The Father (2020)

This multi-Oscar-Award-winning film is no-one's idea of a good time but it is so rivetting on account of its being so well-acted and filmed and told, you are not able to take your eyes off it and the sting in the tail of course is that while delivered with thrills of a distinctly Hitchcockian style, these thriller elements are just the trappings of a very real, commonplace, and oh-so-heart-breaking aged-care conundrum and the film cleverly makes you guilty of assuming wrong things about the cantankerous old man Anthony Hopkins plays.

★★★★☆

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Solace (2015)

Law & Order repeats were playing back-to-back on the other channel and what a far superior viewing experience those police procedurals would have been compared to this heavy-handed claptrap also about a police investigation but one headed by a psychic (Anthony Hopkins) whose heavy metal film-clip visions, in ponderous slow motion, of coffee cups breaking and of eyes bleeding and of drips breaking the surface of some water, help serial killer investigators by telling them minutes in advance of their own human senses which bin to search at a crime scene, what the name of a news kiosk in a train station is, which of five taxis to follow in a traffic jam, and what kind of tattoo a bystander has at yet another of this film's dreary candelabra-decorated, rose-petal-strewn murder scenes. 

★☆☆☆☆

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Beowulf (2007)

With the exception of Ray Winstone in the title role who is transformed into the legendary, muscly Geatish warrior Beowulf, this computer-animated version of the Old English epic poem is populated by incredibly realistic animated versions of actors like Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar and Angelina Jolie as the mother of the marauding troll-like monster Grendell whom Beowulf is asked to slay, but far from eliciting wonder, the movie mostly leaves you feeling that director Robert Zemeckis' purpose for using such ultra realistic animation and not using the actors themselves was simply to be able to stage a series of peculiar nude fight scenes.

★★☆☆☆

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The Elephant Man (1980)

David Lynch's second film is about Joseph 'The Elephant Man' Merrick and although the 1980 movie has a black-and-white schlock horror look, Merrick, not a ghoul, really did exist, really did suffer a congenital disorder that left him deformed from an early age, and really was exploited and abused by a freakshow exhibitor before a kind doctor introduced him to (Victorian-era) London high society.

★★★★☆

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Thor (2011)

The Xanadu stylings of the Thor world - glittery rainbow-coloured rollerskating paths leading up to a gold fob watch hanging in space called Asgard - crossed with the horned helmets, Elvin beards, and male bawdiness of Norse mythology, do not appeal but I persisted with this Chris Hemsworth-helmed number one of the Marvel Thor series knowing one day I'd need to have watched it in order to grapple with the other two (read 'three', 'four', 'twelve'...) - 'Thor: The Dark World' and 'Thor: Ragnarok' - and apart from a Lord Of The BoRings taint to the all-male armies that are fighting to control 'the nine realms', this is very familiar in a just-like-all-other-superhero-movies kind of way (a blonde Wonder Woman from an alien Themyscira ends up among humans being aided by a female Steve Trevor who shows the sort of immediate devotion to the potential lunatic that those women do who, a couple of letter-exchanges in, chose to marry their confessed mass-murderer-in-jail penpals), and it is all fine if slightly boring...but at least I am ready now to equally reluctantly watch the endless other Thors (but, full disclosure, I still need to wiki some aspects of the plot I missed along the way like who Idris Elba is, what exactly he is doing just standing there in space, and what on earth the nine realms are.)

★★★☆☆

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Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Marvel generally cannot sustain the fun and energy of its blockbuster 'firsts' and so it is again with this lifeless number two, a superhero action movie that never gets out of first gear - the humour falls flat, the action fails to interest, the cgi backdrops look cheap, and the Thor mythology is an incessant hammering for two hours ("convergence blah blah blah convergence blah blah blah)" that only the most dedicated of Marvel enthusiasts will care to really listen to.

★☆☆☆☆

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You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Woody Allen movies, and perhaps especially his romantic comedies with their thrown-together ensemble casts, ad-libbed dialogue, seemingly made-up-on-the-spot characters, and voiceover narrations of questionnable value, can give the impression the director isn't even trying, and so it is here in this romantic comedy which in its first half rambles breezily on about the love lives of seven or eight Londoners, appears to jump the shark in the middle with a sudden 'plagiarist writer' development, but finally ties everything together with lots of belly laughs and the idea that the tall, dark stranger of the title is ourselves trying things on in desperate moments, and of course there is the renewed conviction that even though it can sometimes appear he is just churning them out, Woody Allen's movies are always worth a look.

★★★☆☆

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Hannibal (2001)

Oh dear, the subtle, chilling and in many ways groundbreaking Silence of the Lambs is followed up by this blatant, bloated, over-the-top gothic melodrama, a sequel which replaces Jodie Foster's intense, determined but vulnerable Clarice with Julianne Moore's personality-free version who starts off being held responsible, ridiculously, for a 70s blaxploitation movie's stakeout-gone-wrong and then bungles her way through a dull serial killer investigation involving so much exaggerated horror without any let up or normalcy that in the end it feels like a desperate, unclassy, um, assault upon the brain.

★☆☆☆☆

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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola's ludicrous, outrageous Dracula story is buoyed by Gary Oldman's gleefully grotesque portrayal of the 400 year old count who floats around with a disembodied shadow and an ability to transform into green mist or a writhing mass of rats, and the movie's Giallo horror stylings help present a world so reminiscent of the book that this really does feel like it is Bram Stoker's Dracula and not just another camp monster cliche.

★★★★☆

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Bad Company (2002)

Chris Rock is an uncharismatic good-for-nothing enlisted by Anthony Hopkins' Government spy boss to step into his dead twin brother's shoes in this romance-, drama-, and joke-free romantic action comedy which I suspect Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Schumacher chose in the end to self-title rather than use other equally apt titles, "Bad Acting", "Misguided Project" or "Pedestrian Plotting".

★☆☆☆☆

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The Wolfman (2010)

It won an Academy Award for best makeup and is star-studded but this 2010 werewolf story, a remake of a camp 1940s horror of the same name, seems to want to be an epic Hollywood blockbuster AND a camp 1940s horror remake at the same time and ends up being neither; instead, it is an elaborately staged and handsomely made-up "nothing" that should have more wholeheartedly embraced its camp 1940s horror roots and taken itself far less seriously.

★☆☆☆☆

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Fracture (2007)

There's a ball track device in the apartment where Anthony Hopkin's character shoots his wife which gives the impression this movie will be a twisting, turning, complex Hitchcockian thriller; in fact, it is a mildly interesting courtroom drama that treats a small matter of police procedure as a thrilling final reveal, one that dawns much too late on Ryan Gosling's hotshot lawyer.

★★★☆☆

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The Silence of the Lambs

*SPOILER ALERT*

Rewatching this serial killer chiller is a sobering indication of how naive a filmgoing audience we once were but are no longer, for when Hannibal Lecter says very early on, "Why do you think he skins his victims, Clarice?" the obvious answer today in place of yesteryear's innocent bewilderment, is the quick, plain, "He is probably making a human suit."

★★★★☆

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Hitchcock (2012)

I am a huge Hitchcock fan but found very little of interest in this wafer-thin movie-length impersonation and can only assume obsessed fanboys somewhere get off on the minutiae of the making of controversial Psycho which (*spoiler alert*) did end up getting made.

★★☆☆☆

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