Guillermo del Toro

Film Bouquets 2022

2022 was a surprisingly good year for film, although – as cinephiles – it was worrying to note that audiences seemed happy enough to continue watching movies at home after last year’s lockdowns ended. Cinemas were feeling the pinch and there was a lot of talk of this being the end of an era, while others pinned their hope on Avatar: The Way of Water bringing people back in droves. Here at B&B, we’ve always believed that the big screen is the best possible place to watch a movie, so we were delighted to be back in our local multiplex and indie venues. Here’s our selection of the films that have really stayed with us throughout the year.

Belfast

Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film was the first must-see of the year – an absolute joy, with a brilliant central performance from newcomer Jude Hill. This film is all about formative experiences, the kind that shape a young boy’s future.

Nightmare Alley

A new film from Guillermo del Toro is always cause for celebration. This bleak, dark tale is the work of a gifted director at the peak of his powers, handling a tricky subject with consummate skill.

Red Rocket

Director Sean Baker’s ability to depict working-class life is his real strength and Red Rocket, powered by astonishing performances by Simon Rex and Suzanna Son, offers a brilliant exploration of Trump’s America.

The Worst Person in the World

Joaquin Trier’s film is a rare beauty, a picaresque tale of life and love in contemporary Oslo. It’s built around a superb, award-winning performance by Renate Reinsve. A film that positively buzzes with invention.

Elvis

Baz Luhrmann’s biopic is a big, brash, noisy exploration of the late singer’s life and times. Against all the odds, Austin Butler makes the role his own and Tom Hank’s portrayal of the sleazy, manipulative Colonel Tom Parker is also right on the button.

Bones and All

Luca Guadadigno’s visceral tale of love and cannibalism is a brilliant reinvention of a well-worn trope which can be seen as an allegory about drug addiction. It’s brilliant stuff, but not for the faint-hearted – by turns romantic and repugnant.

She Said

This searing account of the uncovering of Harvey Weinstein’s crimes by two Washington Post journalists is timely and superbly recreated, with excellent performances from Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in the central roles.

The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh’s film is a beautifully observed contemplation of the thankless futility of human existence. This is his best offering since the sublime In Bruges, with wonderful performances from Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

Aftersun

A gorgeous film, sweetly sad and tinged with tragedy. Debut writer/director Charlotte Wells knocks it out of the park with her first feature, coaxing extraordinary performances from Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. An absolute must-see.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Not content with one title in our selection, del Toro has two – despite the fact that we had to watch Pinocchio on the small screen. Few films deserve the description ‘masterpiece’ as thoroughly as this one.

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

19/12/22

Netflix

Guillermo del Toro is one of my favourite film directors – and Disney’s Pinocchio one of the formative films of my childhood. So when I first hear the news that the Mexican director is planning to deliver his own version of Carlo Collodi’s classic tale, it’s naturally something I eagerly look forward to – for a very long time. Indeed, it turns out that del Toro has actually been working on this astonishing stop-frame animation for something like fifteen years.

As the release date finally approaches, I look everywhere for a cinema in Edinburgh that’s planning to show del Toro’s film on the big screen, but alas, with the Filmhouse out of action, it cannot be found. So Netflix it must be. As it turns out, some visions are so powerful, so perfect, that they can blaze out of a small screen like meteors. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is an astonishing film, that has the audacity to take everything we know about the story and give it a thorough makeover. What’s more, the changes that he makes (he co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick McHale) all seem to enrich the original, making it more logical, more explicable.

Revelation number one: when we first encounter woodcarver, Geppetto (David Bradley), he has a real son, Carlo (voiced by Gregory Mann). But Carlo dies tragically when Italian air force planes unload their bombs onto the church, where Gepetto is working on a huge crucifixion. This backstory helps flesh Geppetto out and makes his subsequent actions more believable – especially when Pinocchio is forged from the very tree planted to mark Carlo’s grave.

Revelation number two: the Pinocchio that Geppetto eventually carves in a drunken rage looks nothing like a ‘real boy’. He’s a strange, spindly, half-finished marionette, generally shunned and mistrusted by the people in his home village. Contrary to the original tale, it’s the villagers who have to learn to accept Pinocchio, rather than the other way around.

Revelation number three: this version is set in Italy in the 1930s, under the rule of Benito Mussolini. Pinocchio’s adventures on the ‘Donkey Island’ are exchanged for scenes where he unwittingly becomes a poster boy for fascism. (It’s nakedly clear what del Toro is saying here. And it makes perfect sense, because to take on Disney’s most iconic scenes would be a pointless exercise. If you can’t better a scene, do something entirely different, right?)

