Restoring The Darkness

I have a confession to make. I used to hate The Darkness. I can’t recall exactly why, but it may have had something to do with my glam-rock obsessed friend hitting repeat on I Believe in a Thing Called Love every time we had a party. Then another friend, with particularly excellent taste in music, gave me a mixed CD which included Get Your Hands Off My Woman and I was finally swayed.

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How Kind of You to Let Me Come

When I first stepped into the Mount Nelson Hotel I felt like Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (or as it is more famously known on stage and screen: My Fair Lady) – the entire places oozes Edwardian elegance. Famous for its morning and afternoon teas, I had heard and read about it so much that I decided it was high time I try it. I was glad to go with a close friend from the theatre, who would appreciate the look and feel of the place and the era it evoked. I felt like Professor Higgins as I sank into an incredibly comfortable, wing-backed armchair and was tempted to call for my slippers.

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When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie…

Today may be Friday the 13th, but I am not going to tell you about Jason Voorhees and the bad luck he brings, but rather about Jason Lilley and his awesome bakery on Bree. Last night I was craving pizza, so I trawled the net for the perfect spot where I could indulge myself.

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Daylight Fades

With the renewed surge of interest in vampire films, Daylight Fades tries to elbow its way into the canon, but is fully undeserving to any claim of belonging. Simply enough: a wimpy young man, Johnny, falls for Elizabeth, a confident and vibrant young woman and although they start a relationship she rebuffs his love a few months down the line. Distraught at her rejection, Johnny takes a drive with his best friend and weeps and whines about his plight, when suddenly they are ploughed down by a truck. As Johnny teeters on the brink of death Elizabeth suddenly realises she loves him and declares she will never leave his side, whereupon a dark stranger mysteriously appears and turns her boyfriend into a vampire so that they can be together forever.

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Don’t Let Him In

The title is a dead give-away that this is a schlock horror with a plot that contains mores holes than any of its massacred victims. In the 90s, the success of Scream was followed by an onslaught of similar attempts, most of which failed. This is yet another slasher film that harks back to that time and is one of the worst instances of young people buying the farm. It plays on every single stereotype: the dark, creepy woods; an eerie warning early in the film and the isolated cottage in the woods. Needless to say, the characters break every single horror-movie rule, such as disobeying the policeman’s orders not to walk in the woods after dark and opening a door when alone in the house and yelling “Is anyone there?”

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Age of Heroes

Saving Private Ryan set the precedent for opening war films with a stirring score and big action set-pieces, but Ages of Heroes cannot justifiably call itself a war film. It merely uses the war as an excuse for action and in order to give the story and characters some kind of emotional background. This is transparently evident by the fact that the story is so silly and paint-by-numbers that it could have been placed in any historical context. It claims to be based on the true story of a top secret regiment, 30 Commando, sent to the cold climes of Norway during World War II in order to uncover German intelligence that will help them win the war. If this is truly based on fact, then they do the war and its soldiers even less justice with the weak dialogue and inconsistent characters. The British and the Germans are mere binary opposites of each other, providing no depth to the characters or truth to the past – merely painting a shallow, fairytale view of the good guy and the bad guy.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Endings

This is not the type of film one would normally expect to find Harvey Keitel in and his character is out of tune with what he usually does. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but the character has an air of sentimentality that is unusual for him to portray. The film tries to adhere to this sentimental feeling, while also attempting to be offbeat and darkly humorous and it just misses the mark on all three counts.

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