Author: Lou Thomas

NME

From a woman-turned-vampire in the Twilight saga to doomed Princess Diana in Spencer, via surgery enthusiast Timlin in David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Kristen Stewart’s career already has its share of fascinating roles. But now, she gives a deliciously chewy lead turn as gym manager Lou in what might be the most exciting film of her career: the wild, violent and tremendous Love Lies Bleeding, which has just played at Berlin Film Festival.

It’s 1989 in New Mexico when homeless bodybuilder Jackie (actor and martial artist Katy O’Brian) is punched in the face by a man making unwanted advances towards her outside Lou’s gym. Lou takes her in and they begin an explosive love affair that soon leads them towards danger. Just prior to meeting Lou, Jackie had sex with JJ (a memorably sleazy Dave Franco) after he suggests he can get her a job at the gun range owned by Lou Senior, Lou’s semi-estranged father. Violent, vicious abuser JJ is married to Lou’s sister, Beth (Jena Malone).

When Beth, JJ, Lou and Jackie meet over dinner, a confrontation about Beth’s latest bruises compels JJ to reveal his tryst with Jackie to Lou, causing a row between the newly loved-up women. Like so many abusers who can’t keep their hands to themselves, JJ soon goes too far and Beth ends up badly beaten and facially disfigured in hospital. Partly because of the upset this causes and partly because she’s feeling the heady effects of the steroid injections Lou has been giving her, Jackie murders JJ by slamming his head repeatedly into a table. Those of a squeamish disposition will be disgusted by the mess made of JJ’s face; horror fans and appreciators of lurid cinematic violence will be grimly impressed. When the dumping of JJ’s body ends ups attracting the wrath of Lou Senior (Ed Harris with a remarkable hairpiece), the carnage accelerates at a rapid pace.

Following up the oddball nun brilliance of her 2019 debut Saint Maud, director Rose Glass, who co-wrote the film with Weronika Tofilska, has delivered a brilliant noir packed with those great pulp ingredients: sex, drugs and violence. Lovers of the Wachowski Sisters’ excellent 1994 thriller Bound will surely appreciate the mood and content, but Love Lies Bleeding will also draw comparisons to the Coen Brothers’ superb 1984 debut, Blood Simple. It has a similar blend of shocks, fascinating characters and hard-bitten dialogue, though visually it’s bolder and brighter with harsh neon and stylish, red-saturated flashbacks. And sonically, it’s even better thanks to an extraordinary atmospheric score by Clint Mansell.

You might argue that certain fantastical elements here – a scene near the end with a big confrontation springs to mind – take things a little too far, but when you’ve got such richness on screen and K Stew in top, sultry form, this can be forgiven. Love Lies Bleeding is a real Friday night film: a massively entertaining thriller to savour on the big screen, then revisit at home whenever you fancy a lively evening.

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How does an actor follow up the extraordinary Oscar-nominated success of Oppenheimer? If you‘re Cillian Murphy, you go in the opposite direction in role and scale of film. Having played the necessarily talkative and erudite father of the atomic bomb leading the Manhattan project in a $100million Christopher Nolan blockbuster, Murphy tackles Bill Furlong, a laconic coalman in a small town in Wexford, south-east Ireland.

It’s approaching Christmas 1985 when we find Bill working hard to provide for his shrewd, loving wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and their five bright daughters. Bill, still evidently deeply traumatised by the death of his mother during his childhood, comes home covered in grime every night and takes great care to scrub his hands, the implication perhaps being he suffers misplaced guilt for her death. The Furlongs and the local townspeople are seemingly respectful, decent folk but one day Bill sees young, unmarried and pregnant Sarah (Zara Devlin) being ushered into a convent. This is especially triggering for Bill – his own mother avoided a similar fate only by being taken in by a kind and wealthy local family, who it is implied brought him up after his mother’s passing. When one freezing night Bill finds Sarah banished to the convent coalshed, he has to question whether he can stand by and allow this horror and doubtless other abuses to continue. Complicity is widespread.

The shameful history of Ireland’s so-called ‘Magdalene Laundries’, where for most of the 20th century thousands of young, often pregnant women with nowhere else to go were essentially imprisoned, stripped of their identity and worked relentlessly was investigated movingly in 2013’s Philomena, starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. Small Things Like These is a more sombre, slower piece. Its rich tone of regret, guilt and unspoken malice comes across in careful direction from Tim Mielants, Frank van den Eeden’s shadowy cinematography and subtle, measured performances across the board. Bill is warned about the power the nuns – and, by extension, the church – wield in the town, so his moral dilemma is a weighty one. It could cost him dearly to take a stand. In the film’s best scene, Bill is coerced into having tea with and taking money from Mother Mary (Emily Watson) to essentially buy his silence. Watson, though not on screen for more than a few minutes is terrifying and never less than believable, insidiously threatening like a mob boss.

