My Thoughts on Blinded by the Light

There's been a lot of music movies lately. Maybe that's because the world is a bit of a shitshow at the minute, and the generally upbeat attitudes that these films have is a pretty effective tonic. You don't have to be a Bruce Springsteen fan to enjoy Gurinder Chada's Blinded by the Light. And even if you don't share Blinded's level of Boss fandom, it's really hard not to get swept up in the sheer delightfulness of it. The film (based on a true story) follows Javed, a teenager from a Pakistani family living in England in 1987. His life is less than stellar, with Thatcher's  Britain being incredibly bleak and difficult to live in. It doesn't help that the country is rife with racism, which makes life pretty hard for Javed and his family. He's understandably feeling totally lost, not quite sure of his identity or how he fits in. It's at this point that The Boss comes into his life, with the music of Springsteen completely inspiring him and allowing him to see the world in a different way

Right off the bat, it's not too hard to apply this story to the world we're living in, although the parallels aren't the point. For the most part, Chada keeps that stuff subtextual. This is a totally feelgood story about finding the courage to discover your voice. It's easy for a film to have energy, but what really makes this work is the amount of spirit it has. That's what makes a difference, what gives an overdone story new life, and as a result of this passion and enthusiasm, the film is genuinely feelgood, not pandering or hollow but sincere and honest. It acknowledges the difficulties of growing up, and the harsh truths of our hero's surroundings, but finds triumph and warmth and humour in these difficulties. Javed is an easy protagonist to root for, particularly because of Viveik Kalra's spirited performance. This guy is definitely gonna be one to watch out for, because he's just outstanding here. He nails Javed's angst, but also his passion and naivety. It's an incredibly sincere performance, one that immediately puts us inside Javed's world, and so when the heartwarming moments hit, they feel earned. Kalra is the heart and soul of Blinded by the Light, and his earnest, genuinely likeable performance is what allows this film to deftly avoid clichés or over-sentimentality.

The film treads familiar story beats. Most of this has been seen in other films, but what makes Blinded stand out is that spirit. The Springsteen soundtrack gives it some personality, but the sheer amount of energy and likeability is what makes this film feel fresh. It's so easy to love Javed and want to follow his story, even though we've seen a lot of his struggles before. His relationship with his father in particular feels well done. That's something that could have felt clichéd, but the warmth and realism is what makes it work. This is a genuine film, one that's good natured and sincere, and that's why it works as well as it does

One thing I love as well is how the soundtrack is incorporated into the film. They're not musical numbers as such, but the scenes where the songs are almost like fantasy. It's the words and music of The Boss leaking into Javed's world, giving him courage and energy that he wouldn't have otherwise. They're fun, but they work because of what they represent for our hero. The free him from his grey reality, open his eyes to the truth in his life, and give him the power to stand his ground. The soundtrack lets us feel exactly what he's feeling, and the sequences where the film lets The Boss tell the story are the absolute highpoints

The film runs on pure passion, and not everything in the story works. There's a story about Javed's sister that feels like it finishes before it starts, not to mention an excursion to New Jersey that doesn't do too much for the plot, with the film literally showing postcards from Javed and Roops' trip. These are definitely stumbles, but even then, they're the film trying things that don't quite work, but in this case, it's the effort that counts. Yeah, they're not great, but there's still something admirable about this movie trying different things and not quite having them pan out. Chada isn't playing it safe here, and even when something doesn't quite work, the fact that she tried to deviate from what you'd expect from this story is kind of cool in itself.

Blinded by the Light is absolutely fantastic. It's pure passion from beginning to end, a powerful, spirited ode to being young and finding your voice. It's strengthened by Bruce Springsteen's music, but not defined by it. The music is incredibly important to the film, essentially allowing you to feel Javed's epiphanies as they happen, but it's not a Bruce Springsteen film. At the end of the day, this is pure, high quality feelgood cinema. It's emotionally driven, optimistic and good natured, so much so that, when it doesn't quite hit the mark, it's easy to forgive. Viveik Kalra is on his way. He's absolutely sensational here, and I cannot wait to see what he does next. This is without a doubt one of my favourite films of the year so far, funny, honest and uplifting. I absolutely loved Blinded by the Light, and I cannot recommend it enough. 

