The Purge (4 Stars)

The plot of this film is irrelevant. All that matters is the premise. A yearly event has been instituted in America called the Purge. Once a year, from March 21st at 7pm until 7am the following morning, all crimes are permissible. For these 12 hours all emergency services, police, ambulance and fire brigade, are suspended. While minor crimes such as theft and looting are permissible, the main crime committed during this time is murder. Some people go out to kill their bosses or other people they don't like. Others, and this is the main focus of the film, see it as their patriotic duty to kill the ones who don't deserve to live, such as the poor and the homeless.

In theory, anyone can die during the Purge, but the main victims are the poor who are unable to defend themselves. The rich kill the poor, while the poor kill each other. Many of the rich celebrate the event at home, eating a luxurious meal and sitting at home watching television reports of the mayhem on the streets. God bless America!

The film is intended as a social commentary. It exaggerates the situation we already have in the USA. Why are people allowed to own guns in America? Why is it considered unpatriotic to forbid the right to a gun? It isn't about home defence, whatever people say. It's about the survival of the fittest. In America the government wants every criminal and gang member to be able to own a gun. This means that they will shoot one another and eliminate the unwanted elements in society. Of course, they can also shoot respectable people, but these people can also own guns, theoretically better guns, with which they are able to kill the poorer people in self defence. If they don't adequately defend themselves it's their own fault, they deserved to die. But there is one last legal resort. The government can arrest the poor killers and sentence them to death, so the killing system has succeeded twice over, ridding America of both the unworthy rich person and the poor killer.

America is struggling to redeem itself. There are political battles between those who want gun control and those who oppose it. The upright religious middle class of America insist that it's their right to defend themselves, but what they really mean behind their hypocrisy is that they're insisting on the right to kill. People in the civilised countries of Europe, where very few are allowed to own guns, are confused by this state of affairs in America. Only the future will tell us what will happen. Will America stem the rising tide of anarchy by forbidding private ownership of guns? Or will American society descend to the level of "The Purge"? Or worse?

Success Rate:  + 27.8

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Fighting with my Family (5 Stars)

True Stories #35

Name: Saraya Bevis

Lived: 17 August 1992 – still alive

Film dates: 2005 to 2014, mostly 2010 to 2014

Film made in 2019

This is the story of the WWE wrestler known as Paige. The young woman from Norwich had a whirlwind career, leading to winning the WWE women's championship

Saraya started wrestling when she was 13. Her parents and her two elder brothers were all wrestlers in the family owned business, the World Association of Wrestling. In 2011 she and her brother Zak auditioned for the WWE in London. Saraya was accepted, Zak wasn't. This was heart-breaking for both of them. It had been Zak's dream all his life to join the WWE. It hurt Saraya because she loved her brother and didn't want to be separated from him.

The training in Florida is hard. At first Saraya, who's now taken the name Paige, isolates herself from the other female trainees. She's the only woman from a wrestling family. The others are models or cheerleaders.

People who don't understand professional wrestling say that it's fake. It's not fake, it's scripted. The level of athletic prowess needed to perform in the ring is immense. Despite Saraya's former experiences in England she had difficulty getting through the training programme.

The film ends with Paige's debut on Monday Night Raw on 7th April 2014. It's unusual for a true story to be made so soon after the real events. Florence Pugh does an excellent job portraying Paige. She had help and coaching from the real Paige. Several real wrestlers appear in the film, including the Rock (Dwayne Johnson), the Miz and the Big Show.

Success Rate:  + 1.8

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Gunpowder Milkshake (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I'm excited to be able to visit the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival again this year. I missed it last year. It took place, but the restrictions imposed due to the Coronavirus were so strict that I didn't want to go. This year there are no restrictions, apart from having to provide proof of being vaccinated when I visit the festival. I can deal with that.

As always, I only write short reviews for the films in the film festival. That's for practical reasons. Including travelling time, I'm away from home for about 12 hours every day. When I get home I'm tired and don't want to spend too much time writing. For that reason I've imposed a 10 minute limit on the time I spend for each post.

"Gunpowder Milkshake" has been compared with "John Wick", but I see more similarity with "Kill Bill". The main similarity with "John Wick" is the organisations of killers that exist side by side with our normal lives. The main similarity with "Kill Bill" is that the main assassins are female.

