IT Chapters One and Two (5 Stars)

Today I watched the two chapters of "IT" back to back. It was worth the five hours spent glued to the screen. Okay, I admit that I was forced to take a break because of family commitments. My grandson wanted to play with me. He actually wanted to watch the films with me, but I switched them off fast when he came in. I don't want to give him nightmares. I'm sure he'll become a fan of horror films when he gets older, but there's no need to rush him.

In retrospect, I don't think it was a good idea to write a single review for both chapters. They're distinct enough in essence and style to justify being reviewed separately, even though I've included then in my top 100 films list as a single film. I've already started writing, so I shan't go back and change my review now.

When visiting Derry, be sure to visit the excellent little pawn shop Second Hand Rose.

The pawn shop owner may look creepy, but he has terrific items in stock. Look what's on the wall behind him. It's the original license plate from the car in the film "Christine". I wonder how he got his hands on it.

Someone who was looking at my top 100 film list yesterday said that it's full of old films. I wonder what he means by that. What's the definition of an old film? I judge films by their quality, not the year they were made. My personal definition is that an old film is a film made before 1995, but others might think differently. The two chapters of "IT" were made in 2017 and 2019, which make them new films by anyone's definition.

Here are the statistics of my top 100 films list by decades:

  1960's – 2

  1970's – 6

  1980's – 4

  1990's – 31

  2000's – 33

  2010's – 23

  2020's – 1

The statistics look more interesting if I split the decades in the middle:

  1965-1975 – 4

  1976-1985 – 7

  1986-1995 – 11

  1996-2005 – 42

  2006-2015 – 29

  2016-2023 – 7

It surprised me to see that almost 50% of my favourite films were made in the ten years from 1996 to 2005. Checking my list, I can see that they were good years.

Does that make my list old? You decide. For me the answer is No, because I have only 22 films before 1995 and 78 films from 1996 onwards.

Success Rate:  + 8.3

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The Zookeeper's Wife (4 Stars)

True Stories #11

Name: Antonina Zabinska

Lived:18 July 1908 – 19 March 1971

Film dates: 1939 to 1946

Film made in 2017

It's amazing that after all these years it's still possible to make new films about the heroism of people who risked their lives to protect Jews from the Nazis. They're stories that never cease to fascinate modern audiences. Each story has its own variations.

What's even more amazing is that there are still people who deny that Hitler killed millions of Jews. They claim that the Holocaust is Jewish propaganda. I had a personal friend in Birmingham who used to post videos on Facebook about scholars who have found new evidence that the Holocaust never happened. Maybe she still does. I don't know, because I unfriended her. She's the only person I've ever unfriended. I have a principle that I don't unfriend people for disagreements on politics, but she pushed me too far. One person in 12 years of using Facebook. That's not too bad.

Anti-Semitism is currently at its strongest since the end of World War Two, especially among left-wing thinkers. The modern way to excuse anti-Semitism is to say "I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm anti-Zionist". It's a subtle difference. Being anti-Semitic means you want to kill (or otherwise harm) Jews. Being anti-Zionist means you support those who want to kill the Jews who live in Israel. Britain recently had a leader of the opposition party who attended meetings with Jew-killers. If he'd been voted into power, it would have started a new Dark Age in Britain.

Now let me say a few words about the film itself. Not many people know Antonina Zabinska, apart from those who've seen this film. She was the wife of Jan Zabinska, the owner of the Warsaw Zoo from 1929 to 1939. When Germany invaded in 1939 they were ordered to close the zoo. All the animals should have been slaughtered for food, but a senior SS officer in Warsaw, Lutz Heck, was the director of the Berlin Zoo. He offered to take some of the animals to be kept in the Berlin Zoo until the Warsaw Zoo re-opened.

Jan and Antonina wanted to hold on to the zoo by any means possible. They offered to turn the zoo grounds into a pig farm to supply meat for the German soldiers. Lutz agreed to this, as long as he could also use the former zoo for a personal project. He wanted to breed aurochs. Have you ever seen an aurochs? Of course not. They're a European form of bison that's been extinct since the 17th Century. Lutz thought that through selective breeding he could bring them back to life.

What was most important to Jan and Antonina was to save their Jewish friends. Jan was allowed to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to collect scraps to feed the pigs. He smuggled Jews out of the Ghetto, mostly children, but also a few adults. His pig farm was used as a halfway house. Most of the Jews were kept in the underground animal rooms for a few days, until they received fake passports and were able to travel. Some of them preferred to stay.

