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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated VFW (2019) in Movies
Jun 8, 2020
VFW had been an off the cuff pick for ones to watch, at the last minute it appeared in some listings and I was intrigued by the cast and the vibe I was getting from the poster.
When a young girl's plan for revenge goes awry she leads a drug fueled army to the doorstep of the local veterans club. The group must defend their home away from home and try to survive until the morning.
The opening scene paints a picture of a slightly dystopian present/future where drugs run rife and cities are shells of their former selves. There are addicts and revellers all in different states and they're either in lively party spirits or high and out of it. Right from the off I found the set up confusing because you're watching something that is difficult to assess, the darkness makes it almost impossible to gauge the surrounding and you're thrown for a loop when they cut to the bright afternoon scene that is pinpointed by captions to just three hours later.
VFW definitely has a heavy 80s vibe to it. The titles, the background hum of music and the style of the filming. The colours are great but it is incredibly difficult to see anything unless you're watching it in anything but darkness. On my first watch I found myself squinting and peering at the screen trying to decipher what was going on.
There's no logical consistency to things that happen even if you take into consideration that half the characters are supposed to be drugged up to the eyeballs. The event that starts off the whole caper gives you a fairly clear idea of how the addicts react to things, if that is translated to the rest of the hoard then there's no way this film is making it past 30 minutes. It would have been done and dusted.
Dialogue throughout isn't very inspiring, there's are some truly dubious moments and the rest is easily forgotten. The scenes themselves aren't believable, the main cast get lots of opportunities to have moments together inside the VFW club despite having moments before been under the threat of a siege. There was one point where I genuinely wondered if the baddies approached and went "No. It's rude to interrupt someone when they're talking."
What it's missing in those areas it makes up for in random violence. (Make sure to watch out for the plastic machete.) There's a vaguely amusing tooling up sequence and I kind of hope they got the cast drunk and let them improvise weapons all on their own for it. This is another thing that smacks of the 80s, a lot of that violence feels like it's been lifted out of retro horror movies and adapted to this film.
I haven't spoken about the cast, and it's something that left me a little frustrated. The names and faces on the list are epic, they're solid actors with a lot of good credits under their belts... but even though they get a couple of good points in the film it's not really what I'd want for them.
VFW has a lot of elements that could work but with the slightly b-moviesque action scenes and clear omissions for the sake of having a "moment" I think it misses the opportunity to be something more serious. It's not right for b-movie/spoof status and because it doesn't take itself seriously enough it's left in a no man's land and I just couldn't figure out what it was trying to do, especially as even they didn't seem to know if they were attempting to make zombie or an action film.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/06/vfw-movie-review.html
When a young girl's plan for revenge goes awry she leads a drug fueled army to the doorstep of the local veterans club. The group must defend their home away from home and try to survive until the morning.
The opening scene paints a picture of a slightly dystopian present/future where drugs run rife and cities are shells of their former selves. There are addicts and revellers all in different states and they're either in lively party spirits or high and out of it. Right from the off I found the set up confusing because you're watching something that is difficult to assess, the darkness makes it almost impossible to gauge the surrounding and you're thrown for a loop when they cut to the bright afternoon scene that is pinpointed by captions to just three hours later.
VFW definitely has a heavy 80s vibe to it. The titles, the background hum of music and the style of the filming. The colours are great but it is incredibly difficult to see anything unless you're watching it in anything but darkness. On my first watch I found myself squinting and peering at the screen trying to decipher what was going on.
There's no logical consistency to things that happen even if you take into consideration that half the characters are supposed to be drugged up to the eyeballs. The event that starts off the whole caper gives you a fairly clear idea of how the addicts react to things, if that is translated to the rest of the hoard then there's no way this film is making it past 30 minutes. It would have been done and dusted.
Dialogue throughout isn't very inspiring, there's are some truly dubious moments and the rest is easily forgotten. The scenes themselves aren't believable, the main cast get lots of opportunities to have moments together inside the VFW club despite having moments before been under the threat of a siege. There was one point where I genuinely wondered if the baddies approached and went "No. It's rude to interrupt someone when they're talking."