There’s more, much more, packed into the film’s two hour run. We meet Sebastian J Cricket (Ewan McGegor), an ambitious, self-aggrandising would-be author, who only agrees to take on the task of being Pinocchio’s ‘conscience’ in the hope off getting a book deal. There’s Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), the greedy, venal owner of a travelling freak show, who spots an opportunity to make lots of money and who bullies his monkey assistant, Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett) at every opportunity. And wait till you see what the animators (and Tilda Swinton) have done with the infamous Blue Fairy, rechristened here as the Woodland Sprite. More than anything else, there are fundamental changes to the character of Pinocchio himself. He’s no longer the obnoxious, pig-headed lout of the novel, but a sweet, misguided misfit, desperately trying to be liked. A scene where he can’t understand why all the villagers hate him, but adore the other wooden figure nailed to a cross on the church wall is a stand-out.

It’s not just the levels of invention in the story that make this such a unmitigated triumph. It’s the loving attention to detail: every character, every set, every painted landscape; it all pulses and dazzles with imagination of the highest calibre. There’s so much to see here, it’s clearly going to need repeated viewings to really take it all in. And watching it makes me wish that dear old Ray Harryhausen was still alive to see where modern technology has brought the art of stop-motion animation.

Many films have the word ‘masterpiece’ attached to them, but few deserve it as thoroughly as this one. All you need to do it hit the Netflix button, so… no pressure.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Nightmare Alley

25/01/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

After the heartwarming optimism of Belfast, could there be a more contrary film than Nightmare Alley? This bleak, cynical tale of corrupt grifters, who spend their days trying to part the vulnerable from their worldly wealth, is a noir in the truest sense of the word, and marks the first time that Guillermo del Toro has stepped away from the supernatural or  sci-fi in order to tell a story. That said, this is every bit as dark as anything he’s done before.

It is of course, a remake, originally filmed in 1947 and starring Tyrone Power. Here, the boots of the lead character, Stanton Carlisle, are convincingly filled by Bradley Cooper. When we first meet Carlisle he’s carefully eradicating all traces of something he’s done – something bad that can only be cleansed by fire – but we won’t be given more detail until much later. After a long ride on an overnight bus, Carlisle arrives on the doorstep of a seedy carnival run by Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe), a venal charmer who thinks nothing of employing alcoholics and passing them off as ‘geeks’ – supposed ‘wild men’, who will bite the heads of live chickens for the entertainment of the carnival’s visitors.

Carlisle makes himself useful, helping to pitch tents and dispose of rubbish. He meets up with ‘Zeena’ (Toni Collette), who runs a mind-reading act alongside her alcoholic husband, Pete (David Strathairn), and, spotting an opportunity, Carlisle succumbs to Zeena’s charms, whilst filching the basics of Pete’s old routine for future use.

The carnival provides a wonderful setting, an atmospheric world where the neon-lit, tawdry wonders seem to throb with an innate sense of dread. Carlisle meets up with Molly (Rooney Mara), whose act has her being ‘electrocuted’ on a nightly basis. Carlisle transfers his affections to her, and the couple head off to the film’s second act, which takes up the story two years later. Now Carlisle and Molly are running a successful night club act, using Pete’s old blueprint, and are living the highlife. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this is noir, so of course there has to be a femme fatal and she dutifully arrives in the shape of psychologist Dr Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). She starts to dangle the prospect of even greater riches in front of Carlisle. Will he yield to temptation?

Del Toro’s theme here is that the unscrupulous operate by exploiting the weaknesses of their victims, whether they’re doing it from the grubby confines of a canvas tent or the swish environs of an art deco apartment building. And, as ever, the wealthy are never happy to stand still, when they can see even more riches glittering enticingly, just out of reach.

Nightmare Alley is proper, grown-up filmmaking. The lengthy running-time and serious subject matter will doubtless put some punters off, and financial success will rather depend on whether any of its predicted Oscar nominations come to fruition. While this might not be the slice of cinematic perfection that is The Shape of Water, it’s nonetheless the work of a gifted director at the peak of his powers, handling a tricky subject with consummate skill, aided and abetted by the dazzling cinematography of Dan Lautsen.