In 1944 Jan was shot while participating in an armed uprising against the Germans. He was considered dead, so no more Jews could be rescued. Antonina continued to take care of the Jews remaining in the pig farm. There's a certain irony in pigs, an unclean animal for Jews, to be used to save them. Jan surprised everyone by returning home in 1946. The zoo was rebuilt. He continued as the zoo director until 1951. The Warsaw Zoo is still open today.

In the film we see Antonina with her two children, Teresa and Rys.

They're still alive today. It must have been emotional to see their early life being filmed.

Arguably, the film's main hero is Jan Zabinska. He's the one who drives in and out of the ghetto, smuggling Jews in his truck, while his wife sits at home waiting. I see them as a team. They both did their part. The only problems they had were with Antonina's relationship with Lutz Heck. She flirted with him to distract him from suspicious noises in her house. She even kissed him. Jan didn't understand this. He was jealous. Men are like that. Jan didn't understand that Antonina had no interest in Lutz. She was making sacrifices to save Jews.

Success Rate:  - 0.7

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Ava (4 Stars)

This is a film that was scheduled for cinema release in October 2020, but it was cancelled because of the Coronavirus lockdown. In Germany the cinemas were closed, at least. It's possible that some of my readers in other countries were lucky enough to see it on the big screen.

Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain) is an ex-soldier who now works for a shady group known only as the Organisation. I don't know whether to spell that with a capital O or not. The Organisation seems to be on the right side, but it's ruthless in the way it acts. It sends agents to assassinate money launderers, arms dealers and anyone else who's above the law, wherever they are in the world. This is illegal, of course, but they believe that the end justifies the means. This is the same sort of principle as in Luc Besson's "Nikita".

Ava is the Organisation's most efficient operative, and she's responsible for 41 kills. Two years ago she had a meltdown. It's not stated what happened or why, but we can assume it's because she developed a conscience. She got over it and she's back to work, but someone high up in the Organisation thinks she's a liability and wants to kill her.

That's a simple enough story, but there are a few subplots to complicate matters. Her ex-fiancé Michael, who's now married to her sister, has $80,000 gambling debts. That's a strange relationship. Evidently Ava walked out on him eight years ago without saying goodbye, so he married her sister on the rebound. Strange guy. Ava's mother is sick, close to death, but the illness is left unnamed. Overall, a lot of things are annoyingly left open, leaving the viewer to guess.

Jessica Chastain is a competent action hero. It's a joy to watch her taking out male attackers, either with a gun or with her bare hands. She just needs a better written screenplay next time.

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix (4 Stars)

I gave this film five stars when I watched it in the cinema two years ago. That was too much. It's not as good as "First Class" or "Days of Future Past". 

I'm not sure whether the last four X-Men films are consistent with one another concerning Jean Grey's timeline. I suspect there's an error with her being eight years old in 1975, but I'll need to rewatch the films in order to check for errors. Some people call the films starting with "First Class" a reboot, but that's not correct. It's telling stories in the past that lead up to the events of the initial X-Men trilogy. Of course, the events of "Days of Future Past" rewrote the timeline, so the events of "X-Men 3" never happened. That's the film in which we first saw Jean Grey become Dark Phoenix. Now it happens again, this time earlier. How many years earlier is unclear. In this film she became Dark Phoenix in 1992. In "X-Men 3" no date is stated, but we can assume it took place round about the time when the film was released, i.e. 2006.

The Dark Phoenix story is told more accurately than in "X-Men 3", although it still deviates significantly from the comic book stories. The Phoenix force in "X-Men 3" was an innate mutant power, but in "Dark Phoenix" it's something that possesses her. In the comics there were actually two stories, the Phoenix Saga (X-Men #101 to #108) and the Dark Phoenix Saga (X-Men #129 to #138). The first saga shows how she received the Phoenix force and used it for good, while the second saga shows how she lost control of the Phoenix force and used it for evil.

I've read that it was originally planned to make two films, a two-part story. That would have been much better and would have done the original stories justice. Sadly, the film studio blocked this. 20th Century Fox was in too much of a hurry to reboot the X-Men, and this was the last film, so it had to round things off. I find it highly unusual to talk about a reboot before a film is made. What are the film studios up to?

There's a hint at the end of the film that Jean Grey has survived, but who cares if the series is going to be rebooted anyway?

Not as many X-Men members are shown as in the previous films, just a team of six members, without Wolverine around to hog the spotlight for himself. This offered a chance for strong character development, but the chance was missed. Apart from Charles Xavier (Professor X) we only spend time with Hank McCoy (Beast). Mystique, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and Quicksilver are all blank characters. If we hadn't seen the previous films we wouldn't know who they are. An extra 30 minutes running time would have solved the problem.