Sam (Karen Gillan) works for an organisation known only as the Firm. They pay her to kill, and she's good at her job. The trouble is that she's too soft-hearted. She's sent to retrieve money stolen from the Firm and kill the man who stole it. She finds out that the man only stole the money because his eight-year-old daughter is being held hostage. Instead of returning the money to the Firm, she gives it to the gang holding the daughter. This makes her a liability, and the Firm's bosses decide to kill her.

When the film started I thought it would be a five-star film. I like girls with guns. I dropped the rating a point because some of the action are just too ridiculous. There are fight scenes that are totally infeasible. I definitely want to watch it again, so I might change my mind. Watch this space.

The Broken (4 Stars)

There was a delay writing this blog post. After watching the film last night I wanted to write a review immediately, while it was still fresh in my mind, but there was no Internet connection. It happens. I waited a bit. I had a cup of coffee. Then I tried again. Still no Internet. Then I realised that the problem was only with me. My phone and my laptop could both access the Wifi. Curiouser and curiouser. It was late, so I went to bed.

This morning (6th October) there was still no Internet, so I tried to diagnose the problem. My Wifi adapter was working. The diagnostics claimed there were proxy problems, whatever that means. I remembered that I did a Windows update last night before the film started, so I restored the state I had before the update. Voilà! Everything worked again.

I've never had problems with Windows updates before. I'm not sure what to do now. Can I flag the update as a bug so that it isn't automatically installed again? I don't want to have to restore my system every week.

You've probably noticed that the date of this post is 5th October. The dates of my posts are always when I watch a film, not when I write the post. At least, that's the case now. When I started writing my blog in 2010, I didn't know I could change a post's date. I didn't have a handbook on how to use the Blogger software, I just learnt as I went along. It wasn't until a few years later that a noticed a "Set date and time" option. It's more useful to me to have the correct date attached to each film. As I've often said, my blog is primarily a film diary, not a film review site. The dates of my early posts are often a day off. But at least the order is correct.

Now to the film itself. "The Broken" was made in 2008, thirteen years ago. I'm surprised that I never discovered it until now. I bought it spontaneously after seeing a trailer on another Blu-ray disc. It's a very good British horror film, and it's refreshingly original. Most American horror films follow standard formulas. You know what I mean: the jump scares, etc. Not that I don't like American horror films, but it's good to see something original once in a while. The opening scenes don't even look like a horror film, but the eerie music tells us what we have to expect.

Gina McVey is a radiologist who lives and works in London. At her father's birthday party a mirror spontaneously breaks. The following day she sees a woman who looks identical to her. She follows her home, and in the woman's apartment she finds photos of herself with her father. She leaves quickly before she's discovered. After this she leaves, but she gets into a car accident. She's admitted to hospital with light injuries and memory loss.

When she leaves hospital strange things are happening. Her boyfriend has changed so drastically that she tells people it's not her boyfriend, it's just someone who looks like him. Other people are also changing. And wherever she goes she finds broken mirrors.

This is a film that I enjoyed so much that I already want to watch it again. It leaves things open. When the film ends, not everything has been explained. Normally I'd call that an error, but in this case it works well. The viewer is left to speculate on what things mean.

Despite being a British film, it hasn't earned a Blu-ray release in Britain. The German Blu-ray release has the original English dialogue. The only thing that's missing is English subtitles. That's a problem with most German releases of English language films. The discs include the original English dialogue, but only German subtitles.

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St. Trinian's (4 Stars)

The last time I watched this film I only gave it three stars. That was unfair. It's a better film than that. I think I penalised the film because it wasn't what I expected. The original St. Trinian's films, especially the ones made in the 1960's, were saucy, with a lot of sexual innuendo. The 2007 St. Trinian's girls are bad girls, but not in a sexual way, apart from occasional short skirts,. There's only one hint of sexuality in an early scene, when a half naked boy runs out of the school after a party.

In a manner reminiscent of American high school movies, the girls are divided into their tribes: the Chavs, the Emos, the Geeks and the Posh Totties. There aren't any real Mean Girls in the school, even if the Posh Totties look like them. The girls in the school aren't mean to one another, they stand united against the rest of the world. Well, they're mean to the New Girl, Annabelle Fritton, but it's just a test to see if she's worthy of joining the school. After surviving two days of humiliation she's accepted as one of the girls.