My Thoughts on I Am Mother

I Am Mother is an awesome idea on paper. A film set in a secret facility, where a lone robot raises the last child on the planet, following an apocalyptic event? Sounds pretty interesting. An injured survivor finds her way into the bunker, bringing with her the truth about what really happened outside the facility? Sounds even better. So it's a real shame that I didn't enjoy this film at all. Believe me, it brings me no joy to say this, but I Am Mother was an absolute disappointment. It's an awesome idea for a film, and seeing this kind of thing make it onto the screen is pretty impressive, because original high concept sci-fi is always great to see, and I'm really glad to see so many people enjoying it

The problem for me is that it's just so boring. The film feels like a two hour episode of Black Mirror, one with a good premise but without any real commentary. Those episodes work because they're (usually) around an hour long, just enough time to explore a single idea in depth. I Am Mother runs out of steam with its premise fairly quickly, even when new developments try to change things up. The problem is that core idea, one that's so solid that it's actually kind of difficult to stretch over a two hour feature film. The first twenty or so minutes are pretty good, succeeding on the strength of a really good idea. The problem is when they try to develop that, with reveals that just over complicate a winningly simple idea.

Technically, it's not even that bad. The film looks AMAZING, with fantastic effects. It's shot really well, and all of this gives the bunker such a strong atmosphere. The performances are pretty good too, with the whole thing almost working like an underground play. The general ideas are pretty good, even if the later ones can't quite top the initial premise, or even really develop the plot beyond it at all. It's made of good components, but it's just so freaking boring. All of this stuff is good, it just never quite comes together, with the glacial pacing not doing the already thin plot any favours.

I Am Mother is a great idea that suffers from being stretched thin over a runtime that's definitely longer than it should be. As good as everything around it is, it never quite comes together because of that stretch. It's a dull watch, and while that twist at the end should feel monumental, it's really not, because it's just too hard to really care about anything that's going on, so by the time that reveal comes in, it's just.... kind of something that happens. It's a real shame, too, because this could have been really good, and this kind of high concept sci-fi is definitely something to celebrate when it's done well, but this just doesn't work. I don't hate it, but I also don't think it works, not half as well as it should, anyway.

My Thoughts on Black Mirror (Season 5)

Black Mirror is one of the most consistently interesting series out there at the minute, and when it's at it's best, it's really, really special. After all there aren't many shows that can go from a tense tale about the prime minister being blackmailed to a tender, honest love story set in 1987, to a crazy Christmas episode split in three without breaking a sweat. I love this show, because it always has something to say, and always says it in an interesting, sometimes explosive way. When the fifth season was announced, I was immediately hyped, and when the trailers were released, I didn't really watch them, because I wanted to go in blind and have Charlie Brooker wreck me like only he can. And, having seen all three of them now, I think that the season is, overall, pretty good. Obviously, as ever, some chapters are stronger than others, but on the whole, the show has stayed pretty damn strong.

Season 5 starts with Striking Vipers, and this episode is freaking bonkers, man. Black Mirror has had episodes about video games and VR before, but there's something about this one that's just so interesting. Like so much of this is stuff that we've seen before, in Playtest, and San Junipero and even The Entire History of You to an extent, but something about how it's been put together is just so interesting. Without giving too much away, the episode follows two old friends reconnecting over the VR version of a video game they used to play all the time. When they get in there, the results are.... unexpected. What I love about this episode is that it's not afraid to explore these two guys, to show them at their most vulnerable and in doing so, pick away at some really interesting ideas, like sexuality. The show has always had something to say about relationships, and the way this episode approaches that idea is really quite interesting. Okay yeah, it suffers a little from previous episodes exploring similar things, but I've never quite seen something like this through the lense of video games. Even if it's maybe a tad longer than it needs to be, it explores its ideas in a medium that allows them to ask these questions, and the fact that it's unafraid to give some of the answers is one of its greatest strengths. It's not one of the show's more shocking episodes, or even one of its more creative episodes, but the way it dives so deep into the psyches of these guys is something that I find really interesting. It asks some really thought provoking questions, and never feels like it's passing judgement when it starts to answer them. I'm not a huge fan of its ending, which feels oddly quite neat, but I suppose Black Mirror has always been more of a conversation starter than a comprehensive study, and that's definitely true here. I'm a huge fan of fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter, and the way this episode homages them is affectionate, and ultimately pretty interesting. Overall, Striking Vipers feels like a remix of ideas that the series has touched on before, but they really work when they're put together, even if there are some issues here that stop it from being one of the show's best episodes. Also cast Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in more things please

