Silent Hill

Although a significant departure from the themes and events of the video games being adapted, director Christophe Gans' Silent Hill does capture something of the actual, linguistic experience of a player puzzling through this type of interactive story. Screenwriter Roger Avery even apes the structural and narrative devices employed by both Konami's Team Silent and the similar, largely Japanese development studios who specialised in survival horror during the PlayStation 2 era. To wit: expositional flashbacks instantly impose themselves on the unfolding action following the activation of some inscrutable trigger and Radha Mitchell's despairing mother, Rose, finds herself in a safe, congratulatory space after having surmounted a climactic danger. Keys are also crucial to Rose's basic progress within an environment that is smothered with low resolution textures and shifts in then out of relative safety. These solutions are scavenged and context-sensitive; premised around the tiny, everyday inventory that Rose is able to hold. Of course, these items are then immediately lost after their use. Whereas other video game adaptations work hard to translate the sprawling mess of interactive entertainment into a tight, three-act structure, Silent Hill instead attempts to emulate the dissociative quality experienced when playing Japanese video games that are themselves inspired by an American film or television series. Those messy, parapsychological doomsdays that have been transcribed and reinterpreted back-and-forth between two languages that read in completely different directions. Gans' film, which centres around a Bible Belt town's revulsion at the idea of a messiah born out of wedlock, even finds time for the listless wandering that occurs when players are unfamiliar with their brand new maze. 

Jeff Danna & Akira Yamaoka - Night Drive

Spawn by Peach Momoko

Madara 1000 - DDDDDD

Deadpool & Wolverine

Ryan Reynolds, who is already plastered all over Disney+ with his Welcome to Wrexham documentary series, finally makes his presence known in the big screen Marvel universe with Deadpool & Wolverine, a long-promised meet-up that keeps some plates spinning for a cinematic slate that is, we are repeatedly told here, no longer in the rudest of health. Rather than immediately have Reynolds' talkative (or annoying, if you prefer) avatar brushing shoulders with what remains of The Avengers, director Shaun Levy and his co-writers, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, and Reynolds again have concocted a slightly more metatextual premise for their crossover event, one that uses the Whovian claptrap present in cancelled streaming serial Loki to draw in characters from films that were either made when Marvel was happily licensing off any property it could to stay solvent or released under regimes now obliterated by enormous, monopoly-flouting mergers. 

So, as well as an eternally reliable Hugh Jackman essaying a particularly grumpy take on The Wolverine, Jennifer Garner's Elektra is wished back into being, along with Dafne Keen's X-23 (from Logan) and Channing Tatum as a version of Gambit that never quite made it out of development hell. All are welcome distractions from the relentless motor-mouthing - particularly Tatum who ably demonstrates the difference between genuine, comedic irreverence and a strain of humour, otherwise omnipresent in this film, in which the audience often feels like they've been taken hostage by a brand ambassador - but it's the film's use of Wesley Snipes as an older, grouchier Blade that turns out to be the biggest double-edged sword. Of course, in the week that Kris Kristofferson has passed away, it's wonderful to see Snipes back in his tacti-Goth get up, now with a fine line of grey creeping up the knife-edge of his hairline, but the brief machete-twirling seen here is not an adequate resolution for a performance and persona that has cast such a massive, sun darkening shadow. 

As Deadpool & Wolverine rattles ever closer to a resolution, the false expectations engendered by its premise become more apparent, even glaring. The fourth-wall breaking muddies the conceptual water: are these heroes refugees from their own, individual franchises or orphaned ideas tossed off from our higher, indifferent reality? Is the plane of existence that we, the viewer, inhabit something that can be accessed by the onscreen characters? If Deadpool can directly address the audience, shouldn't his allies harbour some resentment for, if not the cinemagoer that did not turn up for each of their individual instalments, then perhaps the executive regimes that so mishandled their incredible destinies? The crumbling edifice of the 20th Century Fox logo is frequent background flavour in a topographical realisation of a desktop recycle bin but is that really enough to sate our collective bloodlust? Basically, is The Daywalker cleaving David S. Goyer, the writer-director of New Line's Blade: Trinity, in twaine a realistic expectation for post-modern, early-2000s nostalgia bait or is it merely the delusional desire of this terminally chippy weirdo? 

Regardless, Ryan Reynolds' latest charm offensive absolutely peters out, content to build for itself yet another world-destroying machine then have it be destroyed. Like a great many Marvel films then, Deadpool & Wolverine peaks while the credits are rolling. Although, unusually, the entertainment being extracted here isn't premised on even more completely unrealistic (or, in their more recent instances, unlikely to be referred to again) expectations. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day plays over interlaced B-roll footage from the Fox era and, for once, it feels like the shattering of motion picture kayfabe is being leveraged in a genuinely affectionate, rather than cynically advantageous, way. As a device, these behind-the-scenes glimpses are typically limited to comedies, deployed as a way to reassure anyone watching that of course the crew were absolutely delighted to be on set that day when the highest paid actor decided to waste everybody's time by ad-libbing. Here though, the effect is sincere and cumulative, tracking through a couple of decades worth of both success and failure; most of which hinge upon the unfailing likeability being broadcast by one Hugh Jackman. A superhero actor who, at this point, is surely second only to Christopher Reeve in terms of being able to remain dignified, even immune, when surrounded by hare-brained nonsense.

