Fortnite

Medieval (2022, alt titles Jan Zizka / Warrior of God) dir Petr Jakl A biopic / action film about the Czech military leader and hero Jan Zizka – of whom I knew nothing before watching this film. It's a Czech film, but apart from a few minor characters who appeared to have their words dubbed, the actors all speak English. Set in the early 15th century, Zizka (Ben Foster) is a mercenary working for Lord Boresh (Michael Caine). They become embroiled in a conflict involving two brothers, the Kings of Bohemia and Hungary, and a wealthy but disloyal Lord Rosenburg. Boresh hatches a plan, to be carried out by Zizka's men, to kidnap Rosenburg's fiancee Katherine (Sophie Lowe), in order to force his loyalty to the Kings. Today you might think that would have the opposite effect, but as the English title of the film says, this is medieval times, things were quite different then, and schemes a bit like this were not too unusual. Obviously, this being a film based on real characters, not a history documentary, things do not go according to plan. There's plenty of double crossings and complications between certain characters. Zizka and Katherine become close as she comes to see her intended husband is quite happy letting his thugs murder, r*pe and torture peasants just to further his political aims. This is also true for most of the nobility at that time. There are some peasants starting to rise up against this treatment, inspired also by changes in religious beliefs as the reformation is getting underway, led in this part of world by the priest Jan Hus. Later, Zizka would go on to lead this rebellion and, it is claimed, never lost a battle. He was a tactical genius and innovator, coming up with ways to enable poorly equipped armies to take on the supposedly superior knights and professional solders and mastering the use of new technology like cannons. But this film just focusses on the complicated, drawn out, kidnap mission, which I think is heavily or totally fictionalised, simply mentioning at the end what Zizka would go on to do later. Foster is OK in lead role, due to the nature of the film being as much about the battles and skirmishes as any story or character development. Caine and Lowe are better, I guess because they play an old man and woman respectively, they are not that much involved in the battle scenes. To me the violence and gore were too much. Although they are not for me, I don't object to a film being focussed on this, if that is the point of the film, like a slasher horror film. But this seemed to be trying to be more about the history and character development as well, yet that kept getting put to one side for some gruesome eye gouging, chopping off of limbs, bashing in heads with rocks, etc, etc. They could have told the main story or done a slasher film in much less time than the 2 hours this ran for. But by trying to combine those it significantly weakened it for me and it got repetitive at times. 5 / 10 Amsterdam (2022) dir David O. Russel Set in 1930s New York, two WWI veterans, Burt (Christian Bale) and Harold (John David Washington), become embroiled in, and try to foil, a fascist plot to overthrow the US president. They now work as a doctor and lawyer respectively, helping other veterans. It has a huge ensemble cast of well known, and very good, actors. Margot Robbie plays Valerie, an artist and former nurse who tended to Burt and Harold after they were badly injured in the war and took them both to live with her in Amsterdam for a few years afterwards. The rest of the cast includes Chris Rock, Remy Malik, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matthias Schoenaerts, Taylor Swift, Mike Myers and Robert De Niro. It's a bit like a Wes Anderson film at times, partly because of the large cast, partly because it does not take itself too seriously (it's almost a comedy) and also the lines are sometimes delivered in a similar style to his films too and often narrated by Burt. The acting is good, particularly Robbie. Bale also, though he did seem to be doing an Al Pacino impression to me, but maybe that is just a typical accent for a New York Jewish-Catholic (what Burt describes himself as). The story is a bit complex with a lot of twists, particularly early on as Burt and Harold find themselves wrongly accused of murder, but a sympathetic detective (Schoenaerts), also a veteran, gives them chance to clear their own names. The trail of evidence they try to follow keeps going not where they thought but in doing so reveals a new line of enquiry. But I found it was easy to just watch and enjoy and not try to guess where it was going. It deals with issues of race, Burt is white, Harold is black, they fought alongside each other in a regiment of black soldiers led by white officers. It's looking into the death of the general who founded this that gets them involved in the plot. Also Valerie and Harold were lovers in Amsterdam but knew they would never be able to be open about that in the US. It is inspired by real events with the character played by di Nero based on a real retired general from the 1930s and there was evidence that a group of bankers and business men plotted to oust president Roosevelt, although they never got to put their plan into action. 