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book film review Retrospective Review TV

2023 – Wrap up

What a year!

From January to April, things were moving along nicely. My goddaughter-niece turned one – despite the fact that I cannot remember life before she arrived – but then a few things rocked my little bubble and the people I hold the dearest. It has culminated in the twelve months of 2023 feeling like three years. It wasn’t all bad, there were some positives amid the… seizures… tears… pneumonia… the end of a friendship… cyst on the brain… a stenosis diagnosis… a healing trip to London to experience the shattering catharsis of A Little Life on stage… a Fringe & Bracket reunion… tears… fractured limbs… a much needed sunshine break… I started writing again… all those murdered babies and no ceasefire in sight… ‘Whoopi’ was vacated… relief… healing and self-care… stopped expecting a ‘me’ from anybody… I stopped writing again… boundaries… said enough… I am enough… oh, and Last Christmas finally made Christmas #1 39 years after initial release – RIP George x

Anyway. Phew. Shrugs, *blows raspberry at stress and worry*

I did manage to see some films this year albeit non-film festival ones courtesy of my Curzon and mubi memberships. Below are the twenty I admired the most, half of which excitedly were directed (and written) by women and depict the whole gamut of emotions experienced by a multitude of fully-rounded, complex humans. My favourite being the masterclass in misogyny, Justine Triet’s pitch perfect Anatomy of a Fall.

Favourites Films of 2023

Favourite Books of 2023

Thankfully, I also managed to read. Again, not as many as I’d have liked but personal distractions aside, 60 isn’t too bad. That’s 17,339 pages – actual pages too as I just don’t think I’m cut out for a Kindle. Absolute fave eleven are below left, on the right is a pile of honourable mentions: fiction and non, a volume of comics, women in translation, four blokes and a bit of poetry. If somebody was to make me choose just one, then today it would be Lagioia’s The City of the Living which I happened to review earlier in the year.

TV/streaming highlights of 2023

It was the year that bid farewell to The Marvellous Mrs Maisel (flashbacks, forwards and ageing make-up galore. Also, can’t spell it with just the one ‘l’, soz), Succession (AKA Wambsgans Win) and Happy Valley (bye-bye Tommy Lee Royce). There was a second series for Somebody Somewhere which is just the loveliest show in the world; gentle, tender, funny, and full of grace and warmth. Other TV highlights for me included:

Poker Face – Casino cocktail waitress Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) entangles herself with some shady people following the murder of her best friend. She goes on the run, solving crimes wherever she ends up. Made all the more interesting by her uncanny ability to spot a lie. Think Wonder Woman (sans lasso) meets Columbo via the quick-witted brain of Rian Johnson.

The Last of Us – Pedro! In the adaptation of a game I will never play! Yet more importantly, S1 E03: Long, Long Time – Survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) makes an unlikely connection in Frank (Murray Bartlett). Perfection.

The Bear S2 E08, Forks. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) finally comes into his own after Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) sends him to a posh restaurant to ultimately polish the cutlery.

Dark Winds – It’s 1971 and the discovery of three dead bodies in a motel coincide with an armoured bank heist. Navajo reservation cops Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) investigate the brutal deaths of three of their own with the help of a new recruit, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). A revisionist western mini-series at its finest, re-appropriated from the perspective of indigenous Americans by indigenous Americans (producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin’s names add a little cash/cache). It’s brilliant and thankfully has been renewed for two more series. Whether we, in the UK get those remains to be seen but I sincerely hope so.

The Fall of the House Usher – I, admittedly, haven’t really been a fan of anything Mike Flanagan has done since The Haunting of Hill House (2018) but I think, he may have surpassed even that with this celebration of all things Edgar Allan. The whole cast bring their A-game and it is deliciously dark, twisted and utterly compelling from the first ten minutes. Poe-etic even (ugh). As an aside, I bloody love Bruce Greenwood – the perfect replacement for the other guy.

                  Fin

Phoebe
Categories
DVD Review TV

Channel Zero: Candle Cove

Based upon Kris Straub’s creepypasta short story, Candle Cove was the first anthology in Syfy’s Channel Zero series with the second No End House, Butcher’s Block (S3) and The Dream Door (S4) swiftly following before announcement of its cancellation. Its creator Nick Antosca and producers Don Mancini (Child’s Play) and Harley Peyton (Twin Peaks) brought a unique experience to the small screen, most of which are now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Candle Cove opens during two months in 1988, five children: Jacob Booth, Sadie Williams, Carl Cutter, Gene Hazel and Eddie Painter go missing with four later found murdered. Only one – Eddie – was never returned nor remains discovered for burial. The Iron Hill Murders were never solved and now, 28 years later, Eddie’s identical twin brother Mike (Paul Schneider) a child psychologist is recovering from a breakdown and plagued by nightmares that eventually make him head home to mother Marla (Fiona Shaw) and the childhood home and friends he left behind. Once there, he realises that a TV show has started to air again called Candle Cove, an eerie puppet-led programme that only children seem to be able to see and which brainwashes them into participating in some deeply disturbing antics.