Maybe another reason for my low rating last time is the casting of a man, Rupert Everett, as the school's headmistress. I don't like to see men dressing up as women, even less than women dressing up as men, but I can understand the reason. In the original films a man was also cast as the headmistress. I'll try to close my eyes to it.

And one last criticism which I even mentioned in my last review is that Gemma Arteron isn't given a chance to look sexy. She wears a long skirt and looks almost (but not quite) goth. That's a disappointment that I have to get over. This was her first film, and at 21 it was her last chance to appear as a schoolgirl.

The film's glamour is provided by the Posh Totties, Chloe, Chelsea and Peaches. Do they really call girls Peaches? They're not such bad girls. They like to pray.

And they pray more than once in the film.

But I have to admit, if I were their teacher I'd be looking up their skirts in every lesson. I'd try to resist the temptation, but it would be much too hard.

Is it just me, or do the girls look even hotter with glasses?

Take another look. Tell me what you think.

Yes, that's Jodie Whittaker flirting with Stephen Fry. She won't get very far. Doesn't she know he's gay? She needs to try again after she's regenerated as a man.

I'll probably rewatch the sequel to this film in the next few days. Probably. I'm not going to promise, because I break my promises too often. I also want to rewatch the original five St. Trinian's films. It must be at least 40 years since I last saw them. It's time for some 1950's and 1960's nostalgia.

Success Rate:  + 2.2

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Fighting with my Family (5 Stars)

This film tells the true story about how the wrestler Paige progressed from a small wrestling company in England to becoming the women's champion of the WWE, the world's largest wrestling company. The film ends with her winning the championship on 7th April 2014. It's unusual for a biopic to be made so soon after the events on which it's based. (The film was released in 2019, but it was filmed in early 2017). Maybe it would have been better to delay the film a few years so it could have included later occurrences in her career. On 27th December 2017 Paige was injured in a match, leading to her permanent retirement from wrestling. She's still employed by the WWE, frequently appearing in television broadcasts, but carrying out other roles, such as managing tag teams.

I've seen Paige as a wrestler, and I can verify that the actress Florence Pugh is very similar to her. She's a few inches shorter, but apart from that she's made up to look like her and successfully imitates her mannerisms. They could be sisters. Florence Pugh also appeared in "Midsommar", which I watched earlier this week. I'm starting to notice her as an actress. She seems to have great talent. I'll give a final decision after seeing her in this year's "Black Widow" film.

Success Rate:  + 1.6

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Fighting with my Family (5 Stars)

There's a sentence I've used a few times in my blog, and I'm not ashamed to keep repeating it: "I knew this film would be good, but it's better than I expected". That's definitely true of "Fighting with my Family".

The story tells the true story of the British wrestler Paige, real name Saraya Bevis. It deals with how she became one of the biggest female wrestlers in the company World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). I wanted to see the film because I used to be a big fan of the WWE, or rather the WWF (World Wrestling Federation), as it was called until 2002. I first saw the WWF on television while I was on holiday in Scotland in 1990, but I didn't become a regular viewer until 1997. For me the WWF's greatest years were 1997 to 2002, referred to as the Attitude Era. In those days it was all about flamboyant wrestling, with most wrestlers being anti-heroes. After 2002 it was all about faces and heels, i.e. good guys and bad guys, which I found boring. The audience was programmed by scripted speeches to like one wrestler and hate another. I found this trite, and I stopped watching the WWE a few years later.

During my years as a WWF/WWE fan I watched all the Pay Per View events. I taped them and built up a large collection, which I eventually threw in the trash after unsuccessfully trying to give them away. I'm sure my tape of Over The Edge 1999 would have been valuable to wrestling fans, because it's the only PPV event which has never been released on VCR or DVD. PPV events were broadcast live on Sunday and repeated on Monday, but Over The Edge 1999 wasn't repeated because of Owen Hart's death during the broadcast. His accident happened off camera, but there was a long break while the commentator Jim Ross talked to the audience at home about what had happened. My tape is gone now. Tough luck.

The film itself is about the struggles of a young woman who was an underdog and outsider. She was fortunate enough to be born into a wrestling family. Her father Rick was the founder of the World Association of Wrestling (WAW). Despite its glamorous name, it was a small independent company in Norwich with very few employees apart from his family. Rick's children Zak and Saraya dreamt of joining the WWE, the world's biggest wrestling company. Zak was refused, whereas Saraya was accepted and became Paige. The rest of the film deals with Zak's reaction to being rejected and Paige's difficulties fitting in with the WWE wrestling community.