Plans are afoot to release a monochrome version of this, but it’s hard to imagine how it could look any more lush than it does here, with every frame a veritable work of art.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney



Antlers

01/11/21

Cineworld, Edinburgh

To describe Antlers as ‘dark’ would be something of an understatement.

The tone of this powerful little eco-horror is jet black with a side order of obsidian. Directed by Scott Cooper and co-produced by Guillermo del Toro, it’s a bleak tale, an allegory that carries its twin themes – the desecration of nature and the destructive power of poverty – in plain view. The story is by no means subtle and it doesn’t make for comfortable viewing – but to be fair, that’s the last thing it’s trying to be.

In an abandoned coal mine, somewhere in the wilds of Oregon, Frank Weaver (Scott Haze) is running a covert meth operation. His home town is broken beyond repair, the nearby mountains plundered of their ‘black gold,’ and now he’s getting by the only way he knows how. But his youngest son, Aiden (Sawyer Jones), has an unfortunate habit of sticking his nose into things – and, when Frank and an employee encounter something supernatural down in the darkness, Aiden inevitably goes to investigate.

Some time later, high school teacher Julia Meadows (Keri Russell) is struggling to keep her life together. She’s failing to bond with the kids in her classes, she can’t seem to visit the local liquor store without casting yearning glances at the bottles of spirits – and she’s troubled by horrors from her childhood. She is currently living with her brother, the town sheriff, Paul (Jesse Plemons), and they share a past that they’d clearly rather forget. Perhaps that’s why Julia is so drawn to the plight of Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas), who sits silently at his school desk, drawing a series of very disturbing pictures. But what has happened to his father and his younger brother? And what exactly is he keeping locked up in the attic of the family home?

It would be too much of a spoiler to tell you more about the story. Suffice to say that the creature that the Weavers have unwittingly unleashed is parasitic in nature and has a habit of vacating its hosts in a very messy manner. But while the story goes to some fantastic places, the grubby reality of the setting keeps everything anchored. The squalid, dying town is a realistic place and its inhabitants are believable enough to encourage us to follow them deep into the realms of the unreal.

Those who flinch from body horror should be warned there are visceral scenes here. We all know that teachers have a tough time, but the events endured by school principal, Miss Booth (Amy Madigan), must qualify as an all time low. Cooper keeps offering tantalising glimpses of something unspeakable lurking in the shadows and his ‘less-is-more’ approach consequently ramps up the fear factor. It’s only towards the end of the film, when we finally see the creature in more detail, that the tension dissipates somewhat… but by then, the director’s work is done and we’ve well and truly been put through the mill.

Antlers is a an accomplished creature feature, that generates an atmosphere of mounting dread for most of its duration. Grim and immersive, it’s eminently suitable for spooky autumn viewing, but we warned, the central premise is not for the faint-hearted.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The Muppet Christmas Carol

18/12/19

Most film fans have those puzzling gaps in their backlists – movies they’ve always meant to watch but, somehow, have never gotten around to. Over the years, I’ve gone to considerable lengths in my attempts to rectify such situations. (I’m the guy who sat doggedly through the six hour silent version of Abel Gance’s Napolean, just so I could say I’d seen it.) But, until yesterday, I had never seen The Muppet Christmas Carol. And neither had Susan. Admitting to it on social media unleashed a stream of comments from people who have long cherished it as a yearly festive treat. What were we thinking of? Were we crazy?

It’s not that I have an aversion to the Muppets. Far from it. I loved their TV series back in the day, I’ve seen most of Jim Henson’s cinematic offerings (including The Dark Crystal) and, as a former drummer, whenever I see Animal’s leering countenance, I find myself smiling in something like recognition. But, nevertheless, I missed the film on its initial release in 1992 and, after that, never cared to watch it on the small screen. So, when I see it listed as one of the Cameo’s Christmas offerings, I resolve to finally put the matter to rest.

And of course, my friends are right. It’s an absolute charmer, a retelling of Dickens’ classic tale that sticks very closely to the original, even incorporating many of the great writer’s own words. It simply swaps some of the key characters for cuddly puppets and throws in several jaunty songs by Paul Williams. What’s not to like?

There’s something so right about Kermit playing Bob Cratchit that it’s hard not to cheer – while turning Fezziwig into Fozziewig and having him played by Fozzie Bear is little short of genius. Dickens himself makes an appearance, played by The Great Gonzo and aided by his friend, Rizzo the Rat. It’s always been a wonder to me how Henson’s simple creations seem to come alive in front of the cameras, but they absolutely do. I even shed genuine tears over the scene where Bob and his wife, Emily (Miss Piggy), mourn the passing of their son, Tiny Tim. And yes, I realise I’m crying over a few scraps of green felt, but I can’t help myself.

