'Wake Up Dead Man' is... fine, I suppose
I’m trying to think if I’ve ever been to a film on opening night. I’m not sure. I think maybe I saw the first of the Star Wars sequels pretty close to opening. It was almost fully booked and I got my single seat on the front row at the Barbican Cinema. My mum was seriously ill at that time and those two hours of escapism were very welcome. Actually, now that I think about it, my wife and I went to see The Last Jedi on opening weekend and a packed Saturday night audience made it a lot more enjoyable. That was directed by Rian Johnson, which allows me to get back to my original point. We went to see the third ‘Knives Out’ film at the cinema, as we had done with the first two. I had high hopes. My wife was expecting it to be terrible. The truth was that it was somewhere in the middle. It was OK. About what you would expect for a decent Netflix mystery film, but nowhere near as fun, inventive and assured as either of the previous two movies.
I thought it was too long and only really got going when Benoit Blanc showed up, which was surprisingly late into the running time. Octavia thought his hair was terrible, but I don’t think was the only problem she had with the film. It’s still fairly enjoyable, but staging a lot of dialogue in an echoey church made it all feel a bit distant - a problem that might have been exacerbated by our back-row seats, which might have meant we got more of the rear audio than those seated further forward.
(Speaking of which, we booked two of the last tickets in an almost sold-out showing, but when we got there several rows were empty. What’s going on there? Did people just decide to throw away their £15 tickets or (puts on conspiracy hat) are Netflix block buying seats to bolster… something?)
It’s fine. I wouldn’t say it’s worth seeing at the cinema, which is a shame, because the first two really were a good time.
Also, someone kept taking pictures of the screen with their phone. During the film!
'The Librarians' is inspiring and depressing, in unequal measure
I’ve been wanting the opportunity to see The Librarians since reading about it on social media a few months ago. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that it was screening on iPlayer as part of the BBC’s Storyville strand.
I think it’s probably not a surprise to anyone to learn that right-wing populists are on the ascent, but it’s still incredibly scary to see the effects of that. This feature-length documentary follows the struggles faced by librarians in the face of aggressive campaigns of intimidation and abuse. A pseudo-grassroots book-banning campaign to remove LGBTQ+ books, books about race and books about fascism from library shelves becomes incredibly ugly when seen up close. The amount of intimidation and hatred faced by these librarians - librarians, for god’s sake - is incredibly depressing.
It’s amazing to see what they endure. It is utterly unsurprising to discover that the campaign run against them is calculated, co-ordinated and run by a millionaire who is slightly to the right of the kaiser. School boards, it seems, have become the latest target of the right’s strategy to consolidate power. It makes me wonder how progressive politics can ever effectively counter such an organised and calculated approach. You have to believe it’s possible. You have to.
Radiohead x Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Not shown: crappy flashing lights
This ‘cinematic mashup’ pairing the 1922 vampire film Nosferatu with Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac albums could have been great. Unfortunately, the execution is so slapdash and careless that it feels like a missed opportunity. Rather than put any thought into which tracks might work with which scenes, the editor just runs the two albums over the film.
It’s frustrating, because there are moments where it almost works. Idioteque playing over a manhunt is a good sequence and there are moments here and there where picture and sound match up, but that is more by luck than judgement. The whole thing just felt so sloppy, with scene changes (demarcated by title cards) happening 10-15 seconds after different tracks come in. This could have been fixed so easily that it feels like a wilful act of apathy not to do it. The other infuriating decision by the editors is to add pulsing patches of colour to the black and white film, timed to the music. This adds nothing to the film, serves as a distraction, and meant I was getting a headache about two thirds of the way through the runtime.
I’ll concede that the second half of the film works a little better with Amnesiac, but that’s probably down to that record being a bit more open and ambient than Kid A. This was a crushing disappointment, seemingly tossed off with little care for either element. The company behind it is releasing more of these combinations, including mixing Buster Keaton’s The General with the music of REM, which honestly sounds pretty awful.
I saw this at the Depot in Lewes, but I believe it’s been released nationwide. I’d skip it, to be honest.
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
This low budget Canadian thriller is better than this misleading poster graphic suggests. Don’t want to say too much about it, but off-season resort towns, 80s magicians and big cats feature in it.
It’s currently on Netflix UK and worth a look.