Though its stately pace and tough subject matter may deter some viewers, Murphy again leads with aplomb and his casting alone will likely bring a bigger audience to this intelligent adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name. While on the set of Oppenheimer, Matt Damon saw Murphy reading the Small Things Like These script and suggested he produce with Artists Equity, the company he set up with Ben Affleck in 2022. Based on the resulting work, he would be right to be pleased with that decision.

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An actor as singular as Joaquin Phoenix. A director as fearlessly energetic as Ridley Scott. They’ve not worked together since Roman Empire epic Gladiator at the very start of the 21st century but finally, some 23 years later, they reunite for another period drama spectacular. This time they present the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, a soldier born in Corsica who rose to become the Emperor Of France from 1804 to 1814.

Scott begins Napoleon as he means to go on with a lavish scene full of life and noise depicting the execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793, four years after the French Revolution began. Such a vivid and dramatic start sets the tone of a film that is never less than full-blooded, though riven with historical inaccuracies – we know that Napoleon was in Paris at the time but have no evidence he saw the guillotine come down, as he does here. Later, when the now-General Napoleon leads the French into Egypt, his troops fire cannons at the Pyramids. This might not have happened but it looks fabulous on screen, a fun cinematic shorthand to show how the French army took control of this part of North Africa.

The carnage of war and booming cannons are only one part of the general’s lifetime of conquest. His other great mission was his wife Josephine (Vanessa Kirby, on a break from the Mission: Impossible franchise but clearly relishing such a lively role). Napoleon and Josephine have a fiery, sensual relationship comprising an angry and – at times – difficult love, with affairs and despair marking their years together and apart. As with his efforts on the battlefield, Napoleon couldn’t win every row with Josephine.

Lovers of the currently unfashionable historical epic, however, mostly aren’t eager to see Napoleon for the love story at its core. What they want is a battle – blood and thunder writ large. On this front, there’s little in modern cinema to equal what Scott and his team manage. There are six huge battle scenes across the 157-minute run time, with Napoleon’s victory at the Battle Of Austerlitz (now part of the Czech Republic, then the Austrian Empire) in 1805 perhaps the most exciting, as the French outsmart Russian and Austrian men and horses as they clamber across the ice. This decisive victory is a moment of justifiable pride and Phoenix wears it well. He may have won his best actor Oscar for Joker but this grand, imperious performance is as impressive in many ways (and funnier), even if viewers may argue who is the more sympathetic character.

Of course, all good things come to an end and Napoleon eventually suffered his last, final defeat at Waterloo at the hands of the Duke of Wellington (here essayed by a deliciously hammy Rupert Everett) before his final exile on the desolate island of Saint Helena. Scott has teased a four-hour version of Napoleon that will eventually be available to stream on Apple TV+ and, on the basis of the terrific entertainment he’s already served up, it’ll be a doozy. In the meantime, the details of historical truth be damned: this mighty adventure should be seen on the biggest screen possible. Charge on horseback to the multiplex to savour it.

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Following the mammoth success of the four-film adaptation of The Hunger Games trilogy, a big-screen version of author Suzanne Collins’ prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes was inevitable. But how will the young adult saga fare without Jennifer Lawrence as rebel leader Katniss Everdeen?

This new story focuses on the young life of Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the man who becomes the despotic President Snow, memorably portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the previous films. After a brief childhood flashback in which Snow and his sister see a starving man hack off the arm of a cadaver, we’re introduced to him as an 18-year-old from an affluent family somewhat down on its luck following the death of his father. Snow, a resident of the rich, establishment Capitol city regardless of his low status, is tasked with mentoring one of the “tributes” for The Hunger Games, a reality-show where 24 youths fight for survival until one remains.

As in the first books and films set 64 years later, these tributes are a pair of residents from each of the 12 poor districts outside the Capitol, areas that had unsuccessfully rebelled in a war – referred to as the “dark days” – 10 years before. Snow’s District 12 tribute, singer Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) has the pugnacious spirit and charm to compete in the games but the pair must work together while sometimes breaking the rules to have any chance of her winning.

