Pilgrimage (2017)

Set in 13th Century Ireland, Pilgrimage sees Spider-Man (aka Tom Holland as naive young monk Brother Diarmuid) and The Punisher (aka Jon Bernthal as The Mute) team-up in a violent Medieval action-strewn road movie.

They are members of a party of monks tasked by The Pope with transporting a mysterious relic from their isolated monastery on the west coast of Ireland to Rome, as it is believed to have the power to sway the Crusades in favour of The Church.

Naturally, things don't go well.

Heavy on atmosphere, the film is a meditation on the power of faith in the face of adversity and superstition, but also a warning of the dangers of blind faith.

Told in multiple languages (ie. Irish, French, and English, with a smattering of Latin), Pilgrimage clearly demonstrates the ethnic diversity of the Middle Ages, something not always addressed in period films.

It also means plenty of subtitles, which I know puts some people off.

With Ireland torn apart by Celtic warbands battling Norman invaders, the monks are forced into an uneasy alliance with a Norman baron who offers to guard their caravan in return for absolution.

The ever-reliable Richard Armitage (of The Hobbit, Hannibal, Robin Hood et al) shows up as the baron's son, the sinister knight Raymond De Merville, who's working to his own agenda.

Although there are some brutal fight scenes and a splattering of gore, I'm not sure why Pilgrimage merits an 18 Certificate, we've all seen far worse in movies with lower certificates.

Pilgrimage feels like a small film, despite a large (all male) cast and wonderful, evocative Irish landscapes, portentous weather, and mist-shrouded scenery; it's the kind of film that actors make between Hollywood blockbusters.

Ultimately writer Jamie Hannigan and director Brendan Muldowney do a great job of focusing on the central message they were trying to impart, but at the expense of any greater depth.

Neither tragically poor or epically fantastic, Pilgrimage is a film you come away from thinking 'that was okay', and then move on to whatever's next in your queue.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Anya Taylor-Joy

The announcement this week that the queen of genre flicks, Anya Taylor-Joy has been cast in the upcoming Lord of The Rings spin-off movie, The Hunt For Gollum, as Seren, a Sindar elf, reminded of a piece I wrote on an earlier blog when I "discovered" her.

What makes me particularly proud about the following article, posted on October 6, 2017, under the banner headline Remember This Name..., was that I had never written such an article before, or since.

I had never been so engaged by the collective body of a performer's work (who wasn't already a household name). There was just some rare, indefinable magic about Anya that shone out, shouting "this woman is a star".

The text below, from almost nine years ago, is the exact text (and photograph) from the original article, posted on my earlier, now deceased, blog.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Many young actors cut their teeth on genre roles, particularly low-budget horror parts, before making their names in "more respectable" fields of acting.

But Anya Taylor-Joy is proving to have a gift for genre roles.

The 21-year-old has already had memorable lead roles in Split, Morgan, and, of course, The Witch, and is scheduled to return as Casey Cooke in M Night Shyamalan's Glass (the sequel to Unbreakable and Split) in 2019, after a turn as Illyana Rasputin aka Magik in next year's X-Men: The New Mutants.

None of these are low-budget schlockfests; these are mainstream movies.

Remember her name and where you read it today. Anya Taylor-Joy is a future megastar. I'm calling it now, so in years to come you can tune your wayback machines to this post and say "he was right, you know, he was right!"

For instance, her most recent performance - as Casey, in Split - reminded me of Kacey Rohl's pivotal role as Abigail Hobbs in the greatest TV show ever, Hannibal. Rohl has gone on to carve a niche for herself in genre TV with enduring characters in Arrow, The Magicians and Wayward Pines (the M. Night Shyamalan-produced mystery sci-fi show).

Here's hoping great genre roles continue to drop in the lap of the talented Taylor-Joy and that eventually she might even land a character she can become synonymous with - like Hugh Jackman with Wolverine.

But whatever happens, I just hope she continues making amazing movies!

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Television's Hannibal Lecter Mads Mikkelsen is One-Eye, the Viking ultimate fighting champion, a mysterious mute slave so dangerous he has to be kept in chains at all times - even when he fights.

Eventually he escapes captivity and after exacting revenge on his captors he - and the young lad who has been looking after him (Maarten Stevenson) - fall in with a bunch of Christian Vikings heading to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem.

Unfortunately once at sea they become lost in a mysterious fog and when they eventually make landfall it isn't the Middle East but the brave new world of the Americas.

Valhalla Rising is not your typical Viking movie. Languid, episodic and mesmerising, with minimal dialogue, it has far more in common with Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (and, by extension, Apocalypse Now) than, say, Pathfinder or Outlander - even down to the harassment from unseen, missile-firing enemies.

Mix in One-Eye's bloody prophetic visions (which he can't share with anyone, of course) and the occasional reality-challenging montage, such as the sequence where the Christians appear to be attacking each other as One-Eye constructs an impossible pillar of odd-shaped rocks, and you have a film that is far more mystical than mainstream.