Smithereens is the second episode, and is one of those Black Mirror episodes that isn't science fiction as much as it is a parable about the modern world. Like The National Anthem and Shut Up and Dance, it takes existing technology and uses it to tell a really, really effective story of the world we live in. This is the season's best episode by some distance, one that really benefits from its long runtime, which I realise was an issue for a lot of people, but I don't know, I kind of think it works. It starts almost cryptically simple, with a troubled driver working for a ride share app snapping and kidnapping an employee of a multi billion dollar social media company. One thing I think that the runtime does is it allows us to really see every relevant detail here. There's a lot of stuff early on that comes back in a big way (there's a reason he's looking for the right moment to talk at the group therapy sessions), and the episodes ability to deliver these really powerful payoffs is maybe it's greatest strength. Andrew Scott is absolutely phenomenal here, beginning quietly, before gradually working his way up to one of the most stunning moments in the series, where he explains his motives in heartbreaking detail. The episode is tense, really drawing the whole situation out, always stopping just short of making it feel like it's dragging. It's very much about how normal, everyday people relate to big, monolithic companies, or rather, how they don't. Smithereens understands that it's easy to feel invisible to these corporations, and uses that to explore the fraught emotional states of its characters, giving us not just the perspective of Scott's damaged driver, but also a grieving mother seeking answers about her daughter's death. Okay, so maybe I would have liked a bit more about her, because she's largely forgotten about in the episode's mid section, but that's really my only issue here. It's an episode of gradual payoffs that really resonate, maintaining and intensifying that great tension, before letting it explode into achingly emotional social commentary with an ending that's both devastating and satisfying. This is top tier Black Mirror, a real primal scream of an episode that resonates because it's made of real feeling ingredients. Yeah, I really dug this one

Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too definitely feels like the weak link. This is the episode that will forever be known as "The Miley Cyrus One", partially because her being in this show is kind of surreal, but also because the plot is so thin and clichéd that her presence is really the only memorable thing. Basically, an incredibly famous pop singer releases small android replicas of herself. A shy girl buys one, and when the singer is put in a coma by her aunt/manager, it's up to the girl, her sister, and the robot to save the day. This feels like a weird hodge-podge of better Black Mirror episodes, one that also kind of misses the point of any of them. It's also weirdly comedic, not unusual for this show, but given the lack of any real bite or commentary, the humour makes this one feel weirdly out of place in the larger scheme of the whole show. It's a strange experience, one that kind of lacks a lot of what makes this show good. Some of the jokes do land, and I guess the absurdity of the whole thing is kind of fun, so it's not a bad episode, but it does feel particularly weak given the lofty heights that this show has proven itself capable of reaching. Ideas of AI and public image have been done so much better in other episodes, so definitely watch those instead. That said, in the moment, this episode is kind of fun

It's hard to talk about any season of Black Mirror as a whole because of how varied the episodes can be, in content and quality, but overall, season 5 is pretty strong. Those first two episodes are definitely the highlights, Striking Vipers being thrillingly crazy and fairly thought provoking, and Smithereens being an unbearably tense slow burn that explodes into a fantastic comment on large companies and small people. True, Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too is the season's weakest, but even that isn't bad, just bizarrely out of place. Overall, it isn't the show's strongest season, but there definitely is fun to be had with this latest crop of Mirror-y goodness