It’s more than just the puppetry, of course. The delightful production design by Val Strazovec gives the film an enchanting visual flair, and I love the supernatural elements, particularly the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, who looks like he’s crept out of a movie by Guillermo del Toro.

Best of all is Michael Caine’s accomplished performance as Scrooge, resolutely refusing to tip a wink or give a nudge to the audience, playing the role with absolute gravitas. It’s this serious element at the heart of the story which makes all the buffoonery around him resonate. Caine has made many movies over the years, but this surely ranks as one his finest achievements.

So yes, I’m glad I finally ticked that box. The Muppet Christmas Carol is a heartwarming delight. And it’s only taken me twenty-seven years to come to that opinion.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

08/09/19

As the long summer nights begin to stretch into autumn, the time seems perfect for a film like this. Based on Alvin Schwartz’s retellings of classic ‘campfire’ tales, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a playful compendium of sinister settings and nicely-timed jump scares, aimed very directly at a teenage audience. Produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro and directed by André Øvredal, the film unashamedly pushes its fifteen certificate to the limits and has a kind of galumphing charm that’s hard to resist.

It’s 1969 and Stella (Zoe Margaret Colletti) is a shy, story-obsessed teenager, living with her father, Roy (an underused Dean Norris), after the breakup of her parents’ marriage. With her geeky friends, Augie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur), Stella heads out on Halloween night, intent on trick-or-treating the local bully, Tommy (Austin Abrams), who has made their life a misery all year.

Ensuing events have them hooking up with mysterious young drifter, Ramón (Michael Garza), and the four teens visit a reputedly haunted house, where they discover a mysterious book of handwritten stories. Unfortunately, they soon find that a ghostly hand keeps adding to the collection and that they and their friends are all destined to feature as  protagonists. Unsurprisingly, none of the stories has a happy ending.

If the concept seems a little familiar, the film is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable. The content doesn’t seem a million miles away from the kind of fiction that a certain Danny Weston writes (which is a good thing, right?), and – even when the budget can’t quite stretch to some more convincing CGI – the overarching story sews the various narrative threads together with skill. Arachnaphobes be warned, there’s one sequence here that’s sure to give you the heebie-jeebies.

There’s a suggestion at the film’s conclusion that there may be a sequel in the offing. Would it seem churlish to hope that this remains a one-off? SSTTITD certainly makes for enjoyable autumnal viewing, but I suspect the trick will soon wear thin, if the filmmakers return to the concept one too many times.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Film Bouquets 2018

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2018 has yielded a lot of interesting films, and it’s been hard to choose which most deserve Bouquets. Still, we’ve managed it, and here – in order of viewing – are those that made the cut.

Downsizing

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Alexander Payne’s brilliant satire had its detractors, mostly people who had expected a knockabout comedy –  but we thought it was perfectly judged and beautifully played by Matt Damon and Hong Chau.

Coco

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A dazzling, inventive and sometimes surreal love letter to Mexico, this Pixar animation got everything absolutely right, from the stunning artwork to the vibrant musical score. In a word, ravishing.

The Shape of Water

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Guillermo del Toro’s spellbinding fantasy chronicled the most unlikely love affair possible with great aplomb. Endlessly stylish, bursting with creativity, it also featured a wonderful performance from Sally Hawkins.

Lady Bird

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This semi-autobiographical story featured Saoirse Ronan as a self-centred teenager, endlessly at war with her harassed mother (Laurie Metcalfe). Scathingly funny but at times heart-rending, this was an assured directorial debut from Greta Gerwig.

I, Tonya

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Imagine Good Fellas on ice skates and you’ll just about have the measure of this stunning biopic of ice skater Tonya Harding, built around an incandescent performance from Margot Robbie, and featuring a soundtrack to die for.

A Quiet Place

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This film had audiences around the world too self-conscious to unwrap a sweet or slurp their cola. Written and directed by John Kransinski and starring Emily Blunt, it was one of the most original horror films in a very long time – and we loved it.

The Breadwinner

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Set in Kabul, this stunning film offered a totally different approach to animation, and a heart-wrenching tale of a young woman’s fight for survival in a war-torn society. To say that it was gripping would be something of an understatement.

