Movie Ramblings: The Green Inferno

The Green Inferno is a pretty standard horror film based on the fear of the unknown, in this case undiscovered tribes in the South American jungle. As you would expect from this genre of film it is stuffed full of one dimensional characters, cheesy dialogue, terrible acting, outrageous racial stereotypes and over the top gore and violence.

The first 25 minutes of this film are so astoundingly dull and full of cheesy dialogue, rubbish acting and stereotypical characters that several times I wondered whether it would be more interesting to turn it off and go and watch the paint dry on the walls I was taking a break from painting.

RHS Chatsworth Flower Show 2017

Last week we went to the first ever RHS flower show at Chatsworth House. There had been a couple of days of bad weather and some negative reports about long queues and poor organisation but by the 3rd day of the show when we went they seemed to have most of the wrinkles sorted out. We had a mostly glorious day weather wise too. In fact it got a bit too hot and too bright for good photographs too.

There were some really beautiful displays of flowers in several marquees and some interesting show gardens and stalls. There was also live music at several bandstands to entertain you while you have a rest and grab a bite to eat which was cool. I expect my photographs show it better than I can describe.

Movie Ramblings: Stake Land

Stake Land is a post apocalypse vampire story and has more in common with many zombie stories like 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead than a traditional vampire tale. It is set an unspecified time after an outbreak of vampires has ended civilisation as we know it (called America in this film). Presumably it has been some time since the outbreak as when the vampires show up very early on in the film none of the characters seem surprised, nor do they seem surprised when a seemingly expert vampire hunter turns up out of the blue either. The lack of surprise seems to be spread rather too thick though as one of the main characters seems to be totally unsurprised that a vampire has just wiped out his entire family (spoilers).

Movie Ramblings: Cargo

Overall Cargo is a reasonably good sci-fi mystery thriller that relies heavily on influences from other movies and occasionally suffers from some significant lapses in logic.

This film begins with an obvious Blade Runner influence with a massive space station full of bright neon signs and luxury nestled alongside slums populated by the destitute. Even the high tech stuff has an air of decay and neglect. The style swiftly switches to heavy Alien and Event Horizon influences (to name just the most obvious) once off the station. Total Recall and Matrix style conspiracy theories abound in the build up to a somewhat unexpected ending. It works hard to convince you that a jump scare is coming round every corner when in fact there are very few and seems to want you to think that an Event Horizon style gore fest is imminent when the actual plot is much more thoughtful.

Movie Ramblings: Only Lovers Left Alive

Almost painfully cool and artistic Only Lovers Left Alive is full of shots that are lovingly created and often go on for far longer than you would expect from a modern film. However there is none of the sense of growing discomfort that you often get from a prolonged scene. Expect lots of odd angles, lingering close ups and ritualistic scenes.

Movie Ramblings: Purge

Not to be confused with The Purge series of films, this historical drama/modern day crime film follows 2 women from different generations and explores the similarities between their very different lives.

A young girl on the run in Estonia stumbles into the yard of an old woman who remembers worse times when Russian communists took control of the country. Told mostly in flashback to early communist times and to much more recent times in the modern sex trade, we soon learn that these two seeming strangers have a lot more in common than it first seems.

Movie Ramblings: Lucy

Lucy is an action adventure film from Luc Besson and Scarlet Johannson with some really weird supernatural elements reminiscent of Under the Skin and just as weird in places but with a lot more action and story to keep the interest in between weird bits.

Movie Ramblings: Hanna

Hanna is a young girl raised from birth by her father to be an expert tracker, hunter and assassin. For what mysterious purpose he has done this we are not really sure until one day she decides she is ready to leave their wilderness home and enter the outside world. The resulting film is a strange mix of realism, over the top violence and psychedelic MTV music video.

Movie Ramblings: Sicario

In Sicario Emily Blunt plays Kate, a naive FBI agent who gets offered the chance to make a difference in the war on drugs by joining an inter agency task force. Kate soon realises that the other agencies work very differently from her by-the-book approach and she does not approve of their methods.

Movie Ramblings: The Place Beyond The Pines

The Place Beyond The Pines is a bit of a mishmash of a film. The story starts off as a family drama about a man trying to reconnect with his estranged girlfriend and the son he never knew he had. It moves reasonably smoothly and quickly into a bank robbing action adventure movie. But it isn’t finished with it’s metamorphosis there.