For the first half, Songbirds And Snakes is familiar, fun territory. In their 10th year the games lack the popularity they achieve in the decades to come, with the scheming Dean Highbottom (played with delightful malice by Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage) keen to stop them and any chance of Snow’s success. The relationship between Snow and Baird is carefully crafted – with a will-they, won’t-they romance brewing. That said, the most interesting screen relationship is that of Snow and Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul. As performed by the typically excellent Viola Davis, Gaul is a sinister eccentric and a genuinely unsettling oddball even by the dystopian standards of The Hunger Games.

But what makes this fifth film the best of the franchise is its tense, paranoid latter half. Snow finds himself exiled to District 12 as a peacekeeper and his sympathies for the rebels seem to sway back and forth. Though we know what he eventually becomes, it’s a treat to watch him working out which master he should serve as he spies, lies and betrays. It’s rare to see moral ambivalence depicted in such non-judgemental fashion, especially in a blockbuster movie. As Snow stalks the industrial gloom, we’re almost rooting for him. With that psychological surprise and Jason Schwartzman’s hilarious, bizarre turn as Lucky Flickerman, the host of the games and likely ancestor of Caesar Flickerman, played by Stanley Tucci in the previous films, it looks like no Katniss is no problem for Songbirds And Snakes. A fine blockbuster adventure for autumn.

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With demonic possession being so thoroughly explored in the Evil Dead, Exorcist and Conjuring franchises it takes a special horror film to stand out among such stiff competition. Yet Talk To Me – a thrilling debut feature from Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, who gave the world the chaotic RackaRacka YouTube channel (six million subscribers and counting) – injects the subject with a freshness that’ll leave audiences clamouring for more.

After a shocking opening scene which sees two teenage boys violently killed, we’re introduced to 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde), a young woman whose mother killed herself. As if that trauma wasn’t enough emotional distress to contend with, her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) is going out with her ex Daniel (Otis Dhanji). At Mia’s insistence, the trio attend a séance where boisterous Hayley (Zoe Terakes) leads attendees to hold an embalmed severed hand and let evil spirits take control of them for no more than 90 seconds.

Mia’s turn at the spooky game yields gruesome visions but also reinvigorates her to such an extent that her fellow Adelaide teens soon follow suit. The ritual is scary but, as with many dangerous experiences in life, it’s an exciting diversion from the mundanity that curious people want to keep pushing as far as they can. Given this, some may view Talk To Me’s cautionary tale as a drug addiction allegory. Things begin to unravel when Mia lets Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) have a brief go on the hand with painful consequences. When he’s inevitably hospitalised, Mia’s mental state takes a turn for the worst and nightmarish visions begin to plague her.

The quality and vitality of the Philippous inaugural effort is less to do with any narrative originality and more to do with the world in which they situate their action and what they do with it. Mia and her pals are mixed-up teens, prone to foolishness, desire and jealousy like the rest of us but crucially, talk and act in recognisable ways. Where fully grown-up adults do appear on screen, they’re impressive too, with Miranda Otto (Eowyn in The Lord Of The Rings) on lightning form as Jade and Riley’s mother Sue, a funny and wise scene-stealer. Marcus Johnson’s portrayal of Mia’s father Max is different again, a caring, tender man trying to help his daughter navigate grief while keeping his own in check.

That said, this is a horror film and many will watch because they want to be scared – or, at the very least, spooked – and maybe even repulsed by some grisly sights, regardless of solid acting and realistic characterisation. Pleasingly, there are some stomach-churning scenes and a smattering of jump scares. Hardcore horror fans should expect less of a full-on festival of bloody carnage and more a new-school chiller in line with the first two films by Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) or Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us). Regardless: for a top-ranking summer fright from Down Under, don’t miss Talk To Me.

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It’s Harrison Ford’s final crack at playing Indiana Jones – and his fifth time out as the great adventuring archaeologist is much more than a fond farewell.

Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny, which premiered this month at Cannes Film Festival, begins with a barnstorming opening sequence set in 1944 in which Indy is being held captive by the Nazis. Having escaped death by hanging, the good Doctor Jones battles his way through and atop a speeding train to save his pal Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) and an ancient dial – part of something called the Antikythera Mechanism – built by Greek genius Archimedes. It’s here that our hero has his first punch-up with evil scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). Ford is de-aged but the tech looks decent. It also helps that the now 80-year-old hasn’t lost a step since Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Next we leap to New York in 1969 where Indy is rudely awakened by his hippy neighbours cranking up The Beatles. We see Indy delivering a lecture to bored students in a hall and it bears amusing comparison to the scene in Raiders where a class of keen academics are enraptured by their suave teacher. The only person interested in his chat this time though is Helena Shaw, the late Basil’s daughter and Indy’s goddaughter. She’s brilliantly played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as charismatic and energetic as in Fleabag or elsewhere. Outside, man’s first trip to the moon is the subject of a great parade through the city. Of course, that’s interrupted in spectacular fashion when a group of Voller’s cronies track the pair down, the most interesting of whom is played by Shaunette Renée Wilson (also seen in Black Panther). Indy and Helena, the latter bestowed with the affectionate nickname “Wombat” by her godfather, soon hotfoot it to Tangiers, Morocco, in an attempt to find the missing half of the dial. It’s a good job, too, as Indy’s apartment is pretty poky and hardly befitting of the great adventurer, even if that side of his employment is kept hush-hush.