Success Rate:  - 0.7

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IT Chapter Two [2019] (5 Stars)

You wouldn't believe all the trouble I went through to watch this film. After my Blu-ray player broke down yesterday, I had to go to Stuttgart to buy a new one. Actually, I just bought an external Blu-ray drive for my computer. I'll buy a real Blu-ray player later this year when I have more time to choose. Today I was in a hurry and needed a replacement fast. I don't like going to Stuttgart on a Saturday. It's always so busy in the shops, and not even the Coronavirus makes it any different. In addition, today was a hot day, 34 C, even hotter than yesterday, so I was dripping with sweat by the time I got back home.

One of the priorities for the casting of the second chapter is that the adults should look similar to the children who appeared in the first chapter. James McAvoy was an excellent choice to play the adult Bill Denbrough. He's evidently the character that Stephen King most identified with when he wrote the book. Bill has become an author, and Stephen King likes to have an author in most of his novels.

Most of the adults were cast after the first film had been made, but Jessica Chastain is an exception. Andy and Barbara Muschietti already envisaged her as the adult Beverly Marsh from the beginning. The portrayal of her new life, 27 years later, is unfortunately realistic. She grew up with an abusive father, so she's married an abusive man..

Richie Tozier was a fast talker as a child, so now he's become a stand up comedian.

Eddie Kaspbrak grew up with a smothering, over-protective mother. Now he has a smothering, over-protective wife. It's not just a cliché to say that he's married his mother; the same actress plays his mother and his wife in the films.

Stanley Uris is the weakest of the Losers. Or is he the strongest? That depends on how you look at him.

Jay Ryan is the only actor who doesn't look like his child self. That's deliberate. He used to be overweight, but now he's spent years getting into shape.

Of the seven Losers, Mike Hanlon is the only one who's stayed in Derry. He's become the town's librarian, so that he has better access to the books about Derry's history. Like a true fanatic, he lives in the cellar below the library.

Losers, one and all.

I understood some things better than when I watched the film in the cinema last year. Today I understood the context of the scenes in the second film that take place between the two visits to the Neibolt House in the first film. The explanatory dialogue went past too fast the first time I watched it. Good films should always be watched more than once.

I have a small question. Is it possible to kiss underwater? I mean a real, passionate kiss, like the one shared by Ben and Beverly. It's not something I've ever attempted, and I don't understand the mechanics.

Success Rate:  + 4.0

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IT Chapter Two [2019] (4 Stars)

It's been a long two years since "IT Chapter One" was in the cinemas. Much too long. I've been impatient to see the conclusion, and now it's here at last.

It's 27 years since the children in the Loser's Club defeated the clown Pennywise. They weren't sure whether or not he was dead, so they swore that they would return to Derry if he ever came back. Six of them left the town as adults. Only Mike Hanlon remained in Derry. The six who left became rich and successful in their new lives. Mike became a lowly librarian. The six who left forgot what had happened. Mike devoted his life to studying Pennywise and his appearances over the centuries, in case he ever returned.

Now he's back. Once more he's killing children. Mike phones his six friends and reminds them of their promise. Reluctantly they return. Back in the town, they slowly begin to remember their former lives and their battle with Pennywise.

This is a very different film to the first chapter. It's the same horror, but the circumstances of the Loser's Club have changed. In the first film they were seven innocent children, cute and likeable. Now they're middle-aged adults, all 40-ish, and not all of them are pleasant characters.

It's a fascinating film that I need to see again soon, preferably back to back with the first chapter.

I've read news reports that parents have complained about the film posters scaring their children. Clowns are supposed to be funny, but they're always scary. I'm not sure why. I've never been scared of clowns, but I know that many other people find them creepy.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (5 Stars)

The original American name of this film is "Dark Phoenix", but in the rest of the world it's called "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", even in other English speaking countries. Usually I prefer to use the original film titles, but in this case I'll make an exception. Naming the X-Men in the film title seems appropriate. Apart from anything else, it will make sure that all the X-Men films are listed together in my alphabetical list of posts.

"Didn't we already have a film about Dark Phoenix?" some people may ask. Yes, we did. "X-Men: The Last Stand" already showed how Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl became the Dark Phoenix. (Was she ever called Marvel Girl in the films?) This film ended with Jean's death, and yet she's back now. Was there a secret reboot somewhere? No, this all happened within the same continuity. In the fifth X-Men film, "Days of Future Past", Wolverine travelled into the past and changed history, meaning that the events of "The Last Stand" never happened, or if they did, they occurred in a parallel universe.