Geordie Greep - The New Sound

Frank's Monz by Buster Moody

Burial - Dreamfear

Walter Rizzati - Tema Bambino

The House by the Cemetery

Free association filmmaking from writer-director Lucio Fulci that combines the creepy au pair of The Omen with the housebound, psychic maelstrom of The Shining to little actual effect. These lifts aren't conceptual fragments that fellow screenwriters Dardano Sacchetti and Giorgio Mariuzzo have plotted their story around, they're blaring instruments that are (infrequently) deployed to keep the film's wheels spinning. Ania Pieroni's babysitter may gaze longingly at her employer, Paolo Malco's Dr Norman Boyle, but Fulci's film has neither the time nor the inclination to suggest the beginnings of an affair, even when it becomes clear that a previous tenant of the building they inhabit brutally murdered his own young mistress. Lucasian rhyming couplets be damned then. 

Similarly, when Pieroni's Ann wakes early to robotically smear the blood that has seeped out of the cellar and into the kitchen, it may seem that she is being driven by some unseen, supernatural force to cover their tracks but, if she is, this lingering horror isn't above immediately trapping this governess under the building so she can be mauled by a mummified monster. Set in and around a decaying, Boston mansion, The House by the Cemetery is packed with clashing, contradictory ideas; all of which are being tipped into a steaming, maggoty slop, faster than they can congeal. As with The Beyond, whose original, Italian release was less than six months before this feature, Cemetery's stand-out moment is a truly tremendous animal attack. This sequence, in which a plump bat attaches itself to Norman's hand, is both alarmingly violent and, in terms of the filmmaking techniques used to detail the assault, massively distended. The fanged ambush goes on and on, battering back-and-forth between treacly repulsion and a more comedic kind of over-indulgence. 

Walter Rizzati - I Remember

Lizzie Esau - Cool

Stilz - Scarlet Lips

Thunderwing by Paul Jon Milne

VIQ - Ghost

Return of Bastard Swordsman

Return of Bastard Swordsman is an unusual sequel, one that almost completely dispenses with its title character to spend vast tracts of screentime in the company of Tony Liu, recast here from the treacherous mole he essayed in the previous instalment to an, apparently unconnected, fortune teller. Norman Chui's orphaned superman Yun Fei Yang is a fleeting presence then, his diminished role in proceedings perhaps somewhat premised on the enlightenment the character experienced in the prior film? So, having shown mercy at the conclusion of writer-director Lu Chun-Ku's Bastard Swordsman, by refusing to erase the Wudang martial arts school that had mercilessly bullied him, Yun strode off into an uncertain future rather than stick around and assume leadership of his devastated former home. Yun's ambivalence has left Wudang rudderless though. Easy prey for the nearby Invincible school, who are spoiling for a fight, and a clan of Japanese ninja who have shown up to encroach on this territory.

As an aside, it's hard not to delight in the Ega force's violent assault on Wudang headquarters, slaughtering a selection of newly imported big shots as well as the ageing law makers who, previously, made Yun's life a living hell. If only the silken superman had done it himself. Far less deranged in either its plotting or the film's physical construction, Return is a misshapen retread that ties itself in knots to (re)deliver on the reincarnation beats established in its predecessor. What Lu's sequel does have going for it though is any time spent in the company of Alex Man as Master Dugu, the cuckolded sifu of Invincible school and the means by which Return dissects a specific kind of middle-aged anxiety. Having dedicated his life to training in seclusion, Dugu finds himself alone and unloved as he nears the end of his life. As well as driving his wife into the arms of another, Dugu's mastery of laser-blasting martial arts has, understandably, caused his blood pressure to spike dangerously as well. It's a diagnosis that sees this cackling, well-dressed madman shit out of luck when he battles against an Ega ninja master who can puff out his own, incredible chest then use the oversized, jackhammering organ within to disrupt the rhythm of Dugu's broken heart. 

Clairo - Thank You

Kupla - Treasure

Bastard Swordsman

Writer-director Lu Chun-Ku's Bastard Swordsman refuses to sit still. Structured around the tangled webs woven by competing martial arts schools, the film is constant movement and counter-movement. This rush of gesticulation isn't just the weightless figures blasting around the frame either. Onscreen energies have sunken into the piece itself, resulting in an assembly that reads like a tape stuck on fast-forward. Lu and cinematographer Chin Chiang Ma (who previously collaborated on the similarly mind-boggling Holy Flame of the Martial World) approach even basic head-to-head conversations as an opportunity to hurl the camera into their actor's faces or stalk around them in an aggressive, agitated manner. Editors So Chan-Kwok, Lau Shiu-Gwong and Chiang Hsing-Lung are the willing accomplices, paring down their director's raw footage until Bastard Swordsman is nothing but breathless motion. 

Perhaps this method of delivery is reflective of an overstuffed screenplay? One that aims to condense a 60 episode television series (the show in question, Reincarnated, was broadcast on Hong Kong TV in 1979) into one, ninety minute movie? Lu crams in factions and sub-factions; secret identities and betrayals; as well as heart-breaking familial disorder, into a story that is, broadly, a kind of wuxia Cinderella. Norman Chui, who passed away recently, plays Yun Fei Yang, an orphan who overcomes his diminished station in life to fight on behalf of the kung-fu academy that used him as a live target during throwing dart lessons. Transformed from a virginal whipping boy into a supernatural demi-God, thanks to the combined efforts of several (deferred) love interests, Yun vanquishes the pretenders that have besmirched the good name of Wudang. Having won the day, it's a shame that Yun doesn't go even further, tearing down the pillars of the sect that so relentlessly mistreated him. Unfortunately, for this blood-thirsty audience, by that point in the story Yun towers over such earthly concerns.

Magdalena Bay - That's My Floor