It clearly all means something but I'm not entirely sure what - perhaps Mikkelsen's one-eyed berserker is meant to represent Odin of Norse mythology and the young boy is Thor?

Valhalla Rising is definitely a DVD that will require a second viewing - but with the commentary track turned on.

What isn't in doubt is the gorgeous, but bleak, landscapes against which everything is framed. The harsh elements are as much a factor as anything else in this atmospheric drama, even to the extent that there are no buildings featured at all; the characters never have any form of comfort. There are also no women involved either.

Anyone coming to this expecting massive battle scenes, constant clashes between hordes of blood-soaked Vikings and a fast-and-furious action-adventure will be disappointed, but if you are open to something a bit different then you might find Valhalla Rising piquing your interest.

Horror Movies and The Mandela Effect

Bryan Fuller Reunites With Hannibal Himself For Dust Bunny, A Hitman vs Monsters Movie

Ten-year-old Aurora has a mysterious neighbour (Mads Mikkelsen) who kills real-life monsters. He’s a hit man for hire.

So, when Aurora needs help killing the monster she believes ate her entire family, she procures his services.

Suspecting that her parents may have fallen victim to assassins gunning for him, Aurora’s neighbour guiltily takes the job.

Now, to protect her, he’ll need to battle an onslaught of assassins―and accept that some monsters are real.

Lizzie Borden Took An Axe (2014)

Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden got away
For her crime she did not pay.

- children's skipping rope song

First, a confession. Somehow, somewhen, during my nearly six decades of life and absorbing random elements of pop culture, I managed to conflate alleged axe murderer Lizzie Borden with the deaf and blind, pioneering disability activist Helen Keller. 

Somewhere along the way I'd latched onto a self-invented reason for why Borden had become so infamous: not only did she murder her own parents, but she was deaf and blind as well.

Imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch Christina Ricci's portrayal of Borden and realised that the character wasn't actually blind or deaf! 

Turns out her notoriety arose from the simple fact she was a woman accused of these heinous crimes.

Lizzie Borden Took An Axe is the 2014 TV movie that opened the door for the bonkers and wildly fictionalised Lizzie Borden Chronicles, an eight-episode, limited series (contradicting the end of the movie where it states the sisters never saw each other again).

This show, set in the wake of Lizzie's trial, had Ricci and Clea DuVall return as the Borden Sisters in and around Fall River, Massachusetts, in late 19th Century America, the Gilded Age.

In this parade of glorious Grand Guignol, Lizzie has become a coldly, calculating serial killer who could give Hannibal Lecter or Jason Voorhees a run for their money.

Compared to the campy mini-series it spawned, Lizzie Borden Took An Axe plays things much straighter, focussing on the initial murders of Lizzie's father, Andrew (Pontypool's Stephen McHattie) and stepmother, Abby (Sara Botsford).

After establishing that Lizzie and her older sister, Emma (Clea DuVall) don't exactly live in a happy home - their father is controlling and disappointed in them (as they haven't found husbands yet), while their stepmother (apparently) cares more for her own relatives than Lizzie and Emma - the film adds to Lizzie 's criminal profile by depicting her as a habitual liar, thief, societal rebel, and shoplifter.

Random bits of potential obfuscation are thrown in to Stephen Kay's script (such as a lurking soldier, who may - or may not - have been a lover of Lizzie), but he and director Nick Gomez are quite adamant that there is no mystery here: they want you to know Lizzie did it.

There are frequent dream-like sequences and brief flashbacks to the murders, not really showing Lizzie committing them, but strongly suggesting that is the case.

The police are also convinced that Lizzie did the deed, while - once the case comes to trial - her lawyer Andrew Jennings (Billy Campbell) plays up her innocent nature, the fact that she's a Sunday School teacher, and pulls out the old "how could a woman do this?" defence.

At point, the court learns of another random murder of a woman in her home that has just occurred, mimicking the style of the Borden murders, but then this is dismissed - without investigation - and never mentioned again. 

Eventually the jury find Lizzie not guilty and she is freed.

However, the film's denouement, where Lizzie whispers her "confession" to Emma (intercut with more gruesome versions of the earlier flashbacks that leave no doubt as to who was swinging the axe) would have come as more of a surprise twist had the film not spent the previous 80-or-so minutes pointing the finger at Lizzie, saying: "She did it, but don't tell anybody!"

Every so often, it looks as though Lizzie Borden Took An Axe is about to explore such topics as "celebrities on trial" or "trial by media", but then it veers away from those topics just as quickly.

Honestly, I think, taking the two shows together, I feel the original murder, if better framed as a mystery (which it remains in reality), would have been more deserving of the mini-series treatment.

That would have allowed time to explore all the little plot hooks that pop up in the movie and are then forgotten in the next breath.

As wild and, yes, entertaining as The Lizzie Borden Chronicles was, to my mind, nothing was gained by taking a real-life character like Lizzie and transforming her into a serial killer in this manner.

The mystery around the single incident that made her name is enough.