My Thoughts on Midsommar

Hereditary was an interesting film. The smash horror of last summer, it was such an unbelievably ambitious debut, that like I said in my review at the time, is largely pretty good despite some issues. I suppose one surprise is how soon Ari Aster is following it up, with just over a year between Hereditary and Midsommar. Such a small gap could be a bad thing. Maybe he's rushing himself, not giving himself enough time to properly learn or grow. Actually watching Midsommar makes me realise that that's probably not the case, because not only do I think it's better than Hereditary by some way, but I also think that this is the film that establishes something that his first film only suggested: Ari Aster is the real deal. Midsommar is an incredibly disturbing film, and while I'm not going to go into any specific details (for spoiler reasons and content reasons), I'd still advise some reader discretion, because this film contains some seriously difficult subject matter. I'll try to be vague, but just in case, you have been warned

Midsommar follows Florence Pugh's Dani, a young woman whose life is drastically, horrifying altered by a gut wrenching tragedy. The film's first fifteen minutes are it's best sequence, excellently made, quietly devastating and ridiculously efficient in how it tells its story. This sets up the absolute madness that follows, and does so beautifully. Dani's boyfriend Christian invites her on a trip to Sweden with his friends to attend a midsummer festival. As you can imagine, this goes south very, very quickly. The film is slow, hypnotic and almost ethereal. Most of it takes place in daylight, which makes everything that goes down doubly eerie. Aster really takes his time getting into the horror, which makes Dani's trauma really feel like it resonates. It's a dreamy drift into madness, and its greatest strength is how it holds everything back for most of its run. The explicit details (and they are very explicit) are only really revealed near the end, but it's that constant feeling of unease that makes this film so effective. It's not that nothing is happening, it's that the horror takes its time to arrive, and when it does, you'd better strap yourself in. That feeling of anticipating something disturbing is one that's at the heart of this film, and something that I definitely had watching it.

I've seen some comparisons to The Wicker Man, and though that's definitely understandable, I actually saw more similarities between this and Don't Look Now. Both films feature protagonists traveling abroad following a tragedy, only to discover unimaginable horror. Oh yeah, and both films contain unspeakably graphic sex scenes. I'm not going to call it "Don't Look Now for the modern age" or anything silly like that, but I do think that Nicolas Roeg's film is a helpful point of reference for this one, as it deals with some pretty similar themes and ideas.

I know I said this earlier, but it really can't be overstated how disturbing this film is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the film is such an unpleasant experience, not just because of the content, but also the length and pacing. This is not a short movie, and the slow, deliberate way that Aster unfolds the story makes it a really tough film to sit through. Much as I really enjoyed it (enjoyed might be the wrong word here), I doubt I'll watch it again, because the sense of dread is so overwhelming and oppressive, and the things that happen are so extreme. Credit to Ari Aster, he created one seriously powerful horror experience.

Midsommar is one crazy trip. It's deeply unpleasant watch that I'm not sure I can exactly recommend, but as a pure work if horror, it's one of the strongest in recent memory. Beginning with tragedy and ending with.... flowers and bears, it's a pure descent into colourful hell, and it's awesome to see Ari Aster finally finding his groove. He feels so confident behind the camera, keeping everything controlled to just the right level, while also giving the film room to be woozy and dreamlike. He unleashes chaos gradually, like a pastel explosion in slow motion, and that's definitely the film's strongest attribute. It takes its time in revealing its mysteries, but when it does, boy is it spectacular, and deeply messed up. The performances are phenomenal, especially Florence Pugh, who portrays the bone deep trauma of her character excellently. Jack Reynor continues his impressive winning streak as a character who's honestly kind of an asshole, which he actually plays quite well. Will Poulter gives good douchebag, doing something that ultimately results in one of the film's more horrifying scenes (careful around the ancestral tree). These are the standouts, but the whole cast are impressive here. Midsommar is a really strong piece of work, and it really convinces me that Ari Aster is a great horror storyteller, something that Hereditary didn't exactly do. This is a carefully curated voyage into sun soaked doom. Watch it, but do so at your own risk.

