Monthly Archives: January 2019

Film Review – Vice

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The opening caption in writer/director Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney satirical biopic Vice points out that although the story we’re about to watch is based on truth, given that Cheney was such a secretive leader, it’s hard to be sure of the facts. Still, the caption goes on to say, “we did our f***ing best”.

Funny yes, but although Vice features fine performances and is darkly entertaining throughout, this disclaimer does not give McKay a licence to play as fast and loose as he does. This is clearly a film with an agenda (what political film isn’t) and amid its determination to paint the Machiavellian Dick Cheney in the worst possible light (understandable), it overreaches somewhat towards the end by attempting to imply that conservative points of view are stupid, and liberal points of view are well-informed. I laughed, but the reality is there are both stupid and well-informed conservatives, and stupid and well-informed liberals. Not to mention corruption on all sides of the political spectrum.

That said, the film is still worthwhile, primarily for Christian Bale’s astounding performance in the lead. Bale is ably supported by the likes of Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife Lynne, who is quite bone-chilling at times, although a sequence where they both quote Macbeth is a little too on-the-nose, even for a satire like this. Elsewhere the supporting cast includes strong turns from the likes of Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell as George W Bush Jr, the President, whose strings Cheney pulled to remarkable effect, if this film is to be believed.

All things considered, despite warnings for swearing, disturbing scenes and a few bloody images, Vice is a good watch and recommended with the afore-mentioned caveats, to those who enjoy an entertaining political satire. One scene involving a waiter played by an uncredited Alfred Molina is darkly hysterical, and worth the price of the ticket alone.

Film Review – Free Solo

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Those suffering from a fear of heights will have their nerves soundly tested by Free Solo, widely considered the frontrunner for Best Documentary at this year’s Oscars. I’m pleased to have finally caught it on the big screen, because this riveting account of Alex Honnold’s attempt to be the first person to scale Yosemite’s 3,000 feet high El Capitan rock face without ropes really, really needs it.

Alex is a monomaniacal enigma; a man whose pathological obsession with flirting with death seems psychotic. Yet he is entirely sane, as a medical scan of his brain proves (although it also reveals the area of the brain that registers fear is remarkably under-stimulated). In attempting to get under Alex’s skin, the film dredges up a few introvert-who-lacked-affirmation-growing-up clichés, but in the end I couldn’t help but conclude he was destined for greatness in his chosen field. He continually speaks of how not being able to climb free solo would make him miserable, and is disturbingly blasé about the fact that this could eventually kill him (as it has many other free solo climbers). His (perceived) lack of emotion and ruthless honesty alienates people (at one point he is referred to as “Spock”), yet he also attracts Sanni McCandless, an unfailingly kind, supportive girlfriend who nonetheless is terrified he will fall to his death. Their touching relationship provides the heart of the film.

The documentary is also about the filmmakers themselves, specifically directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and their camera crew. We see them discussing at length how they are going to film, with roped crews both above and beneath, and with drone footage. More interestingly, we hear them discussing the ethics of what they are doing. What will happen if Alex falls? Can they live with themselves, knowing their presence might have disturbed his concentration?

When Alex finally makes his ascent, the effect is as nail-biting and spectacular as you would expect. I was somewhat reminded of similarly themed documentaries such as Man on Wire, but in the end Free Solo is a unique piece of filmmaking in its own right. Highly recommended.

The Gothic Mysteries of Laura Purcell

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Recently I’ve been reading and enjoying Laura Purcell’s The Corset and The Silent Companions. If like me you have a taste for Victorian era gothic mysteries, both are an absolute must.

9781408889619The Corset concerns Dorothea Truelove, a young, wealthy and beautiful woman whose charitable work involves prison visits. Here she meets Ruth Butterham, a teenage seamstress awaiting trial for murder. Dorothea is intrigued to test her theories in the field of phrenology, to see whether the shape of a human skull really can shed light on why certain people have a tendency to commit crimes. However, she is also faced with an alternative possibility. Is it possible to kill with needle and thread? Ruth claims that her crimes were caused by a supernatural force inherent in her stitches.

