   13/4   Film4 @ 23.05

Now for something completely different. An animated comedy drama about a earthquake causing a school on the edge of a cliff to float off into the sea while the students inside try to save themselves. Sounds grim doesn't it. Well it's not, it's hilarious and far more entertaining than you'd think. It's also surreal, bizarre and very very unique. Super voice acting from Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham and Maya Rudolph is the icing on the cake.

Death Wish

'First do no harm' is one of the promises in the Hippocratic oath, an ethical standard all doctors must keep to during their career. This oath first came into being between 22 to 24 centuries ago and is attributed to Hippocrates, a man known as the father of modern medicine. Well do ye all hear a whirring sound? That's Hippocrates spinning in his grave over this depiction of one of his disciples.

Paul Kersey is a mild mannered and talented surgeon living and working in Chicago with his wife Lucy and his daughter Jordan who is off to college. Life is good for them but Chicago is experiencing an all time high murder rate and it isn't long before the Kersey's get a taste of it. A traumatised Paul decides to take matters into his own hands when he feels like the police aren't doing enough.

This film had its moments but fails more than it succeeds. Bruce Willis aside and more on him later, it annoyingly wastes a great cast including Elisabeth Shue and Vincent D'onofrio. It's an odd hotch potch of social commentary, satire, some wedged in comedy courtesy of Dean Norris's goofy cop, gore and revenge thriller and a very confused one at that. It takes pot shots(groan) at things like how easy it is to get a gun in America but then fetishises the same weaponry in the next scene. It tastelessly uses the real life murder rate of Chicago as a backdrop but then suggests more murder is the only way to solve it. It tries to have it's cake and eat it too which makes for an uneasy watch.

It's a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson film that makes the same mistakes that film made and adds a few of it's own into the mix. Like that film it also takes an actor who can be good when he wants to be and lets him sleep walk through the role. Bruce Willis is on autopilot here and it's cringy to watch. This is the first leading role of his to make it to the cinema in 5 years and you'd think he'd make more of an effort but nope, it's just like his DTV stuff, in fact you wouldn't be blamed for wondering why he bothers anymore. Also like the original it casts an actor best known for his tough guy roles and expects viewers to be surprised when he turns from a normal trouble avoiding fella into a avenging AR-15 toting mincer of bad guys. This is the man who played John McClane for fuck sake. I'd have loved for the film-makers to take a chance and cast an actor best known for being a nice guy. Imagine someone like Tom Hanks as the lead in this. It probably wouldn't make the film any better but it would certainly be more interesting.

Speaking of AR-15's..... this film couldn't have been released at a worse time. America is in the midst of a hugely important gun control debate and a film like this will stick in the craw of many, especially with the amount of mass shootings lately that have used that very weapon. Usually you'd imagine a film like this would be delayed to avoid negative press attention but with the sheer amount of shootings in the States it's likely it would never be released with that course of action. Director Eli Roth claims this isn't a pro gun film but who's he kidding. This film is both repulsed by and in love with bullets. Just like the US of A.

All that said, there is some fun to be had in here. A split scene montage played out to the sounds of AC/DC slyly cuts to the quick of the film's schizophrenic view of things. It's a clever moment but quickly forgotten. And of course seeing bad guys get gunned down will always pander to our baser instincts. It's something that never gets old and the nastier the villain the more we love it. Roth's past experience as a horror director comes into play here and he stages a couple of gruesomely entertaining sequences including one in a garage that tests the limit's of the 16 certificate*. But herein lies the film's biggest problem. The original film was based on a book that was decidedly anti vigilante. The original film was most definitely pro vigilante. The remake is too. Eli Roth is a clever director and his earlier Hostel films, whilst not my cup of tea, surprised in the way they subverted cliches and our ideas of how a horror film should go. I expected that here too but got nothing. It's just a straight forward revenge thriller with some very dubious undertones.

*this sequence has been trimmed by distributors to avoid an 18 certificate in Ireland and the UK. 

If you want a brainless way to spend a couple of hours go see this. Other than that I can't really recommend it to anyone. Watch 2007's Death Sentence instead. An earlier Death Wish remake that's far better than this.