What it's missing in those areas it makes up for in random violence. (Make sure to watch out for the plastic machete.) There's a vaguely amusing tooling up sequence and I kind of hope they got the cast drunk and let them improvise weapons all on their own for it. This is another thing that smacks of the 80s, a lot of that violence feels like it's been lifted out of retro horror movies and adapted to this film.
I haven't spoken about the cast, and it's something that left me a little frustrated. The names and faces on the list are epic, they're solid actors with a lot of good credits under their belts... but even though they get a couple of good points in the film it's not really what I'd want for them.
VFW has a lot of elements that could work but with the slightly b-moviesque action scenes and clear omissions for the sake of having a "moment" I think it misses the opportunity to be something more serious. It's not right for b-movie/spoof status and because it doesn't take itself seriously enough it's left in a no man's land and I just couldn't figure out what it was trying to do, especially as even they didn't seem to know if they were attempting to make zombie or an action film.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/06/vfw-movie-review.html
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Bob Mann (459 KP) rated The Snowman (2017) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
“We’re trudging through the slush”.
Unlike its animated namesake, “The Snowman” is not a good film. Frustratingly it has all the right ingredients:
A story by bestselling Nordic writer Jo Nesbø;
Gorgeously photogenic snowy scenes of Oslo and Bergen;
A stellar cast (Michael Fassbender (“Alien: Covenant“); Rebecca Ferguson (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation“); J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash“); Toby Jones (“Dad’s Army“); Chloe Sevigny (“Love and Friendship“); Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Independence Day: Resurgence“, very sexy as Fassbender’s ex-squeeze) and even Val Kilmer (“Top Gun”, whose mother – interesting fact – is actually Swedish).
snowman2
That sinking feeling when you realise you’ve been drinking all night and its too late for bed before work.
And while these elements congeal in the snow together quite well as vignettes, the whole film jerks from vignette to vignette in a most unsatisfactory way. I haven’t read the book (which might be much better) but the inclusion in the (terrible!) trailers of key scenes that never made the final cut (where was the fire for example?, the fish? the man trap?) implied to me that the director (Tomas Alfredson, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) and screenwriting team – Peter Straughan (also “Tinker, Tailor”), Hossein Amini (“The Two Faces of January“) and Søren Sveistrup (TV’s “The Killing”) – either didn’t have (or didn’t agree on) the direction they wanted the film to go in.
Film Title: The Snowman
Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons) and Katrine (Rebecca Ferguson) having a “Weinstein moment” at the hotel.
Nesbø (and indeed most crime writers these days) litter their work with damaged cops…. you have to question whether the detective application form has a mandatory check-box with “alcoholic and borderline psycho” on it!. This film is no exception. Fassbender plays Nesbø’s master sleuth Harry Hole: an alcoholic insomniac well off the rails between homicide cases. “If only Oslo had a higher murder rate” bemoans his boss (Ronan Vibert). He joins forces with newby officer Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who has her fair share of mental demons to fight, in investigating a series of missing person/murder cases. The duo unearth a link between the cases – all happen when the snow starts to fall and to particular types of women, with the protagonist leaving a snowman at the scene.
snowman5
One of the cuter snowmen… they get worse… much worse.
The plot is highly formulaic – I guessed who the killer was within about 20 minutes. But what makes this movie stand out, for all the wrong reasons, is that it has one of the most stupid, vacuous, flaccid, inane, ridiculous … (add 50 other thesaurus entries)… endings imaginable. My mouth actually gaped in astonishment!
There are also a surprisingly large number of loose ends you ponder after the film ends: why the “Snowman”‘s fixation with Harry?; what was with the “Vetlesen cleaner” subplot? How is Star Trek transportation possible in Norway? (But wait… “Telemark”… “Teleport”…. coincidence????? 🙂
On the plus side, there is some lovely Norwegian drone cinematography – (by Australian Dion Beebe (“Edge of Tomorrow“) – that immediately made me put “travel by winter train from Oslo to Bergen” on my life-map. The music by Marco Beltrami (“Logan“) is also effective and suitably Hitchcockian.
If you like your films gory, this one is definitely for you, with some pretty graphic content that (for those who like to cover their eyes) is cut to so quickly by editors Thelma Schoonmaker (“The Wolf of Wall Street“) and Claire Simpson (“Far From The Madding Crowd“) that your hands won’t have time to leave your lap! I remember this being a feature of a previous Nesbø adaptation (the much better “Headhunters” from 2011) but here it goes into overdrive.
snowman1
One of my favourite actresses – Rebecca Ferguson, curiously playing much “younger” in this film than she appears in her previous hits.
Overall this was a rather disappointing effort that was heading for a FFf rating. But just because of that ending I’m knocking a whole extra Fad off!
A story by bestselling Nordic writer Jo Nesbø;
Gorgeously photogenic snowy scenes of Oslo and Bergen;
A stellar cast (Michael Fassbender (“Alien: Covenant“); Rebecca Ferguson (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation“); J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash“); Toby Jones (“Dad’s Army“); Chloe Sevigny (“Love and Friendship“); Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Independence Day: Resurgence“, very sexy as Fassbender’s ex-squeeze) and even Val Kilmer (“Top Gun”, whose mother – interesting fact – is actually Swedish).
snowman2
That sinking feeling when you realise you’ve been drinking all night and its too late for bed before work.
And while these elements congeal in the snow together quite well as vignettes, the whole film jerks from vignette to vignette in a most unsatisfactory way. I haven’t read the book (which might be much better) but the inclusion in the (terrible!) trailers of key scenes that never made the final cut (where was the fire for example?, the fish? the man trap?) implied to me that the director (Tomas Alfredson, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) and screenwriting team – Peter Straughan (also “Tinker, Tailor”), Hossein Amini (“The Two Faces of January“) and Søren Sveistrup (TV’s “The Killing”) – either didn’t have (or didn’t agree on) the direction they wanted the film to go in.
Film Title: The Snowman
Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons) and Katrine (Rebecca Ferguson) having a “Weinstein moment” at the hotel.
Nesbø (and indeed most crime writers these days) litter their work with damaged cops…. you have to question whether the detective application form has a mandatory check-box with “alcoholic and borderline psycho” on it!. This film is no exception. Fassbender plays Nesbø’s master sleuth Harry Hole: an alcoholic insomniac well off the rails between homicide cases. “If only Oslo had a higher murder rate” bemoans his boss (Ronan Vibert). He joins forces with newby officer Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who has her fair share of mental demons to fight, in investigating a series of missing person/murder cases. The duo unearth a link between the cases – all happen when the snow starts to fall and to particular types of women, with the protagonist leaving a snowman at the scene.
snowman5
One of the cuter snowmen… they get worse… much worse.
The plot is highly formulaic – I guessed who the killer was within about 20 minutes. But what makes this movie stand out, for all the wrong reasons, is that it has one of the most stupid, vacuous, flaccid, inane, ridiculous … (add 50 other thesaurus entries)… endings imaginable. My mouth actually gaped in astonishment!
There are also a surprisingly large number of loose ends you ponder after the film ends: why the “Snowman”‘s fixation with Harry?; what was with the “Vetlesen cleaner” subplot? How is Star Trek transportation possible in Norway? (But wait… “Telemark”… “Teleport”…. coincidence????? 🙂
On the plus side, there is some lovely Norwegian drone cinematography – (by Australian Dion Beebe (“Edge of Tomorrow“) – that immediately made me put “travel by winter train from Oslo to Bergen” on my life-map. The music by Marco Beltrami (“Logan“) is also effective and suitably Hitchcockian.
If you like your films gory, this one is definitely for you, with some pretty graphic content that (for those who like to cover their eyes) is cut to so quickly by editors Thelma Schoonmaker (“The Wolf of Wall Street“) and Claire Simpson (“Far From The Madding Crowd“) that your hands won’t have time to leave your lap! I remember this being a feature of a previous Nesbø adaptation (the much better “Headhunters” from 2011) but here it goes into overdrive.
snowman1
One of my favourite actresses – Rebecca Ferguson, curiously playing much “younger” in this film than she appears in her previous hits.
Overall this was a rather disappointing effort that was heading for a FFf rating. But just because of that ending I’m knocking a whole extra Fad off!