The Boy Next Door
Jennifer Lopez makes for unusual but solid casting in this
horror-toned thriller as a middle-aged woman whose one night stand with a
teenage neighbour (played by Ryan Guzman) has some dangerous consequences.
Lopez is however, the film's only marginally redeeming factor. Ineptly written
and directed and with some other less successful strokes of casting
eccentricity (Kristen Chenoweth is great in musicals and comedies but way out
of place here), the film is mercifully short but may be worth a few ironic laughs
for the daring. The Guest (2014) touched on similar ground, with intentional
comedy and fared a great deal better. **
Focus (previously published review, see last entry)
It Follows
If The Babadook (2014) proved that good horror movies could
still be put in multiplexes, It Follows may help to convince the skeptics that
it may not be a fluke. Maika Monroe plays a teenage girl trapped by the
presence of humanoid forms that only she can see and that can kill her. The
film owes an obvious debt to older horror films, especially Nightmare On Elm
Street (1984) but manages a snag of originality, something plenty of horror
movies, even good ones, don't always manage. The only major flaw is an
overly-complicated and inconsistent mythology but the film is filled to the
brim with dread and foreboding atmosphere, something that has been sorely
lacking from the mainstream in horror for a while. ***
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is well named. Second
in quantity and second in quality. The film follows up on a hotel/home for the
(almost exclusively) British elderly in India and brings back most of the cast
from the first film, such as Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith
and Dev Patel all of whom are very likeable and amiable but without much to do.
There are a few plot lines that flow through the film (particularly on Patel's
upcoming nuptials to Tina Desai) put the film serves more of a purpose of
indulging an audience in the presence of a glamourised India and the appearance
of Richard Gere; the plot is of secondary concern, at best. As a result, it
lacks the bittersweet tone that made The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) such
a good film, but there's something to be said for those who enjoyed the first
film aesthetically. Pleasing to the eye, but unsatisfying to the mind. ***
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