Most of the actors in the film aren't wrestlers, with the exception of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Nick Frost is absolutely brilliant as Rick Knight. He looks and talks like a wrestler. The WWE trainer Hutch Morgan is played by Vince Vaughan, who has the size and muscular build to be a wrestler. It's excellent acting throughout. I've always liked true stories, and this has immediately become a film I want to add to my Blu-ray collection.

P.S. I wrote this review on March 21st, but I've backdated the post to the day I watched it in the cinema.

St. Trinian's (3 Stars)

It's been almost 10 years since I first watched this film. I didn't know what to make of it then, and I don't know what to make of it now.

Four films were made about St. Trinian's Girls School from 1954 to 1966. After a long pause a fifth film was made in 1980. The first five films followed a logical continuity. Now, in 2007, the St. Trinian's franchise has been rebooted. The spirit of the early films has been revived. It's all about naughty girls. The older girls (16 to 18) are sexually provocative, the younger girls (11 to 13) are mischievous, and there's a grey zone in between.

The school is shown through the eyes of Annabelle Fritton, a new girl who arrives in the school at the start of the term. She's the niece of the school's headmistress, but that doesn't give her any advantages. She's shocked by the chaos and lack of discipline in the school, but as she settles in she gives up and becomes like the other girls.

The main plot of the film is that the school is facing bankruptcy. St. Trinian's is £500,000 in debt. Not even the money from the sale of the illegal vodka that the girls make in the cellar is enough to save the school. There's only one solution. They decide to steal a painting from the National Gallery in London and sell it to an art dealer. Bad girls!

I would have expected Kelly Jones, the head girl, to be the sexiest girl in school, since she's played by Gemma Arterton. Somehow she looks too plain, too goth and too pale. She doesn't even wear a short skirt.

This is the most we get to see of her. No, it isn't a short skirt, it's just the way she's sitting.

What sort of girls school lets a man pose naked for the art class? I couldn't do it. I'd be too afraid that I might have an embarrassing "problem".

Here are a few girls, from the youngest to the oldest. Do you see what I mean about Gemma Arterton's skirt being too long?

So why don't I like the film? For me it's too much of a contrast. I like the idea of sexy schoolgirls, but the presence of too many very young girls is a turn off. If it were just about older schoolgirls it would be an erotic fantasy, if it were just about younger schoolgirls I could treat it as a comedy, but mixing the two side by side in the same scenes is disturbing.

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The Red Baron (4½ Stars)

A few days ago I watched "Wonder Woman", in which the German army in World War One was portrayed as being made up of evil monsters. That was appropriate for the film, since the war was shown as being inspired by Ares, the God of War. "The Red Baron" shows another side. The fighter pilots were the gentlemen of the air. They shot one another's planes down, but they made no attempt to kill one another. The men were instructed, "Stop firing when your enemy is falling. We are sportsmen, not butchers". The pilots on opposite sides of the war respected one another's skills and thought of one another as friends.

This was far removed from the normal foot soldier with a rifle in his hand, where the motto was "Kill or be killed". If a German and a British pilot were shot down close to one another they would sit and chat and share a cigarette. If necessary, they would help one another if one of them was trapped in his plane. Then they would shake hands, promise to visit one another after the war, and then walk off in opposite directions. After a few days they would be sitting in their planes firing at one another again.

If the war had been decided in the air alone, Germany would have won. The German fighter pilots were the world's best. In aerial battles they were outnumbered by at least four to one, but they were always victorious. Manfred von Richthofen, nicknamed the Red Baron, was the best of the best. According to official figures he shot down 80 planes, but he claimed to have shot down more than 20 other planes, which couldn't be confirmed because they fell behind enemy lines.

Manfred was given his nickname because he painted his plane red. In France he was given the nickname "Le Diable Rouge", which I find more appropriate. The colour red was intended to strike fear into the heart of the enemy. It was also to identify himself in the German squadron, to encourage the best British pilots to engage him in battle. It was sport, not war.

The film takes place from 1917 to 1918, when the Germans were already the underdogs. The successes in the air are in stark contrast to the losses on the ground. Manfred's victories are used as propaganda to encourage the foot soldiers to fight harder, sending them to their deaths.