9781408888032The Silent Companions is a ghost story set in a decaying country mansion. Recently widowed Elsie is sent to await the arrival of her baby in her late husband’s crumbling country estate. Resentful servants and local villagers are openly hostile, and Elsie only has her husband’s awkward cousin for company. However, Elsie then discovers a room containing a diary written two centuries previously, and a sinister painted wooden figure bearing an uncanny resemblance to herself…

Both novels deploy a crystalline prose, providing both intricate plotting and atmospheric insight into the grim struggles of the era in which they are set, whilst also holding up a mirror to concerns in present society. Above all, both are superbly creepy and gripping mysteries, with some brilliant final twists. But don’t just take my word for it. Susan Hill herself praised The Silent Companions, and the author who wrote The Woman in Black is well worth heeding on matters of gothic fiction.

Film Review – Glass

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M Night Shyamalan’s Glass completes what is surely one of the most bizarre trilogies to ever emerge from mainstream Hollywood. It succeeds neither as a sequel to Unbreakable or Split, and instead emerges as a genre dogs dinner that doubles down on narrative stupidity. That it is entertaining in any way is something of a miracle.

It is difficult to discuss the plot without alluding to plot spoilers for both of the afore-mentioned (much better) films. If you haven’t seen them, I suggest going back to view them first, then returning to this review if you are morbidly curious about events in Glass. Said events pick up some years after Unbreakable and shortly after the events of Split, with David Dunn aka “The Overseer” (Bruce Willis) still doing his hooded raincoat vigilante superhero thing. Meanwhile it’s a regular day for multiple personality psychopath Kevin (James McAvoy), doing his usual thing of abducting teenage girls and subjecting them to the seemingly super-powered attentions of his scariest personality “The Beast”. A chain of events too idiotic to detail here results in both Kevin and David being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who also has brittle boned, evil mastermind Elijah Price aka Glass (Samuel L Jackson) heavily sedated and under observation. Her apparent plan? To convince all three that they do not have superpowers, and are in fact mentally ill. Needless to say, David’s teenage son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) is less than thrilled that his father is now imprisoned, and tries to get him out. At the same time, Kevin’s former would-be victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) has seemingly developed a convenient case of Stockholm Syndrome, giving her the perfect excuse to start visiting Kevin. These various plot threads eventually converge, and entangle themselves in a lunatic tapestry of incoherence.

Let’s be clear: Glass is an absolute mess of a film. It is tonally all over the place, as though Batman and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shared a universe, and were then obliged to share a sequel. Not only that, the pacing is wildly uneven, with the middle act in particular dragging ahead of a barmy third act that piles on twist after twist. Each turn feels more preposterous than the last; secret powers, secret plans within secret plans, secret societies and a final secret so deranged that it doesn’t so much require the suspension of disbelief as the expulsion of disbelief. The icing on this demented cake is the way the screenplay takes this nonsense so utterly seriously, with not one wink or nod, ironically making matters even more hilariously daft.

And yet… I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the film. It is well directed and the performances are pretty good, despite everything. There is something undeniably fun about watching what was once a moderately interesting idea (in Unbreakable) stretched to breaking point in a kind of car-crash-in-slow-motion way. I can’t make up my mind whether being so deliberately straight-faced amid plot holes the size of a sinkhole deserves points for sheer audaciousness. Perhaps not, but even so, Glass is a maddening experience; utterly insane yet also not bereft of guilty pleasures.

Spectre of Springwell Forest – Influences and Inspiration

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What writers inspired my latest novel Spectre of Springwell Forest?

Two undoubted influences on the story are Susan Hill’s seminal The Woman in Black, and the shorts of ghost story par excellence author MR James (such as The Ash Tree and Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You My Lad). There’s also a smidgeon of Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier present, along with a dash of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. In fact, pretty much all my favourite ghost stories have informed this novel in some way, shape or form.

In the case of The Woman in Black, one of the major inspirations was the structure of the novel, including the framing device, and the famously upsetting, terse finale. I’ve always loved the way that book begins in a more settled present; at Christmas (like my story) but with a sense that the apparent serenity of the present masks long buried pain. Certainly as Arthur Kipps recounts his bone-chilling visit to Eel Marsh House, it becomes apparent that he is opening wounds that have never really healed.