Following it up with pure, over-the-top, fiction is only going to muddy the waters, mixing fact with fiction in this way, so that some viewers will no doubt mistake one for the other.

It's all too easily done.

Split (2016)

Split is a strange film. Like its central character, it has multiple personalities. It begins as a Hitchcockian kidnap thriller, but very quickly starts to seed its narrative with suggestions of something more, something much more "superhero (or in this case 'supervillain') adjacent".

I've been burnt way too often by M. Night Shyamalan movies that I now tend to avoid them on principle, life being too short for repeated unnecessary disappointment or frustration.

Which is why I'd originally planned to give Split a wide berth, until it was revealed that Shymalan was working on a sequel to one of his superb early movies, the inventive superhero origin tale Unbreakable. However, this new film - Glass - was also going to be a sequel to Split.

Well, that I was it. I now had to see Split. And I'm glad I did... even if just for the final few seconds.

Three young students (Anya Taylor-Joy, Jessica Sula, and Haley Lu Richardson) are kidnapped and held prisoner by Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with 23 distinct personalities, each with its own voice, strengths, and weaknesses.

Gradually, the young girls learn that they are being prepared as sacrifices for a 24th personality - called The Beast - which is due to manifest soon.

Just shy of two hours in duration, there's no escaping the fact that Split is a patchy affair.

Possibly my total immersion was hobbled by the "Shyamalan Factor", I was always looking for that bonus plot twist (Is this real? Are the girl's real? Is his psychiatrist real? Is this is all a figment of one of the girls' imaginations?), when it's actually played pretty straight.

All the kidnapees are quite resourceful, but the Final Girl is clearly set up to be Taylor-Joy's outsider, Casey Cooke, as we learn more about the roots of her resourcefulness in flashbacks to hunting trips in her youth with her father and creepy uncle.

There's a lot of the claustrophobic horror of Silence Of The Lambs here, as well as moments that reminded me of Hannibal, but McAvoy's Kevin is drawn from the world of comic book science (like David Dunn) rather than the real world verisimilitude of Hannibal Lecter.

However, given that McAvoy is obviously the star of the feature, I found Casey's story dissatisfyingly unresolved, unless I missed a key point somewhere, particularly in respect to her vile uncle (Brad William Henke).

With the impending release of Glass, which unites the two movies, Split is the supervillain origin story to Unbreakable's superhero story, but it doesn't come across as a self-contained work.

Where the Bruce Willis movie feels like a self-contained work, Split feels like chapter of a longer story.

This makes me wonder if Casey is poised to return in Glass, tying up the loose threads of her story, along with Bruce Willis' David Dunn and James McAvoy's Kevin Crumb?

The Salvation (2014)

No genre quite embraces the revenge story like westerns.

Danish immigrant Jon Jensen (Mads 'Hannibal' Mikkelsen) has worked for seven years preparing his farm and raising the funds to ship his wife and child over from the motherland.

Unfortunately, on the day they arrive, and the family is traveling to Jon's home - that he shares with his laid-back brother Peter (Mikael Persbrandt), just outside the town of Black Creek - they end up sharing a stage coach with a couple of ne'er-do-wells with tragic consequences.

Jon, an ex-solider like his brother, quickly exacts revenge, but that's only the beginning of his troubles.

One of the men he kills (Once Upon A Time's Michael Raymond-James) happens to be the brother of the irredeemably loathsome land baron Colonel Henry Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, of Watchmen and Supernatural fame), an unbalanced ex-Indian killer, with ambitions to take over Black Creek.

Delarue, a gonzo pantomime villain of an antagonist, wants to buy up the town because of the oil beneath it that his paymasters have their beady eyes on.

He also lusts after his brother's mute wife, Madelaine (Penny Dreadful's Eva Green), and very quickly takes advantage of her loss.

Venting his anger on the townsfolk of Black Creek - which includes undertaker-mayor Nathan Keane (Jonathan Pryce) and sheriff-priest Mallick (Primeval's Douglas Henshall) - Delarue demands the capture of his brother's killer and it isn't long before the cowed inhabitants point the finger at Jon.

Despite aspiring to be the new Unforgiven, The Salvation is more spaghetti western in its execution (just check out the number of quirky, gimmicky deaths in the third act, for instance) with a script - from director Kristian Levring and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen - that's not afraid to corral a few clichés along the way.

Eva Green's character, in particular, gets the short end of the stick, being little more than a trophy to be 'won' and whose development revolves around successive brutalisation until she is finally driven to fight back.

Given that Jon would have only known her as Delarue's sister-in-law and accountant, there's no real logic for why Jon saves her, mid-battle, from Delarue's lieutenant, The Corsican (ex-footballer Eric Cantona), except for the fact that she's Eva Green!

Shot in South Africa, The Salvation looks gorgeous, has great pacing and an ice cool central performance from Mads Mikklelsen - who really can do no wrong.

Plot wobbles and misogyny aside, The Salvation stands as a stylish, old school, western revenge movie.