So, plotwise, it’s Indiana Jones as usual – dangerous, globetrotting hi-jinks with a pal, trying to keep an old artefact from the clutches of the Nazis. We know Ford is always mint as his career-best character (Indy just beats Han Solo to it in our book) and Dial Of Destiny is no exception. Waller-Bridge makes for a dependable sidekick, though that word is a disservice. She’s more equal partner than lowly helper – which is a relief. After all, Karen Allen, Indy’s main squeeze Marion from two of the previous four movies, is a hard act to follow. Mikkelsen, meanwhile, makes for an even more chilling baddie than he did in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

The biggest question – could another director succeed Steven Spielberg after four Indy films in a row – is also well-answered. James Mangold, who also co-wrote Dial Of Destiny with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp, has a strong action CV that includes X-Men outings Wolverine and Logan. Here, he marshals frantic set pieces with plenty of quite noticeable CGI. This is perhaps sad for those weaned on the superb practical effects of earlier Indy outings. Still, it’s a lively, enthralling tale with some particularly emotive scenes in the final act that are bound to cause a tear or two. Some will ask why make this film at all? The answer should be, why not?

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It’s been a big year for horror already, with killer classics like Scream VI, Pearl and M3GAN setting the bar scarily high in 2023. Looking to join the party is Evil Dead Rise, Irish writer-director Lee Cronin’s terrifying new entry in a much-loved franchise.

• Read more: Evil Dead Rise: inside the year’s scariest horror film

After a brilliant cabin-in-the-woods pre-credits sequence that nods to the setting of the first two Evil Dead films from the ‘80s, we’re introduced to Beth (Lily Sullivan). She’s in Los Angeles to reunite with her estranged sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland from Vikings). Single mum Ellie is busy bringing up her three children, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher), which makes dealing with Beth’s arrival tricky. Then an earthquake hits and makes it even trickier, dislodging something wicked underneath their apartment block. Soon, Danny’s bedroom DJ curiosity sees him spin a piece of vinyl that sounds like a spooky old Latin recital but is essentially the aural accompaniment to the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient book from the newly revealed basement that summons demonic spirits.

What follows is a fast-paced and funny rollercoaster ride filled with likeable characters. While most horror films are populated by people you’d probably want to see mutilated in awful fashion, Evil Dead Rise isn’t. The family of five at its centre are all affable enough that you might want to hang out with them in real life. This may not be the reason anyone goes to see a scary movie but it’s an unexpected bonus.

What probably will be expected, certainly by anyone who’s heard the film’s glowing word-of-mouth reviews, is how savagely bloody things get in poor old Ellie’s apartment and the rest of her building (which look suitably hellish thanks to the sterling work of production designer Nick Bassett and cinematographer Dave Garbett). It may be slightly cartoonish but the abundant gore and blood is impressive, while the death scenes feel inventive and the action furious. Rise pays homage to previous Evil Dead films too, as well as genre classics The Shining and Brian Yuzna’s cult 1989 flick Society. It still manages to stand on its own though – and refreshingly doesn’t require a knowledge of the rest of the series.

Cronin cut his teeth with quiet-but-spooky debut The Hole in the Ground in 2019, but here he’s gone ballistic. It can’t quite match Brandon Cronenberg’s debauched riot Infinity Pool for ferocity, though in its own way it goes just as hard. Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi, one of the film’s executive producers, must be glad he chose Cronin for the job. You’ll find demons and the undead, chainsaws, the trailer-promised cheese-grater, impalings, decapitations and much more that needs to be seen to be believed in this 96-minute thriller. You won’t catch a more satisfying horror film this year. Seek it out.

The post ‘Evil Dead Rise’ review: a riotous reboot that rips up the rulebook appeared first on NME.

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It’s been a big year for horror already, with killer classics like Scream VI, Pearl and M3GAN setting the bar scarily high in 2023. Looking to join the party is Evil Dead Rise, Irish writer-director Lee Cronin’s terrifying new entry in a much-loved franchise.