My Thoughts on Murder Mystery

Adam Sandler is a bit like moss. Nobody really likes him, but somehow, he's still around, no matter how much you try to get rid of him. Weird thing is, I actually really like Adam Sandler. Maybe his filmography is pretty poor (although Punch Drunk Love is genuinely masterful and I urge you to see it if you haven't already), but he actually seems like a really nice guy. Shame Murder Mystery doesn't do much to get him out of the slump he's been in for the last two decades. This is a pretty lazy film, a paint-by-numbers comedy whodunit that doesn't have much to do or say, instead kind of limping its way through some pretty generic story beats. It follows Sandler and Jennifer Aniston's married couple, who live a pretty dull life, until a holiday in Europe leads them onto Luke Evans' yacht, which becomes the scene of a grizzly murder, leading our heroes to try to figure out just who did it

The performances are all pretty one note here. Sandler isn't great, but he's definitely better than he's been before, so thank god for small blessings. Aniston doesn't even feel like she's acting, just kind of on autopilot for the whole thing while getting the occasionally funny quip. I guess her character is into crime novels, but it's only mentioned a few times, but good try at giving her character traits I guess? The other characters are kind of a cartoony gallery of potential killers, none of them particularly memorable, but none of them notably bad. They're all kind of entertaining actually, not well developed but still mildly fun. The reveal of who did it isn't especially obvious, but maybe that's because I didn't really care enough to notice any foreshadowing. Still, it's kind of a surprise when it happens, but again, that could be from a lack of plot development.

The jokes are kind of flaccid. I didn't laugh.... at all. Granted, I didn't groan at anything either. The jokes are incredibly unfunny, but they aren't painful or anything. There's nothing overly crass or annoyingly low brow. They're just kind of there, not offensively bad but not actually funny, which creates a weird void where you know the laughs should be. The very French detective was kind of fun, but apart from that, nothing is zany or sharp enough to get much of a laugh. The catch with the merciful unfunniness is that, because there aren't many actual jokes, the film is just kind of boring. I'm thankful that it's not as crude or annoying as some of Adam Sandler's other offerings, but it's still so dull. Game Night did a similar idea much, much better, with better writing, better characters and actually funny jokes. Watch that instead.

I suppose the best things about Murder Mystery are the things that it doesn't do. There's no hackneyed emotional moment. I mean, there kind of is with this plot point about Adam Sandler lying about being s detective, but the film never stops to deliver some really forced emotional scene, instead just kind of addressing it a few times and then just moving on, so it kind of avoids the trap that far too many shitty modern comedies fall into. It's also mercifully short and pretty fast paced. Those 97 minutes are kind of boring, but the fact that it never overstays its welcome is pretty good, and it moves along at an enjoyably swift pace. The jokes stay away from being offensively bad, which they easily could have strayed into, which is another small mercy in a film of plenty

Murder Mystery is generic, bland, and fairly boring. It's plot is far from original, but a lack of laughs and a tendency to play things by numbers means that it's not even really a parody. It doesn't even really have fun with itself, instead just kind of happening. Is it bad? Yeah, but it really isn't the worst. It's a decent diversion but not much else, semi-enjoyable in the moment but it doesn't linger at all. It's a pretty flat film, one that never tries to be more than it is, instead just kind of settling for its own flatness. It's not great, but it could have been worse, so ultimately, it's just kind of meh

Reservoir Dogs: The Perfect Debut

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most beloved filmmakers working today, and I just love the guy, and I'm so excited for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. So much so, that I want to talk about my favourite Tarantino film, which, incidentally, is his first one, Reservoir Dogs. When I did my top 12 movies of all time, I had a shedload of honourable mentions, and this was definitely one of them. This is how you debut. Tarantino exploded into the screen with this, a white hot, audacious film that even 27 years later, still packs one of cinema's strongest punches. Time has been (mostly) kind to Tarantino's debut, which is as explosively cool now as it was in 1992

Reservoir Dogs follows a group of thieves carrying out a diamond heist, which goes wrong when one of them rats them out to the police. Injured and bloodied, the gang need to find out who sold them out, fast. It's clear from the opening minutes that Tarantino means business, with a conversation loaded with his trademark razor sharp dialogue ("let me tell you what Like a Virgin is all about...."), which then leads to one of the most iconic opening credits scenes ever, that awesome slow motion walk set to Little Green Bag. From there, the film is a tightly constructed, snappily paced story, brilliantly told

Where the hell do I even begin with how much I love this film? Almost everything about it is great. I guess I could start with the cast. A stoic Harvey Keitel, a nervy Steve Buscemi, a psychotic Micheal Madsen and a bloodied Tim Roth  are the highlights, but everyone is pretty much perfect in this film. It's almost like a play, driven almost purely on the strength of these performances. Because of this, Reservoir Dogs is like pulpy, ultraviolent theatre, with each of these guys different as their performances are, each of them brings that kind of hard-boiled cool that would come to become a trademark of Tarantino's. The film's full of these future staples actually, such as.....