American Animals

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Based on a true story and skilfully intercutting actors with real life protagonists, Bart Layton’s film was a little masterpiece that gleefully played with the audience’s point of view to create something rather unique.

Bad Times at the El Royale

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Drew Goddard’s noir tale brought together a brilliant cast in a unique location, and promptly set about pulling the rug from under our feet, again and again. There was a superb Motown soundtrack and a career making performance from Cynthia Erivo.

Wildlife

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Based on a Richard Ford novel, this subtle but powerful slow-burner was the directorial debut of Paul Dano and featured superb performances from Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal and newcomer, Ed Oxenbould.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

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The Coen brothers were in exquisite form with this beautifully styled Western, which featured six separate tales of doom and despair, enlivened by a shot of dark humour. But, not for the first (or the last) time, we heard those dreaded words ‘straight to Netflix.’

Roma

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Another Netflix Original (and one that’s hotly tipped for the Oscars), this was Alfonso Cuaron’s lovingly crafted semi-autobiographical tale off his childhood in Mexico, and of the nanny who looked after him and his siblings. It was absolutely extraordinary.

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

The Shape of Water

30/01/18

The release of a Guillermo del Toro movie is generally a cause for some excitement, but The Shape of Water arrives in the UK already garlanded with 13 Oscar nominations – this year’s most nominated film. It’s an unusual state of affairs because fantasy movies rarely get much of a look in at the Academy Awards, apart from the occasional grudging nod for special effects and cinematography. It doesn’t take long, however, to appreciate how this film has managed to garner so much acclaim. It’s a gorgeous, multi-faceted allegory that isn’t adverse to taking risks – The Creature From the Black Lagoon dancing in a Busby Berkeley routine? Hey, no problem!

To my mind, there are actually two del Toros out there – the one that creates eerie fairytale fantasies like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, and the one that offers us the likes of Pacific Rim, where giant robots punch colossal lizards repeatedly in the head until (eventually) they die. Take a wild guess as to which del Toro I personally favour! I’m glad to report that The Shape of Water falls squarely into the former category.

We’re in Baltimore in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a reclusive mute woman, works as a cleaner in a high security government laboratory, alongside her supportive friend, Zelda (Octavia Spencer). When a mysterious new life form – simply referred to as ‘The Asset’, arrives for safekeeping – it is accompanied by its keeper, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon, excelling in what must be his most repellant role to date). It turns out that the lab’s new addition is some kind of amphibious man, captured in the jungles of South America, where he is worshipped as a god – and it soon becomes clear that Strickland’s job is less to find out about this new acquisition than to make sure the Russians never do. Resident scientist, Dr Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), is interested in studying the creature, but the American military seems determined to view it as a suitable candidate for vivisection. Meanwhile, Elisa is beginning to establish a strange and deepening friendship with it…

The outline of the story itself may sound vaguely ridiculous, but it simply cannot prepare you for how utterly compelling del Toro’s film is. It’s a multi-layered affair, beautifully shot and cleverly scripted. Elisa is an outcast, watching from the edges of society, and her best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins), a graphic designer, is in a similar position, exiled from his regular place of work because he is secretly gay. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the early sixties is brilliantly conveyed. All-American diners seem friendly as they sell their day-glo green pies, but won’t allow black people to eat alongside their white customers. The old-fashioned cinema above which Elisa and Giles live plays to nearly empty houses every night because of the growing power of television, and yet every TV screen we see displays a series of classic movie comedies and sumptuous musicals. The Asset too is an outcast, a creature that doesn’t belong in this blinkered, paranoid world. Little wonder then, that both Elisa and Giles fall under his spell.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Every frame of it bursts with creativity, the performances are exemplary (special mentions should go to Hawkins – who manages to convey so much without the luxury of words, and to del Toro regular, Doug Jones – who makes us care deeply about his scaly bug-eyed character and about what will ultimately happen to him).

I appreciate that not everybody is going to love this as much as I do. It requires an almost total suspension of disbelief; this is in no way a realistic film. It’s a fantasy that deals in archetypes, a contemporary reworking of a tale that could have bled from the pens of the Brothers Grimm, juxtaposing scenes of beguiling sweetness with ones of graphic violence. I watch it spellbound. I had thought that del Toro couldn’t possibly improve on Pan’s Labyrinth, but you know what? I rather think he has.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

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01/10/16

Based on the popular novel by Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is a Tim Burton film, that doesn’t feature his usual cohort of friends/family and is largely set in North Wales. Jake (Asa Butterfield) is unusually close to his secretive Grandfather, Abe (a scenery-chewing Terence Stamp) who often regales him with stories about a children’s home he spent time in during the Second World War.

