tiger_moran: (Default)
 Yesterday I rewatched Manhunter and Poltergeist (2015)

Manhunter is the much better film I'm sure but Poltergeist is the DVD I'm keeping (although fuck that cover on it, that's much creepier than the actual film). Manhunter is just too dark for me to want to watch enough to keep the DVD. I mean it's actually not as gory as it could have been, there's actually not that much of the actual murders or murder scenes shown and a lot is more just implied. But what's implied is just... it's unpleasant, all these brutal murders of whole families and then Graham being driven insane by it all. Also while Cox is a much better Lector or Lecktor or however it's spelt there than any of the others I think, he supports JK Terfling so fuck him.
I still love the use of the Shriekback songs in the film though. 

Poltergeist meanwhile doesn't seem to actually remember it's meant to be a horror film. For me that is no bad thing. I only bought this for two reasons, one Jared Harris, two it was very cheap. I don't know or care about the original film, I haven't got the slightest interest in that film so I neither know nor care how it compares to that; Jared Harris was literally the only reason I wanted to see this version. But it's actually quite... sweet? Which seems weird for what is meant to be a horror film but the family are actually really adorable and I genuinely care about what happens to them? Like most movie young children are annoying and movie teens are really bratty and selfish and unlikeable and you'd expect the parents to spend ages dismissing the things the kids are trying to tell them because Adults Know Better which is a really frustrating trope but all the kids and their parents are characters I actually cared about and I liked how quickly really the parents accepted there's some fuckery going on here. And Madison is so cute. I don't like children but she's one of the very few young child characters in anything who I think is super sweet and engaging. And I do like Jared Harris's character. Also that he appears to die but then does survive. Even Carrigan's relationship with his ex I liked, and the silly end credits scene. And the actual horror stuff is very toned down, like there are a few jump scare type bits (which aren't actually scary) and a few glimpses of the dead people and the 'other dimension' but there really isn't much that I'd call actual horror in it. I am keeping this one.
tiger_moran: (Default)
I've just rewatched Hands of a Murderer which isn't great but also is far from being the worst Sherlock Holmes thing I've ever seen. It's one of those things where they made the 'bad guy' far more interesting than the 'good guys' though; Woodward isn't a completely terrible Holmes but he's just sort of... mediocre. Andrews' Moriarty is far more engaging and interesting. Despite them committing the unforgivable sin of making Moriarty straight in it, his portrayal itself is still one of the few I've always liked. Also it does make an interesting point about Mycroft, as a person of importance in the British government, being one of the people responsible for sending people off to war which is something that definitely ties in to my major issues with Mycroft, and with Sherlock Holmes and Watson and everything else to do with 'law and order' in the stories - the things Mycroft is responsible for and represents (and the things that often Sherlock too, and Watson with him are helping to support) are actually worse than anything Moriarty could ever do, and like Moran... Watson thinks Moran used to be an "honourable soldier" but the things Moran did as an "honourable soldier" were all tied in with colonialism and racism and sending British soldiers to fight and die for 'queen and country' in another country on the other side of the world, a place the queen never even visited and a place probably a lot of the other people, the politicians, playing about with people's lives never even visited either. Moran left the army; he rebelled against all of that, and Moriarty and Moran, they are not responsible for the things that Mycroft and the rest of the government and the monarchy are, and in rebelling against those they are actually rebelling against a lot of really dubious shit, while Watson got forced out of the army through injury and illness and doesn't really seem to see a problem with any of it. This film doesn't actually go that far nor does it bother to include Moran (there is a colonel connected to Moriarty but he's not Moran and as far as I can tell is not intended to be him under another name or anything), but it did at least briefly acknowledge that part of the reason someone who's supposed to be a 'true patriot' might betray the British was basically because he was sick of their shit and people like Mycroft just treating his men as cannon fodder.
Also I appreciate that Moriarty doesn't actually die in this film - they try to hang him but he escapes, then you get the ~dramatic~ carriage chase and plunge into the water and some guff about the water being deep and the current sweeping the bodies away but that is nonsense; if Moriarty died there he would have been found (the same in fact as in the canon. People who know far more about these things than me have pointed out that a man's body is not just going to disappear at the Reichenbach Falls, it would be washed up downstream). Ergo, Moriarty survived in it (probably because as I always say Moriarty is actually Death and you can't kill Death). 
Also I'm not sure if they actually realised the significance of this or not but there is definitely something very interesting about them implying the police have beaten a confession out of a suspect (one who we the viewer know isn't even a criminal, he's just an unwitting pawn) while having Moriarty stating he doesn't like unnecessary violence and repeatedly avoiding seriously physically harming people.
So I think I will be keeping this one.
tiger_moran: (Default)
I'm sorting DVDs to see what to get rid of and I sort of rewatched Piggy by which I mean I skipped through all the boring bits which is basically every scene Paul Anderson isn't in. I still don't understand what's in the bag at the end. It's a pointless unpleasant film that is very boring at times though I'm still LOLing at the head stomping scene both because it's so stupidly over the top (those noises!) and because I'm sure I remember Paul Anderson saying he really fucked his leg up doing that and he does look like he can hardly walk in it afterwards. He is the best thing about that film by a long long way. I think his acting is very good even in that (and I'm not sure many actors could make such a violent killer so cute). It's just kind of... even more of a shame that basically his only real major role/the only thing he's really known for i.e. Peaky Blinders is something I hate so much and most of the rest of the things he's been in is dross like Piggy.
Anyway even though I still like him in it, I don't think I will be keeping this DVD. (Also the Messiah DVDs, I can't see a real reason to keep them. I only watched those for Neil Dudgeon and actually his character turned out to be the best and the one who actually got real positive character development and ended up being genuinely likeable but that show is just too damned gruesome and miserable. Also the murder rates in them are worse than in Midsomer Murders, in all the Messiah episodes they're like 'we've gotta figure out what links these murders and identify the next victim so we can save them!' and then they don't seem to manage to save anybody from being murdered and the murders just stop because the murderer finishes the sequence and dies. At least in Midsomer Murders they've sometimes got to the next intended victim in time to save them.)

May 2025

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