As more children go missing and start acting strangely, losing teeth along the way, Mike, – even finding himself a suspect at one point – must embrace his repressed memories, childhood traumas and nightmares head-on if he is ever going to discover the truth about Eddie. His creepy journey will see him recollect the bullying, the paralysing fear, and meet the mysterious Jawbone, its merry band of shipmates aboard the happy ship on the way to Candle Cove, and prevent history repeating itself.

While some shows tend to tell their stories from the child’s perspective, the world between adults and kids separated, here they interlink; childhood fear enforces adulthood and that trauma never leaves – all those things that grown-ups dismiss as an overactive imagination manifest and are all the more real and frightening. What makes Candle Cove so effective is its thoughtful and understated – even mundane – approach to horror. Yes, it uses tropes familiar in the world of Stephen King but there are also elements of The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, America Gothic and even Mystic River (2009), with additional (and repetitious) layers of intrigue. The fact that Winnipeg (doubling for Iron Hill) is so green, lush and naturally shot only enhances the supernatural.

There are nods to Treasure Island, The Muppets and an all-too terrifying version of the tooth fairy but not like you’ve ever seen. Childhood fears are its emotional backbone but it uses guilt, grief, dream logic and some surreal and whimsical imagery to really sell the deeply unsettling. The performances particularly those of Schneider, Shaw and two of the children, Abigail Pniowsky (Arrival) as Lily Painter and Luca Villacis, who portrays the Painter twins beautifully and skilfully relays two very separate personalities, elevates the subject matter. The thing about murderous children is that they are utterly terrifying; corrupted innocence disturbs and distresses on such a profound level. The lack of gratuitous violence is refreshing also, it’s not completely absent but tends to be distancing, quick and almost always off-screen.

Told over six episodes this anthology is an atmospheric and quietly unique experience, it builds the dread and truly unsettles staying with you long after the denouement. It’ll haunt your dreams especially the child made entirely of human teeth but never fear, head to bravery cave, all your secrets will be safe in Candle Cove…

Categories
Blu-ray Review TV

Top of the Lake

sundance-top-of-the-lake

A determining factor, some may argue, at the heart of Campion’s oeuvre is the inclusion of a strong, emotive (and convincing) female protagonist seen in the likes of Sweetie (1981), An Angel At My Table (1990), The Piano (1993) and In the Cut (2003) to name but a few; these women are usually in search of themselves and while their strength and femininity are rarely questioned they tend to be deeply flawed characters. In Campion’s crime mini-series Top of the Lake – which sees her reunited with collaborator and long-time friend Gerard Lee – leading protagonist Robin Griffith (Elisabeth Moss) picks up the baton left by these memorable characters.

top-of-the-lake-14-03

When 12-year-old Tui Mitchum (Jacqueline Joe) is rescued from Lake Top’s freezing stretch of water, her pregnancy is discovered and Detective Robin Griffith – having returned ‘home’ from Sydney – insists on taking the case. Over the course of the six-part drama, she contends with a lot more than just a statutory rape case; namely a dying mother, a long-term engagement she may or may not want, the boy she left behind, and her own demons that she has never fully faced. Throw into the mix, the all-female commune (attempting to take refuge from the debilitating aspects of their respective lives) that has set up home in a field they call Paradise, led by the enigmatic GJ (Holly Hunter). Feeling such a strong personal affiliation with young rape victim Tui, Robin is determined to assist the child; a prospect made all the more difficult when Tui disappears from a dysfunctional community full of secrets, lies, and deception, seemingly led by her father, Matt (Peter Mullan).

TOP OF THE LAKE

Boasting a cast which includes David Wenham (Oranges and Sunshine), Genevieve Lemon (The Piano) and Thomas M. Wright (soon to be seen in the US version of The Bridge) as well as the stellar prowess of Hunter and Mullan, all of whom are superb, this is really Moss’s show. Proving that she can do so much more than Mad Men‘s Peggy Olson, she is, quite simply, brilliant as the psychologically paradoxical Robin. Filmed largely on New Zealand’s South Island (a character in itself), Top of the Lake, is a TV story which unfolds like a novel much like HBO’s Deadwood. Yet amid its style there is a stark hyper-realism and mimetic quality which emerges at its own pace – some may say a snail’s – but this deliberate pacing, silence and haunting cinematography has a purpose and builds upon the thrilling tension.

It is, oddly, reminiscent of Smillas’s Feeling for Snow (1997), yet ups the emotionally raw ante (and provides a much more relatable leading lady). Campion and Lee wrote a script in 2010, a lot of which is improvised around here, and manages to keep audience interest through many-a subject matter including murder, incest, police corruption and gender politics. Misandry and misogyny go hand-in-hand; the invisibility of the older woman is offset by the impotency of the ageing male, here in Lake Top everybody is damaged, vulnerable and/or breaking the law in some capacity. By the last episode, the conclusion of which is grimly satisfying, one realises that there is no actual resolution; there are still unanswered questions which is frustratingly refreshing and not usually expected in crime television of today’s standard, at least not of the English speaking variety anyway. Campion nails it yet again.