• Read more: Evil Dead Rise: inside the year’s scariest horror film

After a brilliant cabin-in-the-woods pre-credits sequence that nods to the setting of the first two Evil Dead films from the ‘80s, we’re introduced to Beth (Lily Sullivan). She’s in Los Angeles to reunite with her estranged sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland from Vikings). Single mum Ellie is busy bringing up her three children, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher), which makes dealing with Beth’s arrival tricky. Then an earthquake hits and makes it even trickier, dislodging something wicked underneath their apartment block. Soon, Danny’s bedroom DJ curiosity sees him spin a piece of vinyl that sounds like a spooky old Latin recital but is essentially the aural accompaniment to the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient book from the newly revealed basement that summons demonic spirits.

What follows is a fast-paced and funny rollercoaster ride filled with likeable characters. While most horror films are populated by people you’d probably want to see mutilated in awful fashion, Evil Dead Rise isn’t. The family of five at its centre are all affable enough that you might want to hang out with them in real life. This may not be the reason anyone goes to see a scary movie but it’s an unexpected bonus.

What probably will be expected, certainly by anyone who’s heard the film’s glowing word-of-mouth reviews, is how savagely bloody things get in poor old Ellie’s apartment and the rest of her building (which look suitably hellish thanks to the sterling work of production designer Nick Bassett and cinematographer Dave Garbett). It may be slightly cartoonish but the abundant gore and blood is impressive, while the death scenes feel inventive and the action furious. Rise pays homage to previous Evil Dead films too, as well as genre classics The Shining and Brian Yuzna’s cult 1989 flick Society. It still manages to stand on its own though – and refreshingly doesn’t require a knowledge of the rest of the series.

Cronin cut his teeth with quiet-but-spooky debut The Hole in the Ground in 2019, but here he’s gone ballistic. It can’t quite match Brandon Cronenberg’s debauched riot Infinity Pool for ferocity, though in its own way it goes just as hard. Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi, one of the film’s executive producers, must be glad he chose Cronin for the job. You’ll find demons and the undead, chainsaws, the trailer-promised cheese-grater, impalings, decapitations and much more that needs to be seen to be believed in this 96-minute thriller. You won’t catch a more satisfying horror film this year. Seek it out.

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It’s the year 2000, Britpop’s stranglehold on the UK charts has ended. Across the pond, nu metal dominates and West Coast hip-hop has already conquered the globe. Over in New York, the city’s underground scene is prepping a guitar-led, indie revolution.

Fast-forward 20 years and new documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom arrives to tell the story. Named after Lizzy Goodman’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, British directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace interview key figures of the era, mixed in with chaotic archive footage from sweaty gigs, parties and tours. The Strokes (whose song Goodman’s book took its name from), Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Moldy Peaches, TV On The Radio, The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem all feature heavily.

Unsurprisingly, The Strokes become a big part of the film. We kick off with their origin story – meeting at boarding school, forming the band – and move on to the Lower East Side where they first found a rabid fan base. London’s importance in the story is given space too – Rough Trade signed them and sent them out on tour. Then came the press adulation (including a run of NME covers) and their still-brilliant 2001 debut album ‘Is This It’. Unfortunately, the horror of 9/11 was just around the corner and this changed New York, its bands and the world forever. It was perhaps inevitable that the optimism and excitement of the age would implode after a few, short years of success, especially once the redevelopment of Brooklyn and tripling rents forced many musicians out of NYC.

Elsewhere, it’s a joy to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ magnificent South Korean-American frontwoman Karen O get plenty of attention. Her influence, then and on what came after, is impossible to understate. TV On The Radio’s inclusion is to be celebrated too as further proof that there was more to the scene than white dudes in skinny jeans. There’s also fun to be had with James Murphy. We hear how Northern Irish composer and DJ David Holmes turned former punk Murphy on to ecstasy, and inspired his work as DFA records co-founder and ultimately LCD Soundsystem. It’s worth noting that Southern and Lovelace directed LCD concert doc Shut Up And Play The Hits in 2012 – so they’ve got previous with bringing the electro wizard’s genius to life on screen.

You could argue that the film’s broad focus means great individual depth isn’t achieved. Experts may find little that they didn’t know already, and some of the book’s most interesting talking heads are omitted. On the other hand, skipping across the sticky dancefloors of early noughties indie is so enjoyable that you probably won’t care. Meet Me In The Bathroom makes for a lively snapshot of a very exciting period in rock history. Veterans and newcomers alike should check it out.

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