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Reviews
Men (2022)
Hieronymus Botched
For some reason, filmland is convinced that rural life must be pretty weird and those unsupervised oddballs who choose to live in villages are all kinky pagans. These clichés also abound in this hit and miss offering. Stay in the city if you wanna be safe, kids - Satan loves a thatched roof! : /
This particular take of verdant supernaturalism comes across as a blend of League of Gentlemen meets The Green Man. There's a quasi religious feel about the whole thing that's applied with a crude brush - the fruit of the forbidden tree, the crucifixion etc., - and this is probably key to understanding what's going on; I say 'understanding' because following what's going on here will be an imprecise art for the majority of viewers who, confident that they know what's going on in the first 75% of the film will find themselves tossed into a pretentious casserole of symbolism and gore in the final stretch. After that, it's anyone's guess what's happening.
Having endured the increasingly complex storyline, there was meagre reward with the final scene and little in the way of explanation. Instead there is a daft shorthand version of resolution. You might remember it but I doubt you'll understand it.
Barbarian (2022)
The basement has eyes.
Resorting to the usual inbred killer memes of the superior The Hills Have Eyes, this plot-hole ridden clunker opens with a promising first act before descending into the usual cliches; what was that noise in the basement? Shall I explore this dark tunnel? My torch is suddenly not working! I've dropped my phone! I've tripped over while running away! I can't get my keys in the door when being chased! The police don't believe me!
As well as countless plot holes, there's a pointless flashback before the second half lapses into a routine monster chase and physics defying stupidity, undoing all the good work of the first half.
There's Always a Woman (1938)
All banter, no substance
Yes, there's the usual crosstalk 'witty' exchanges you'd expect from a movie dating from this period, and it all looks slickly produced, but Melvyn Douglas seems genuinely sour throughout as the husband who jokes about divorce and abusing his wife, and Joan Blondell's endless breezy mugging begins to irritate when there's little in the way of substance to the plot. You wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with either of these two for very long.
You can predict the entire movie just a couple of minutes from the off, and then it's just a matter of sitting it out while it plays out for two long, self indulgent hours of one predictable scene after the other. It's hard to imagine these two solving much of anything let alone a murder case.
Man About Dog (2004)
Loves Ritchie, hates dogs.
It's clear from the off that this is not so much an homage to Guy Ritchie, as it is an opportunistic mugging amid a dearth of originality. It takes a bloke-ish topic - greyhound racing (I guess it was either that, boxing or poker) - and three laddish young Irish guys (Messrs Cocky, Unlucky and Peaceful...gosh), then drags the plot through a series of contrived encounters with the usual Guy Ritchie ensemble; bookies, tough gypsies, hard men, loose women etc. All with the cliched goal of ending up with a big bag of cash at the end of the movie. There's some pretence that this is about the love of dogs, but their violent deaths are used as a 'joke' so often that this flick is clearly confused about what message it wants to send.
Along the way, we are treated to droll scenes such as the lads getting involved in a fertility drug trial, with predictable consequences, and hooking up with three 'foreign birds' (because they're easy, right lads?). As per the rules for bloke films, women are only allowed as sex objects and don't get to speak more than a line or two. Long, inconsequential blather between the lads act as filler along the way until, finally, the director throws in a Trainspotting rip off as the Lock, Stock theft runs low on returns. Low brow, paint-by-numbers comedy for the Lad Bible crowd. But in Ireland.