THE FREAKING SOUNDTRACK. K Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s is almost like another character in this film, and every time music plays, it's telling a part of the story without using words. Obviously there's the notorious Stuck in the Middle With You torture scene which works because it uses the most upbeat pop song to score the goriest and most distressing scene in the film, but every other track does a similar thing. Look at how Little Green Bag plays over the dogs going to execute the heist, or how Hooked on a Feeling scores the rat trying to win the trust of the gang in a flashback. Soundtracks are everything in cinema, and a great one can work as an effective storytelling tool. And this one is perfect, filling in parts of the narrative with a carefully curated playlist of 70s songs that also works as a radio show that plays over the course of the weekend, which strengthens the film's structure and gives it a definite sense of time. And on top of all of that, it's the kind of killer soundtrack that we've come to associate Tarantino with, the kind that sets a definite tone, gives us a better feel of the characters, is an effective narrative tool in itself, and is just incredibly cool to listen to. In the blistering heat of the heist's disastrous aftermath, the soundtrack provides some ice cube cool refuge, giving us a distinct mood and feel that would come to define Tarantino and his style

The way the plot plays out is simple, but so incredibly effective. The reveal of who the rat actually is is such a wonderful twist, one that Tarantino masks with not just the chaotic haze of violent panic, but also just by putting in plain sight. I won't say who it is in case you've somehow yet to see it, but I think it's one of QT's most devilishly clever narrative tricks. From the beginning, Reservoir Dogs is nervy and paranoid. We get a decent idea of who these characters are, but not well enough so that when the chaos begins, we suspect them all. As far as we know, they all did it, and they're also all innocent. Because after all, in a situation like this, can you actually trust anybody? Tarantino keeps us firmly rooted in this violent panic, never giving us the clarity or time to get our bearings and figure out the truth. His showman like grip over the story is what makes this movie work, distracting us with flash and panache that allows him to get a fairly obvious reveal right past us. Not that the tricks he uses to distract us are purely for show, because they essentially work as his calling card, a powerful showcase of who this fresh faced filmmaker is, while also masking a narrative punch that comes to prove that this guy isn't all talk

And yeah, he's not all talk, but Jesus that's some dialogue. Tarantino is known as a master screenwriter, one who can make every word of dialogue count, often with a razor sharp double meaning. The lines are sharp, snappy and drenched in panic and dread. The pop culture references are liberal, but not hollow. They tie Reservoir Dogs into the larger canon of media, while also mirroring how people can use the films they watch and music they listen to to connect with each other, insult each other and, crucially, communicate with each other. The script is actually almost perfect, with the occasional line not aging the best, but generally being one of his best, one that conveys the imminent danger in the story while also maintaining a facade of cool composure. Add to that Tarantino's confidence behind the camera, where his grip on everything you're seeing is vice-grip tight, and you've got a debut that's assured, exact, and deeply effective

Reservoir Dogs is the perfect debut. It introduces the world to Tarantino in such a fantastic way, by giving us everything he'd come to adopt and meld into his own unique style. Yeah, the influences are clear (70s crime movies in particular, especially The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3), but like he'd show us time and time again, pop culture is just clay that he can bend into his own specific shape, using the things we recognise as ingredients to make something that's undoubtedly his. This panicky tale of diamond thieves is one of cinema's most breathlessly thrilling, but it also contains the verve and energy that Tarantino is somehow able to hold onto all these years later. He sets the temperature here, ensuring that it's absolutely white hot, and then is somehow able to (more or less) keep the heat at that intensity for his whole career so far. That in itself is an impressive feat, but the fact that this is the film that birthed Tarantino as we know him now is what makes it such a stellar first outing