It was an inevitability that Jean Grey should become the Dark Phoenix, and Wolverine's temporal meddling accelerated events. "The Last Stand" took place in the early 21st Century, but "Dark Phoenix" happens in 1992, 10 to 15 years earlier. On a meta-level, the new film is slightly closer to the plot of the the original comics.

There was a lot of politics and negotiations off-screen. Even before "Dark Phoenix" was made, it was decided that it would be the last X-Men film before a reboot of the franchise. That's highly unusual. Normally talk of reboots doesn't start until after a film has been made, usually many years later, but in this case they jumped the gun. It's as if Marvel had lost faith in its own film, not considering it deserving of a sequel.

This uncertainty has rocked the box office. Based on initial box office figures, it looks like it will be the least successful film in the X-Men franchise. My local cinema also didn't seem to expect it to be successful. It's a multiplex, with theatres in four different sizes. Even though "Dark Phoenix" is in its first week, it's being shown in the third largest room. Tonight the largest room was showing "Aladdin", now in its fourth week. The second largest room was showing "John Wick 3", now in its second week. (Films usually start later in Germany than in America). The smallest room was showing "Godzilla: King of the Monsters".

I was aware of the politics and the fact that the film has had bad reviews from the critics, so I feared I would be disappointed. Imagine my surprise when I sat watching the film and realised it was brilliant. How could anyone not like it? It's one of the best films of 2019.

If you haven't seen it yet, don't be put off by the bad reviews or the whining of the critics. If you're a Marvel fan like me, you'll love it.

Interstellar (3 Stars)

This is Christopher Nolan's most ambitious film to date, exceeding even "Inception" in its scale. It's his first attempt to create a film that can be called an epic, depending on your definition of the word. It's also his biggest failure. In his attempt to write a film that stretches across billions of miles and dozens of years he's produced a piece of work that is painfully slow.

The film begins in the near future when the human race is in danger of extinction. Dust clouds are killing almost all the crops, leading to mass starvation. The film's hero, Cooper, is recruited to fly a mission through a wormhole to find habitable planets to relocate the human race.

The twists and turns in the plot, which I won't further discuss here, rely on a huge bootstrap paradox. Human beings from the far future are sending back information needed to save the human race. They don't seem to be very good at it. Rather than send barely comprehensible messages, couldn't they have phoned up the Earth's top scientists and told them what to do? Or better still, couldn't they have sent a big rescue pod back in time to whisk everyone away to a new home? The film doesn't make sense.

The contrast between the lazy farming community and the space exploration is deliberate, but I found the farm scenes too boring. The talks about ghosts annoyed me, and I only tolerated them because it was obvious that it would be relevant later in the film.

Stanley Kubrick left a legacy with "2001: A Space Odyssey". This is clearly what Christopher Nolan intended. Whereas Stanley Kubrick's film is a classic of cinema that will never be forgotten, Christopher Nolan's Space Odyssey fizzles out before it even starts.

The Huntsman: Winter's War (3½ Stars)

Isn't it funny to see Chris Hemsworth fighting with axes instead of a big hammer? However many films he appears in I can't help thinking of him as Thor. Unless something big happens in the next 40 years Thor will remain his signature role.

Chris might be a good actor, but one thing he isn't good at is doing accents. He's Australian, which is obvious at the beginning of "The Huntsman". In the middle of the film he seems to be attempting an Irish accent. After that his accent sounds Scottish. Throughout the film he speaks in an artificially deep voice, as if trying to disguise the confusion in his accents. If he were putting on any accent at all it ought to be German, because that's where the original fairy tale of Snow White is supposed to take place. But to be honest, I wouldn't have a problem if he just spoke with his normal Australian accent. In a fantasy world it doesn't matter if the people sound like they come from different countries. It also doesn't matter in historical films, in which the language used isn't the language spoken at the time. To take the example of another actor, Russell Crowe always speaks with his own accent. Does it bother you that a Roman general speaks with a New Zealand accent in "Gladiator"? It's okay with me.

Now to the film itself. It's been incorrectly labelled a prequel to "Snow White and the Huntsman", which was made four years ago. It's actually a sequel, because it takes place after Snow White has become queen. What might have confused reviewers is that the opening scenes are flashbacks to things that happened before Snow White was born. This will especially have confused reviewers who only watched the first five minutes before writing their reviews. The poor overworked reviewers must have so many films to review that they have to make sacrifices in their time allocation.