When Abe is (rather horrifically) murdered by an odd looking monster (one that appears to have stepped out of a Guillermo Del Toro film), Jake accompanies his hapless father, Franklin (Chris O Dowd) to the remote Welsh island where the home was located and which is now no more than a burned out ruin. Jake has a vague notion of finding some answers about his Grandpa’s death, but almost before you can say ‘time travel’ Jake has somehow found his way back to the 1940s, where the home functions in a weird time-loop, presided over by the titular Miss Peregrine (a remarkable turn from Eva Green) who amongst her many talents has the ability to transform herself into a bird of prey. The children at the home all have odd powers of their own which range from invisibility to internal bee-keeping and the possession of a second mouth at the back of the neck. (Always handy). But the home is under threat from the evil creatures that control the monsters. They are led by Barron (Samuel L Jackson) a vile looking shape-shifter with a predilection for eating human eyeballs…

Like most Burton movies, this is often very nice to look at (he started off as an illustrator and that always shows) but there’s something curiously unengaging about the film, which is packed full of over-complicated incident, yet rarely manages to exert any kind of grip on the attention. It seems to go on for an inordinately long time, before it finally reaches a climax in an exotic location (Blackpool) where screenwriter Jane Goldman has to find something useful for every one of those peculiar kids to do. Despite all the monsters rampaging across the screen, there’s no real sense of threat here and it isn’t very enlightened to have the one black actor in the film cast as a child-murdering villain.

There are admittedly a few nice moments dotted about (a spirited tribute to the ‘fighting skeletons’ sequence from Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts being one of them) but ultimately this isn’t Burton’s finest moment. For a film that’s so packed with fantasy elements, MPHFPC is long on exposition and woefully short of magic.

2.9 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Crimson Peak

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17/10/15

When I last reviewed a Guillermo del Toro movie, I expressed the fervent wish that he would abandon the thick-eared nonsense he was currently engaged on – in which giant robots repeatedly thumped reptilian monsters in the head – and went back to the kind of cinematic terrain he’d mined so brilliantly in Pan’s Labyrinth. While Crimson Peak isn’t exactly that, it’s about a million miles away from Pacific Rim, which is something to be extremely thankful for.

What we have here is a gothic ghost story and if we’re looking for film precedents, maybe the best of Hammer Horror, as directed by Terrence Fisher or Roger Corman’s 60s interpretations of the works of Edger Allan Poe, might be the appropriate places to look. Crimson Peak is a gorgeous piece of film making – the sumptuous look of the production, the painterly evocations of the settings are a cineaste’s delight, while the story exhibits all the conventions of the true gothic horror story – histrionic and compelling in equal measure.

Aspiring novelist Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) (note the tribute to Hammer horror actor, Peter, right there) meets up in New York with baronet and would-be inventor, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and immediately falls under his spell, despite the misgivings of her rich industrialist father, Carter (Jim Beaver). Almost before we can draw breath, Carter has been brutally murdered (a typically Del Toro scene of extreme violence) and Edith is whisked away to Sharpe’s remote Cumbrian family pile, Allerdale Hall, a derelict mansion that makes the Amityville House look like a cabin in Happy Valley.  Mysterious Sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain, struggling a bit with her English accent) goes along for the ride. The house itself is an extraordinary piece of design, as much a character as any of the human actors, and Edith soon discovers that there are secrets hidden in its shadows – secrets that are being explained by ghostly apparitions.

It’s not quite a perfect production – there are one or two lines of clunky dialogue that invoke involuntary smirks and, like so many other directors, del Toro needs to learn the basic lesson that CGI ghosts are simply not as terrifying as mere actors dressed up in rags and makeup – but this is the kind of filmmaking that hasn’t been attempted in a very long time, and mostly it pays off handsomely. Literate viewers will spot references to Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw and a whole collection of other literary and filmic references, but the best thing about Crimson Peak is the sumptuous look of it. Del Toro’s origins as an illustrator are writ large in every scene. Curiously though, while every imaginable trope of gothic horror is on display here – clockwork dolls, moths, mysterious labyrinths and ghastly spectres – it’s the occasional excesses of physical violence on display that scare us much more than any of the supernatural elements.

This is sterling stuff, though, and should keep del Toro’s legions of fans happy while we wait to see what he will do next.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney