Three Films Make A Post: A gripping puzzle of pursuit and escape

The Lurking Fear (2023): I’m not enough of an optimist to expect something like a Tubi adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s worst – though also fun despite of itself – stories to be much good, even though you could arguably make a nice ninety minute piece of pulp entertainment out of the material. What we actually get in Darren Dalton’s film is a bit of mock-POV horror, followed by long, long, long sequences of characters wandering through underground tunnels, disrupted by bad make-up effects and what the film laughingly calls its plot. Add to that an inability to edit action sequences or parallel plot lines – of different character groupings wandering through those damn tunnels, so don’t get too excited – that borders on the anti-genius (the Anti-Christ’s less fun brother), and not even Robert Davi playing a bad guy wearing a ridiculous hat can do much to save this thing.

Reportage November (2022): In some aspects this fake documentary style piece of POV horror from Sweden by Carl Sundström is a bit more competently made than your usual movie about filmmakers/ghost hunters/random fools walking panicked through the woods, wielding cameras. At least, the script seems to have a basic understanding of dramatic structure, so there’s a pleasant lack of scenes where characters just fart around, and the plot progresses in a reasonable and mostly efficient manner.

Of course, the narrative still only works like the filmmakers want it to because a quartet of supposed professionals acts ridiculously unprofessional, and most of it consists of the usual tropes and clichés of your typical wood wandering POV horror movie (without the green night camera, though), with a bit of a vague conspiracy angle pasted on. It’s still watchable, which is more than I’d say about many of its peers. Plus, at least the forests are Swedish for a change.

The Odessa File (1974): Ronald Neame’s Odessa File recommends itself mainly through its very post-War sensibility, a portrayal of an early 70s Europe that still lies under the shadow of the kind of people responsible for World War II. This makes it unpleasantly topical in a Europe where the Right is on the rise yet again. And like the Nazis here, there’s still the assumption of victimhood, the pretence at culture, and so on, and so forth coming from these people. The films hits the tone of parts of particularly German post-War culture and the things it liked to hide from itself rather well, so much so that its more contrived conspiracy elements as well as its general sense of paranoia feel plausibly grounded.

As a thriller, the film’s pacing tends to be a little slow, but once it gets going, it does develop more than enough drive to satisfy. The acting, with a merry mix of German and British actors playing the Nazis, and Jon Voight pretending to be Gerrman, as well, is strong throughout. Maximilian Schell hits the note of the whiny, self-satisfied mass murderer, particularly well.

Past Misdeeds: Ironclad (2011)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

Warning: if you need the movies you watch not to run roughshod over actual history, you'll probably need to keep away from Ironclad, or die of annoyance.

It's 1215 in the Kingdom of England, and King John (Paul Giamatti chewing scenery like a true champ) is quite displeased by having been pressed into signing the Magna Carta. So displeased, in fact, he imports a group of Danes under their Captain Tiberius (Vladimir Kulich) into the country to help him take the baronies he just made peace with truly back into his loving arms.

But a small part of the former rebels led by Baron William D'Aubigny (Brian Cox) and Archbishop Langton (Charles Dance) are willing to even hand the crown of England to the French king Louis to keep John out of power. The French, however, will take their time. Who wants a crown delivered on a silver plate, right? Because of the French dithering, their cause could be lost before it even truly begins if John and the Danes are able to take the strategically important castle of Rochester, which controls access to large parts of England.

Our rebels are a bit low on bodies at the moment, so it falls to D'Aubigny to take a troop of seven men he gathers in the traditional manner of such films, and who are played by people like Jason Flemyng and Mackenzie Crook, to the castle to help protect it together with the minor garrison its actual lord Reginald de Cornhill (Derek Jacobi) can - not exactly happily - muster. D'Aubigny's trump card, though, will be Templar Thomas Marshal (James Purefoy!), a man who may have been traumatized by the Crusades but who is still the best at what he does (which, as you can assume, isn't very nice).

Soon, John and his Danes arrive at Rochester and a siege ensues. The fighting and screaming and nearly dying of hunger is only interrupted by various discussions about the worth of faith and oaths, as well as the mandatory love story: Marshal and Reginald's wife Isabel (Kate Mara) - a woman too independent to be happy in her time and place - fall for each other hard.

As I already warned, if you go into Jonathan English's (a rather ironic director name taken in this context) Ironclad hoping for respect for historical facts, you'll be struck down with some kind of fit sooner or later; this is, after all, a film taking place in 1215 that ends with the French king Louis (who was actually a prince by the time anyway) holding the crown of England, which is not a thing that happened, and, curiously enough, also not really a historical fact that needed changing for the film's story to work at all. Though it has to be said that the film does, on the other hand, show an interest in a degree of historical veracity beyond historical fact, so the middle ages in Ironclad's England are appropriately poor, cold, muddy, and the populace's education leaves something to be desired. I think the easiest way to ignore the film's historical failings is to treat it as a - rather excellent - sword and sorcery film without the sorcery. Just pretend this takes place in Engelund, and the king's name is Jim, and all problems are solved.

If you are one of those people unable to do that, though, you'll probably also be quite annoyed by the film's treatment of its characters. Everyone's psychology works more or less like that of people in a movie made in 2012, with little regard taken for what we today assume to be the specifics of the medieval mind. Personally, I don't mind this too much. I'm generally doubtful when a film turns historical figures into aliens, because I doubt human psychological and emotional needs have changed all that much during the course of history, but rather our consciousness of them and our way to express them has.

Anyway, the film's rather open approach to history also results in something I find rather believable, and definitely one of the three elements I like most about it. Namely, Ironclad's willingness to treat its female lead as an actual human being with a degree of agency. The film is never confusing Isabel's position and meagre rights in life with her actual inner life and her capabilities. Isabel is still, alas, neither hero nor actual centrepiece of the film, yet Ironclad shows a respect for her and interest in her that can't be taken for granted in this sort of historical adventure movie, particularly not a contemporary one where stating historical veracity often rather seems to mean "putting the women in their places".

The second element of Ironclad I find particularly noteworthy is of course James Purefoy, for James Purefoy is an actor who is evidently improbably awesome in whatever role he is cast in, putting charisma and effort in whether a film and script deserve them or not. What is true in general is also true here. Actually, the rest of the cast of predominantly British character actors are no slouches either (particularly Kate Mara and Paul Giamatti), but, you know, James Purefoy!


Finally, Ironclad is also just very, very good at the main thing it sets out to do, creating gory, exciting and slightly repellent battle scenes which from time to time feature a bit too much of the old shaky cam but make up for that by their sheer blood-spattering power. These scenes are quite a thing to behold and are in fact so convincing they leave no doubt in a viewer's mind that twenty men can hold off one thousand enemies in a siege. Which is exactly the sort of thing I like to take away from my medieval adventure movies. Hail King Louis of England!

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

You know the drill: the Orient Express, the murder of a rather unpleasant chap (this time around also played by a rather unpleasant chap), one genius Belgian detective of taste, style and the facial hair of nightmares, and a trainload of suspects given by a cast of great actors.

To start, a double disclosure: Firstly, I am not a great lover of the works of Agatha Christie, or rather, I’m not terribly fond of so-called “Golden Age” (as with many genres, the actual good stuff came after the Golden Age for me) mysteries as a whole – with exceptions of course. Frankly, I often don’t enjoy the emotionless, game-like quality of this particular genre; I also can’t give a flying fart if Lord Suckbottoms was murdered by the butler or his nephew. Secondly, I am not the greatest fan of this version of the Orient Express’s director/Poirot Kenneth Brannagh either. He’s certainly a very talented man, but to me, he too often seems to use much of his talent to demonstrate how talented he is, which is the sort of approach that’ll sometimes make even a genius look like a hack.

However, I actually think Brannagh has his tendency for excess in general and excessive vanity specifically well under control for this film, using his considerable powers for much better things than self-aggrandization. As a matter of fact, the consistency with which Brannagh – in both of his roles for the production - makes good, intelligent, and interesting choices throughout is it what makes this a rather inspired mystery film. From time to time, mostly in the early parts of the film, Brannagh’s direction does get a wee bit showy, but that’s mostly an attempt to keep a film that mostly consists of one dialogue scene after the other gripping to an audience without putting all of the work on the shoulders of the actors alone. Kon Ichikawa did this sort of thing better in his movies about Kozure Kindaichi in the 70s, but then, Brannagh does keep his film flowing and comparatively tight for its genre, where the Japanese master of this form thrived on digressions of all sorts.

As an actor, Brannagh does an admirable job with his Poirot, avoiding either turning him into a caricature or just copying the style of David Suchet’s interpretation of the role. This Poirot doesn’t go overboard with dubious French or incessantly babbles about little grey cells, but reads as a somewhat eccentric, clearly brilliant man with a great capacity for compassion and understanding, in the end a very human genius. Which makes him just the right sort of Poirot for Brannagh’s interpretation of the mystery’s solution which attempts – and even half succeeds – to sell its inherent absurdity through emotion, an approach that is certainly further supported by much fine acting by everyone in the cast, be it Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom Jr., or Daisy Ridley. These are actors willing and able to understand and incorporate into their acting one of the finer points of what is going on here: that everyone in this film is hurt and broken, and acting out a role in front of Poirot - sometimes themselves too - and that not each character here is as good of an actor as the one playing them.

I usually see Brannagh as a director prone to too grand gestures, but in Murder, he demonstrates particular strength when it comes to visually incorporating telling details – obviously a rather important thing in a classic mystery – without feeling the need to excessively point them out to his audience. In a comparable vein, I also appreciated how Brannagh anchors the film’s narrative in its place and time without pretending the film itself does belong to that time, too. So there’s a much clearer view of the way concepts of class and race played out than you would find in most mysteries of its time without strictly making this a film about race and class. Instead, these issues build part of the social fabric the film’s narrative takes place in, adding veracity and further emotional resonance that keeps the film far away from the abstractness that kills a mystery for the type of viewer I am.


All this makes Brannagh’s Murder on the Orient Express easily one of my favourite films in the classic mystery style. It may not be as incisive as Gosford Park but unlike the Altman film, it is aiming to make a perfect modern specimen of a form instead of deconstructing it. In this, it succeeds splendidly.

On Exploder Button: Ironclad (2011)

Remember how eeeeevil King John lost the English throne to Louis of France in 1215? Well it sure happened in someone's Crusader Kings 2 game, so it might as well make its way into a historical adventure movie.

But fret not, friends of medieval people with swords, and of James Purefoy, if you can ignore silly little things like historical fact, Ironclad has a lot of good to offer. What kind of good, I'll relate in my column over at Exploder Button.

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