With Spectre of Springwell Forest, I wanted to capture something of this tone in the framing device structure, and with the nasty sting in the tail right at the end. Thematically my novel shares other DNA with The Woman in Black – the apparent threat to children, for instance. Don’t Look Now also deals with the death of children and the supernatural.

On the other hand, I didn’t want Spectre of Springwell Forest to be one hundred percent clear cut in its explanations. The Turn of the Screw has an ambiguity that has always appealed to me, and in my novel, amid the spooky shenanigans I wanted to hint that there might – just might – be a natural explanation.

In the case of MR James’s stories, it was more the terrifying tone of those tales that proved an influence, rather than plot specifics. His superbly suspenseful prose remains unsurpassed. If my book contains a tenth of the churning dread conjured by his writing, I will have done very well. Of course, my novel doesn’t set out to copy his work or the other afore-mentioned classics, but seeks to be its own beast.

Spectre of Springwell Forest is out now. Pick up your copy here (in the UK) or here (in the US).

Film Review – Stan & Ollie

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Stan & Ollie is a charming, poignant biopic charting the autumn years of much-loved slapstick comedy legends Laurel and Hardy. It isn’t going to change the course of cinema, but it features fine performances, assured direction from Jon S Baird and a rich sense of time and place.

After a massively successful Hollywood career, Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) meet up again in 1950s Britain, on a theatre tour that they hope will revive their flagging careers and lead to a new film. But will past resentments – specifically the fact that Ollie made a film without Stan that ended their screen partnership in 1937 – resurface to sour the reunion?

Jeff Pope’s amusing and compassionate screenplay centres not just around the bond between Stan and Ollie, but also their touching relationships with their devoted wives (and indeed, their wives relationship with one another). Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson are superb as Ida Kitaeva Laurel and Lucille Hardy respectively, and are every bit as important to the story as Coogan and Reilly.

This isn’t a film that features a lot of cinematic showing off, but the opening unbroken long take through a Hollywood backlot is worth mentioning. Everything the viewer needs to know exposition wise about Stan and Ollie is revealed during that conversation, although really it doesn’t matter if you are familiar with their back catalogue or not.

Ultimately this is an uplifting, unashamed celebration of an iconic cinematic duo, shot through with just the right dose of melancholy.

First Love: Another short story coming soon

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I have some more exciting news on the publishing front. Dragon Soul Press has selected my short story Papercut for inclusion in their upcoming romantic anthology, First Love.

The theme for this anthology is self-explanatory, but with elements of fantasy. My story, Papercut, concerns a lonely teenage boy living with his ultra-strict Jehovah’s Witness mother. One night a mysterious girl made entirely of paper appears in his dreams, and… Well, you’ll have to read it to find out what happens.

First Love is released on the 28th of February. Watch this space for further updates.

The Tangent Tree Extra: Star Wars The Last Jedi one year on

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Here is a Tangent Tree Extra, Tangent Tree Special, Tangent Tree Mini, or Tangent Bonsai Tree or whatever you want to call it… ie, it’s not a full episode, but a kind of mini stand-alone rant. This one is about Star Wars: The Last Jedi one year on. That film stirred up some very strong loved-it/hated-it feelings, and I wanted to share my considered thoughts on this somewhat singular film, now the dust has settled.

As usual, you can listen on Spotify, Podcast Addict, iTunes and so on, or on the Tangent Tree website by clicking the link here.

The Tangent Tree will be back for a full-blown second series probably sometime in late February or early March. Watch this space.

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Film Review – The Favourite

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Three superb central performances, splendid direction and a savage screenplay are my favourite reasons to see The Favourite, a deliciously dark period drama from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. With Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and now this under his belt, he has earned himself a place on my will-view-everything-he-directs list.

The court of Queen Anne during the eighteenth century is the setting for this refreshingly unsentimental, viciously funny and hugely enjoyable tale of intrigue and power-play. The central conflict for the favour and affections of the insecure and outwardly barmy Anne (Olivia Colman) involves her loyal counsel Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and newly arrived maid Abigail Masham (Emma Stone), Sarah’s cousin who has fallen on hard times. In the background, war with France is in full swing, with rival Whig and Tory factions in the government either trying to appease France or keep fighting to get better terms of surrender.