In "Snow White and the Huntsman" we heard that the Huntsman was a widower. In the flashbacks we see his wife and how she died. We also meet Queen Ravenna's younger sister Freya. Then, when the film's story finally begins, we see that after Ravenna's death at the hands of Snow White in the first film Freya has become a mighty queen and has conquered almost all of the kingdoms surrounding Snow White's kingdom. Freya now intends to attack Snow White using the power of the magic mirror. The Huntsman makes it his goal to find the mirror and return it to Snow White.

This is a cute little fantasy tale. The set pieces succeed, such as the romantic interludes and the humour surrounding the dwarves. Unfortunately, the end result is disjointed. Allegiances change during the film, and the old enemies seem to eager to forgive one another. It's a reasonable film, but far from a masterpiece.

Crimson Peak (4 Stars)

The film is set at the end of the 19th Century. Edith Cushing is the daughter of a rich businessman in New York. A young English inventor, Sir Thomas Sharpe, visits her father to ask him to invest in the development of a new clay mining machine. The father turns him down, but Edith falls in love with him, marries him and moves to England. The film follows the tradition of the Gothic romance novels of the 18th and 19th Century. The naive romance of the young woman is overshadowed by dark schemes of evil and madness.

Let me get out of the way that this isn't a horror film. It's a ghost story, but the ghosts, even though they look frightening, aren't necessarily evil. They aren't even the main agents in the film. They're peripheral to the plot. In the film Edith has written a novel and is searching for a publisher. It's criticised for being a ghost story, but she says that the ghost in her story is a metaphor, it's about a romance. That applies to the film as well. "Crimson Peak" is a love story, but it's a tragic, doomed love affair.

Tom Hiddleston (Sir Thomas Sharpe) and Mia Wasikowska (Edith Cushing) are two of my favourite actors. Their performances carry the film. Jessica Chastain seems like a caricature of Bette Davis in her role as Thomas' sister Lucille, but I'm sure this was intentional. As is to be expected from director Guillermo del Toro, the film offers bright beautiful colours with delightful cinematography. This is a film worth watching more than once.

Mama (4 Stars)

This film may have been written and directed by an Argentinian, but it's a very Japanese film. I'm sure that fans of Japanese horror films will have seen the similarity immediately. I shan't say why here, I'll invite my readers to leave me a comment and say why.

A father crashes his car into the woods with his two daughters, supposedly aged three and one, although they look older. There's a back story to why he's driving through the woods on an icy road, but it's not relevant, and the film would probably have been better omitting it. They take refuge in a cabin in the woods. The father is killed by a supernatural creature, which then adopts the two girls and looks after them as their mother.

The man's identical twin brother Luke devotes his life and his savings to finding his brother and the children. Five years later hunters stumble on the cabin and find the two girls living in a feral state. After spending three months in a hospital for psychiatric evaluation they're adopted by their Uncle Luke and his wife. But the two children have been followed by the creature that they still consider to be their "Mama".

Originally this was made as a short film, and it shows. The back story that I mentioned is unnecessary padding to make it a full length film. Then there's the matter of the brothers being identical twins, which isn't expounded on enough to make it seem more than a loose end. The five-year hunt doesn't add anything to the story. And the custody battles with Luke's sister-in-law just distract from what the film is really about: it's a very well directed horror film with an abundance of suspense.

Texas Killing Fields (3 Stars)

"Inspired by true events"? I hope the true events referred to weren't too identical to what was shown in this film. The characters are ugly, throughout. Though it has been rated as a good film by many others I couldn't enjoy it for the simple reason that I found nobody among the main characters who I could like and relate to.

Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a deeply religious police detective who has been transferred from New York to Texas City, Texas. His partner is Mike Souder (Sam Worthington), a disillusioned godless man who solves the crimes given to him, but that's it; he has no motivation to do any more, despite the begging of his ex-wife Pam (Jessica Chastain), also a police detective in neighboring Clark County. A girl has been reported missing in Texas City, another day in the office for Detectives Heigh and Souder. Pam suggests that the missing girl is connected to over 60 killings in her district. Brian wants to look into it, but Mike tells him to stay away because it's "not their jurisdiction". Besides, the killings took place in a swamp area known locally as the Killing Fields, and anyone from Texas knows that it's best to stay out.

Texas City is an ugly place, judging by the film. The area is full of prostitutes, some as young as 14. The pimps are violent to the girls. The police are violent to the pimps, beating them up during interrogation. This is one place I would not like to be questioned by the police, I would leave the station without any teeth. When the film was over I didn't know who I hated the most, the killers or the police.

Click here to view the trailer.