My Thoughts on The Dead Don't Die

The Dead Don't Die has one cracking premise. A wry zom-com with a cracking cast that includes all of the hottest names in indie cinema right now? Count. Me. In. It played in competition at Cannes? Awesome! And then the reviews came out.... and they were less than great. I stayed optimistic though, and finally watching The Dead Don't Die, I have to say, I'm incredibly disappointed. I mean, this is just a huge let down, especially when it didn't have to be. The film is set in Centerville, "A Real Nice Place". Weird things are happening in nature, with the sun going down at strange times, animals acting weird, and the dead rising from the grave in search of the things that gave their lives meaning.

The problem is in the execution. I know it's Jim Jarmusch's style, but the cynical, ironic sarcasm just feels like the wrong approach. The humour is joyless and sardonic, and the frequent fourth wall breaking is just so grating. Characters talk about the film's (pretty cracking) theme song, ask each other if they're improvising, and in a totally misjudged moment, talk about how much of the script they read beforehand. And then there's the satire, which is so dull and obvious. Apart from the teeth grindingly blatant contemporary jabs (one character wears a "Keep America White Again" cap), there's the unbelievably tired criticism of consumerism, which is pretty much Romero's Dawn of the Dead with a hipster makeover. Apart from being incredibly derivative, it's also boring, with absolutely nothing new to say. The film is so focused on this satire, to the point where it becomes such a glum, cynical slog.

The movie really takes its time building up its zombie action, only for their arrival to be treated with absolute indifference. None of the characters are even remotely interested in what's going in, and spend most of the film just sitting around talking. Yeah, that's Jarmusch's thing, but it was just not the right approach here, because instead of working up to a climax that feels impressive or impactful, it fizzles out in a frustrating display of indifference, as if the film itself is just shrugging and saying "whatever". I'm not asking for full on action or anything, but it'd be nice to have something of substance happening, because by the end, it just feels like such a waste of time, that abandons effective horror or clever satire for self satisfied post-modernism that's almost proud to be cynical. The film basks in its own self awareness and is in awe of its own ironic humour.

Not to say that's it's bad, because there are things that I enjoyed, like Tilda Swinton's Scottish mortician/samurai, who's an absolute delight and a serious scene stealer. I also really like Tom Waits' Hermit Bob, a mysterious old man who knows everything that's going on through almost supernatural means. The plot about the three kids escaping from juvie is also kind of fun, even if it's completely abandoned over the course of the runtime. It's also kind of cool to see a film like this. Disappointment or not, it's so driven by Jarmusch's vision that it's hard not to admire, even if that vision didn't turn out great in the end result.

Another problem is that it's an absolute mess. There are so many characters with so many plots, most of which are just completely abandoned as the film goes on. The three central cops (Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny) are fine, even if they're totally flat as characters. Danny Glover and Caleb Landry Jones have a plot that should be fun (horror buff and hardware salesman fight the undead), but ends just when it feels like it's getting started. Steve Buscemi's racist farmer should be a scathing comment, but appears too briefly to make any significant impact. Selena Gomez's hipster and her poorly drawn friends meet a similar fate, with a story that ends just as the zombie action picks up. That's a big problem here actually; interesting ideas stopping before they can properly start. An ending that fades out without really concluding anything doesn't help matters, nor does an inexplicable explanation of one character's origins that feels like a comment on something, but the film's probably too smug and self satisfied to elaborate on that.

The Dead Don't Die is one of the most annoying films I've seen in a while, not because it's bad, but because it's disinterested. The irony and deadpan humour feel so misused, and because nobody really reacts to anything, nothing that happens feels like it actually means anything. It's be fine if that was the intention, to make an almost subversive horror that plays with your expectations by deliberately being uneventful, but I get the feeling it wasn't. Or maybe it was partially, but primarily this feels to me like an attempt at the same kind of comment that Romero made 40 years ago. Dawn of the Dead works because of the full on gore, with the social commentary being largely subtextual. The deadpan humour and unbelievably messy plot dull the satire in this film, taking out the film's teeth and really souring the tone. After all, how you can you have fun with something that feels like it's afraid to have fun with itself?