A Quiet Place

It's great to see a film without knowing everything about it. It's hard to do that in this age of nonstop twitter spoilers and trailers that give away everything but on rare occasion it can happen. I saw A Quiet Place on Monday night at a preview showing and all I knew about it was it was a horror and it starred two actors, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who are always good.

It blew me away.

It's the near future. A family live a simple and very quiet life on a farm in rural America. They live in silence and communicate through whispers and sign language. The reason for this is the world around them is now teeming with creatures who prey on humans and who hunt and attack anything making a sound. They pass their time with no real idea of how their future will pan out until an upcoming change in circumstance starts creating some big issues.

I loved this. Loved it. Using sound in a highly effective way and combining that with some superb acting it takes a concept that could be silly and turns it into something brilliant. It's a brisk, efficient, tension packed horror film that is utterly terrifying in places and best of all, it's populated with characters who you'll come to care about and be petrified for over the course of the movie. For a horror film to truly work you need to give a shit about the people in it and here you'll roar for them, cry for them, feel nauseous about them and hope against hope for them. Real life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt play Lee and Evelyn Abbott and play off each other like a charm. They create a lovely and believable relationship through glances, concerned looks and the bare minimum of communication. Their kids are great too, Marcus (Noah Jupe) a wound up ball of relatable anxiety and Regan (Millicent Simmonds), their frustrated teenage daughter who wants to grow up and be responsible but who is being held back by a lack of communication with her father and the small issue of the post apocalyptic world they all find themselves in.

Yup, it's a post apocalyptic horror film. That old chestnut. We've all been here before but smartly this film narrows its focus to one family, drip feeding us only slivers of info on the wider world situation and it gives the story an intimacy and warmth that sustains us through the more nail biting moments in the film, because Jesus Christ there's a lot of them. From the opening moments there's a constant creeping dread that will worm its way into your guts. Then the scares come and they just keep on coming. Some are suffocating, some are so tense you'll have nail dents in your palms for hours after and some are good old fashioned jump scares that through their use of sound feel totally organic and not crow barred in like you usually see in modern horror.

The use of sound in this film is unique. We hear gentle gusts of wind through a corn field, the lapping of water in a river and the film's musical score but we rarely hear a word spoken. Speaking equals death which makes the few lines of dialogue we do hear feel precious. One scene of a couple connecting during a softly sung Neil Young song is just beautiful. Watching a film like this will make you realise how much dialogue in film is superfluous when you see the complex range emotions conveyed through the glances and furrowed brows of the Abbott family. The silences created by all this lull you into a false sense of security and then when the noises happen they are fantastically effective.

This film works fantastically well as both a horror film and a study of a family struggling to stay together but there's even more to it than that. It has interesting things to say about the roles men and women fall into when civilisation crumbles. Maternal roles and hunter gatherer roles, outward strength vs inner strength. What exactly parents are willing to risk for their kids and much more. It's pretty much a perfect little film. One silly moment involving a kitchen utensil annoyed me because it felt like a plot device inserted thoughtlessly into the film but there's just so much goodness packed into this that it's very easy to overlook any mistakes.

Lead actor John Krasinski also directed this and he's done a hell of a job. Who would have thought the man who played goofy, lovable Jim Halpert in The Office was capable of making a film like this. I cannot wait to see what he does next. He's created a stunning horror film with a heart that will pin you to your seat. I highly recommend going to see this if you can when it comes out on Friday.

Blockers

Sometimes films surprise you and it's just great. You go to the cinema to pass a couple of hours and walk in assuming one thing based on trailers you've seen and walk out later smiling because you've seen something very different and far better than you were expecting. It doesn't happen very often but it's always a welcome feeling. 

Blockers fits that slot very well.