This is no buttoned-up, well-behaved Merchant Ivory tale, but a bawdy, unsparingly dirty piece of work (in every sense of the word). Warnings are duly dispatched for sex, nudity and lots of bad language (including the casual dropping of multiple c-bombs). Contextually justified? Absolutely. Just don’t go looking for historical accuracy (for instance, it is unlikely that Queen Anne was actually a lesbian).

Lanthimos deliberate evokes themes from classics such as All About Eve and particularly the style of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, but this is also a film with his unique stamp. Liberal use of the wide-angle lens to create scale and disorientation proves particularly noteworthy, and consequently this really benefits from being seen on a big screen. As for the screenplay, Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara have wit to spare, but their work is also a clever meditation on the survival instinct and human frailty lying beneath cruelty and eccentricity.

Which brings me back to the central performances. Colman is quite wonderful as Queen Anne. Although she appears mad at times, much of this masks inward weariness and grief, and even her peculiar habit of keeping seventeen rabbits in her bedroom has an important reason behind it. Weisz excels too, showing flashes of genuine well-meaning vulnerability beneath her outward snobbery. As for Stone, her performance is further evidence of her acting diversity. Although her character arc ostensibly involves someone going from kind to uncompromisingly cruel in her desire to win at all costs, there are clever hints and indications that really her ruthlessness lurked inside her all the time, waiting to be kindled. Yet even then, we understand her cynical outlook given all the world has done to her. At one point, she asks a male character whether he intends to rape or seduce her. When he responds by insisting he is a gentleman, she lies back on her bed with numb indifference, muttering “Rape then”.

In short, the manipulations and machinations of The Favourite are a wickedly entertaining and merciless dissection of the human condition.

Spectre of Springwell Forest – An introduction

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Spectre of Springwell Forest, my first novel published via a traditional publisher (as opposed to self-published) is out now.

A nail-biting, bone-chilling supernatural mystery, Spectre of Springwell Forest is a ghost story in the classical tradition, but with a number of important differences. Here is a more in-depth introduction to the story than I have previously written about on this blog.

SSF coverThe novel opens in Exeter, 2010. Lily Parker learns that her daughter Olivia is to move to the village of Springwell, near Plymouth. To the surprise of her husband Andy, this sends Lily into terrified despair. She tells him that Olivia absolutely must not move to Springwell, under any circumstances. Andy wants to know why, and Lily then tells him what happened to her many decades previously, in 1979, warning him that she has a horrifying secret that she had previously hoped to take with her to the grave.

In 1979, Lily and her then six-year-old daughter Olivia, along with her first husband Tom Henderson, move to the sleepy village of Springwell. Here they meet a tight lipped community of secretive villagers who seem to have something to hide. Lily then discovers a painting of an abandoned railway tunnel in her attic, by a local artist, Alison Merrifield. Lily is strangely drawn to the painting, particularly the dark maw of the tunnel, and ends up hanging the picture in her hallway.

After meeting her neighbour and other mothers dropping their children at the local primary school, Lily is surprised to learn they all have similar paintings in their homes, all of them painted by Alison Merrifield, all of them showing the same abandoned railway tunnel. The other mothers dismiss this as something of a village in-joke, and when Lily visits Alison in her local craft shop, Alison herself insists she cannot understand why the paintings of the abandoned tunnel are so popular. But Lily senses she is being lied to.

Shortly afterwards, when Lily and Olivia go for a walk in the local forest, they come across a fenced off area in the heart of the woods where the barbed wire has been mysteriously torn apart. Investigating further inside the fenced off section, they discover the very same abandoned railway tunnel of the painting, and enter the tunnel… where something I won’t tell you about happens.

After this incident, Lily starts to make out a mysterious figure in the painting of the railway tunnel. As time passes, the eerie figure becomes more and more clearly defined, but Lily is disturbed to discover no-one can see it but her. Worse still, as the sinister figure is revealed, Olivia starts to behave in an increasingly alarming manner…

Then things get really scary, building to a horrifying and unexpected finale.

I hope this introduction whets your appetite for the story.

Spectre of Springwell Forest is out now. Pick up your copy here (in the UK) and here (in the US).