In the end Manfred was shot down by Roy Brown, a Canadian pilot who had volunteered to fly for the British Royal Air Force. Ironically, this was a man that Manfred had assisted after shooting him down a year earlier. Manfred used his scarf to bind Roy's wound, and Roy returned the scarf a few months later. It was all so civilised. Roy laid a wreath on Manfred's grave.

This is a spectacular film that includes dazzling air battles. It's a German film, but it was filmed in English to make it accessible to the international market. In Germany itself the film was a flop, but it was a box office success abroad. The Germans consider it to be bad taste to celebrate their war heroes. The film has also been criticised for highlighting Manfred's romance with the nurse Käte Otersdorf, because in real they were probably nothing more than friends. As a nobleman he wouldn't have embarked on a serious relationship with a commoner. This isn't a problem for me. I understand cinema. In order to make a good film it's necessary to include elements such as romance to balance out the action, so I consider it acceptable to embellish a story by adding details that might have happened.

I find it strange that the film ends without showing Manfred's final battle. After having seen his successes in the air I would have liked to see his death. Maybe it's because there's lack of clarity about what happened. Manfred was shot down during an air battle with Roy Brown, and Roy was officially given the credit, but it's possible that the killing shot was fired by someone on the ground. That's very probable. Roy would have tried to avoid killing Manfred by aiming at the plane, not the man.

Manfred von Richthofen
2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2 Stars)

When a film has a title like this it just has to be seen, doesn't it?

I read Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice" when I was a teenager. It's been adapted as a film several times, but I've never watched any of the film versions, so I can barely remember the story. I just recall that it was about the genteel like of the English nobility. Supposedly the plot of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" closely follows Jane Austen's novel, apart from zombies being added to the story.

The Bennet family has five daughters that the parents want to marry into good families. Any prospective suitors must be handsome, well-mannered and rich. The Bennet sisters are certainly ideal partners for any man. All five have been trained as zombie hunters. The oldest daughter, Elisabeth, was trained in China, while the other four were trained in Japan. There seems to be some prejudice against Chinese fighting arts, but this isn't fully explained.

Several men arrive in the area where the sisters live and vie for their affections. Colonel Darcy is arrogant, but a highly skilled zombie hunter. Parson Collins is a newly appointed priest. Mr. Bingley is the owner of a nearby mansion. Mr. Wickham is a soldier. The men have secrets in their past that disguise their true motives.

The film's premise is its greatest weakness. The good manners and the understated passions of the main characters slow the film's action to a crawl. If the film had departed further from the style of the original novel it would have been more exciting. Instead of this I found the film's characters annoying, especially the men. The only thing I found positive was the performance of Matt Smith as Parson Collins. His hilariously awkward mannerisms show that he has the talent to become a great comedy actor.

The Purge (4 Stars)

Though advertised as a horror film, "The Purge" is more of a social commentary. Even though it takes place in a dystopian parallel reality, there are many not-so-subtle hints about the state of affairs in America today. I don't intend to say more about it until I watch it again. For now, watch the film and be shocked.

Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (4 Stars)

I didn't intend to see this film in the cinema, but I changed my mind at the last minute and joined the others from the Birmingham Film Club. I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't call it a great film, but it was definitely worth watching. The buildup and the character development in the first half was incredible, and even though the action scenes were weaker I still enjoyed it.

It's based on the first of a series of six best-selling novels written by Cassandra Clare. Even to someone as naive as me it's obvious what's been going on in the boardrooms of the film studios. "Look at all the money Harry Potter made us. We need a new Harry Potter. Is there anyone here who reads books? Do you have any suggestions what we can film next?"

"Mortal Instruments" (the film) isn't a new Harry Potter, neither in essence nor in style. It isn't even a new Twilight. But it is a good film about a teenage girl caught up in a hidden supernatural world. Clary Fray (15 in the book, but her age is unspecified in the film) witnesses a murder in a nightclub. After this her mother is kidnapped, and the apparent murderer becomes her friend. He tells her that her mother used to be a Shadowhunter, someone who hunts demons.

I can't help feeling that a story like this with an excess of minor characters would work better as a TV series than as a film. With the right executive producer it could become the new Buffy. But I'm still looking forward to the second film in the series.