It's prom night and 3 girls, Julie, Kayla and Sam, have had enough of waiting around and make a pact to lose their respective virginity by the morning so they can have that worry out of the way before they get to college. However their parents, the very overbearing Lisa and Mitchell and the underachieving Hunter, find out about their pact and set out to stop their daughters plans using all possible means. Chaos ensues.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It's far from the sophomoric humour filled gross out fest trailers are depicting it as, well a few scenes aside anyway. It's fun, fast moving and flat out hilarious at points but best of all is the fact that it's filled to bursting with heart and dotted with lovely and genuinely moving moments of family closeness that will resonate with anyone lucky enough to experienced that type of relationship with a parent. From the description of the film above you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's another American morality tale about how sex is bad and you should wait until the time is right and your partner is perfect. That conservative thinking is there but it's from the parents point of view. The teens, like real teens, don't care for such matters. It's all just another new experience for them to get out of the way and this gives the whole film a light touch.

Comedy, like horror, only really works if you care about the characters and here you do in spades and that's down to good writing and fine acting from everyone involved. Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz and John Cena are all on fire as the parents. Mann does that neurotic thing she does so well without the annoying asides that made her offputting in films like This Is 40. Barinholtz and Cena are called on to do the lions share of the comic stuff and manage to carry off some pretty horrible stuff while somehow emerging with their dignity intact. I've always enjoyed Cena in films, he's not the best actor but like other wrestlers turned actors he has great presence and he uses it well here and puts in his best work so far. The 3 teens are as good, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon all create their own individual personalities and you'll find yourself hoping for all 3 of them. Viswanathan is someone I expect to see a lot of in the future, her comic timing is immense.

It's nice to see a comedy with a bit of depth and one that uses it's characters as something more than a conveyance for a punchline. It has some telling dialogue about the different ways men and women are judged for expressing their sexuality. It's also about those moments when parents start fearing their child is growing up too fast and in holding on too tightly lose the run of themselves. In one way it is a morality tale but not the expected one. It's still a comedy though and some scenes will really tickle you. A stealth escape from a hotel room, an emoji translation scene and a moment where two people lock eyes at the worst possible moment all spring to mind. Some jokes miss the mark, one involving an odd way to drink beer and another involving an unnecessarily graphic closeup will make you cringe more than giggle but when the jokes are coming this thick and fast (err) you won't begrudge a few bad ones.

First time director Kay Cannon has made a fine film and a very entertaining one. Best of all and unlike a lot of other modern comedy directors (I'm looking at you Judd Apatow) she knows how to tell a joke without milking the life out of it. Get in, make the audience laugh and get out. She keeps the film flowing and keeps it tight even when a few hoary old cliches raise their heads. I can't wait to see what she does next.

This is well worth a watch. 

A perfect pairing of sound & vision. The dance scene from Kickboxer.

A masterful moment in a masterful film. WELL I THINK SO ANYWAY.

Kurt is down in the dumps. He came to Thailand with his brother Frank to see him take on Thailand's premier kickboxer, the vicious bastard known as Tong Po. Things don't go Frank's way and he ends up in a wheelchair courtesy of a sneaky elbow to the spine from Tong Po. Kurt vows revenge but must first train with the best and the best is local legend Xian Chow. Xian Chow's training regimen is extreme to say the least and to give Kurt a break he brings him for a drink and a boogie.

And then this happens. The origin of 1000 gifs.



It's brilliant. Jean-Claude Van Damme giving it welly despite being mangled drunk. The Farah pants. That little air guitar moment at 0.52. That fact that you will definitely watch it through your fingers while something inside you dies. Its a 3 minute oasis of hilarity in the middle of a film filled with broken bones, kicked faces and one unfortunate soul getting a very deserved meat hook buried up their arse.

Van Damme's ego is the only reason this scene exists. He gets to show off the things he's best at all in the space of 3 minutes. Dancing, fighting, his prowess with de wimmen. And of course the splits. Those eye watering splits.

If you haven't had the privilege of watching this film I urge you to track it down. If you have, well then you should watch it again.

They don't make em like this anymore.

Previous parts

Grosse Point Blank
Mean Streets
Watership Down
Casablanca
Zodiac
Jackie Brown
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Deliverance
The Omen
Copland
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The Mission
Before Sunset
Carlito's Way
A Knight's Tale
Platoon
Before Sunrise
Rushmore
An American Werewolf In London
Dazed And Confused
Boogie Nights
Raging Bull
Almost Famous
Once Upon A Time In The West
Goodfellas
Last Of The Mohicans