8 / 10 Run (2020) dir Aneesh Chaganty A psychological thriller / mild horror about a single mother, Diane (Sarah Paulson) and her disabled daughter, Chloe (Kiera Allen, who is a wheel chair user in real life too). Chloe cannot walk and has multiple other health issues that she has to take a huge range of medication for each day for. Diane home schools Choe who, aged 17 and very good at science and technology, is eagerly awaiting responses from various universities she has applied to. Diane claims to be very happy with her daughter who has overcome so much already going off to college. But her actions start to say otherwise. After Chloe is told by Diane of a change in one of her medications and she then finds a pharmacy bottle of the tablets with her mother's name, not her own, on the label, she starts to become concerned. The tension build up as more suspicious things are revealed. The way it unfolds is quite formulaic for this sort of thriller film and there is, of course, a twist near the end and then a further twist at the very end. But Paulson and Allen are good, which is important since most of the film is just them with the occasional other bit-part character. There are some nice aspects to the plot, like the way Chloe really gets herself out of her predicaments, rather than how in many similar films such things are more just down to luck. But the very final twist I did not like nor see as necessary. The horror aspect is really very mild indeed, which is fine for me. I found absolutely nothing scary at all, there was no violence other than the briefest of shots of someone being hit, shot or stabbed with a hypodermic needle, and no blood or gore other than the odd graze or slight cut. The horror aspect simply comes from the film conveying the fear Chloe experiences, which it does well. There were a couple of things I noticed and could not work why that was being shown, whether it was just bad writing or editing. Diane's computer was on a very old version of Windows for a film made, and presumably set, in 2020, and in a shower scene we see scars on her back but that is never referred to afterwards. 6 / 10 Cam (2018) dir Daniel Goldhaber Another mild / psychological horror, and for my Halloween film this was probably too mild horror even for my relatively timid tastes. However it was an interesting, if somewhat flawed film. Madeline Brewer (Janine in The Handmaids Tale) plays Alice, a s*x-cam girl who goes by the professional name of Lola-Lola. Most of the characters are other cam-girls or their fans (clients? not sure of the right word), and there is frequent nudity in this, obviously, but nothing too explicit. The horror aspect comes from two things. The first is from some of the things Alice does in her shows, such as faking injuring herself, but these scenes are infrequent and mild. The other comes later on in the story as strange, unexplainable things start to happen. Alice gets into a ratings battle with another performer on the website they both work through. Both do things they would not normally do in their shows and Alice uses one of her big fans, who she has the phone number of, to set up something to shock other viewers and drive ratings up. Then one day she finds herself locked out of her account and all her efforts to get back in fail. She notices she is apparently still online, and someone who looks and sounds exactly like her is broadcasting live from what looks exactly like her studio, in her home. But that cannot be right, because she is at home. So this is where is gets into the more psychological horror. Alice cannot figure out what is going on. What is happening is impossible, yet it's clearly happening. The impersonator seems completely unaware that anything odd is happening. They seem to think they are the real Lola-Lola and Alice is just the girlfriend of one of her fans who just happens to look like her. Alice again uses the help of a couple of those fans she is in contact with. One of these tells her this has happened to other cam girls, and some of them are now dead. It all seems to be building up to a tense, scary conclusion, only that's not really what happens. The actually ending is relatively un-dramatic, and to be fair I quite liked that Alice works out a how to resolve it this way. There is a little bit of tension and someone does get hurt, but not really badly. But it just was not the way I was expecting a film of the type this seemed to be to end. Also it never explains what was going on at all. It's not like one of those films that puts clues to the real story in for you to pick up or, of if it is they were far too well hidden for me to spot. Maybe we are meant to wonder if the impersonator was the real Alice, or maybe it's all in Alice's imagination? But if so I did not see anything indicating that even might be the aim of the story. I genuinely wonder if the writers wanted to have a more complex plot, and maybe more scenes were even filmed, but someone higher up took the decision to edit it down to the standard film length, since it is almost exactly 90mins. It does examine a bit of what it's like to be in this sort of job, e.g. not something Alice wants her mum to know about. She has to deal with weird fans and her only real friends seem to be fellow cam-girls. Brewer is good in the lead role and generally the rest of cast are decent too. It does have some vague similarities to films like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and David Croneburg's Videodrome (I think that' the one I have in mind, but it's a long time since I saw it) but it is not anywhere near in the same league as those. 6 / 10