Dir - Joe Cornish
Overall: GOOD
The full-length debut from writer/director Joe Cornish of comedy duo Adam and Joe fame, Attack the Block is a comedy/action/juvenile delinquent/horror/sci-fi hybrid that suffers from the era's obnoxious slash-and-dash editing style yet is otherwise enjoyable. Notable for some familiar faces such as Nick Frost, Jodie Whittaker, and John Boyega in his film debut, the script has enough details concerning its disenfranchised characters and setting to give it some cultural weight, even if the emphasis is on wacky set pieces and silliness. The dialog is colorful in Multicultural London English and delivered rapidly enough to fly past some unfamiliar viewers, but besides the aforementioned, distracting cross-cutting during the more intense sequences, the kinetic energy gives it a compelling sense of urgency. Also appreciated is a genuinely unique creature design as the pitch-black extraterrestrials look like spiked, shaggy gorilla dogs with no eyes and glow in the dark teeth, a far cry and more menacing variation than that of the cutesy, gray, big-eyed E.T. variety. Nothing here is laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it delivers the R-rated goods and juggles its multitude of genres better than expected.
Dir - Craig Gillespie
Overall: GOOD
A comedy director and Buffy the Vampire Slayer producer/screenwriter both teaming up to remake Tom Holland's seminal 80s vampire film Fright Night is a logically sound pairing and they plus a well-chosen cast have pulled something off that should have been much worse. By 2011, a handful of beloved movies from two plus decades back were getting the contemporary treatment and Colin Farrell himself would take the lead again in the following year's Total Recall as well, but existing property cynicism aside, there are some admirable qualities here. Both Farrell and David Tennant are wonderful in their respective Jerry Dandrige and Peter Vincent roles, Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse make no-brainer choices as two vampire-hunting dweebs, and Toni Collette and Imogen Poots refreshingly buy into the undead shenanigans by the halfway point instead of constantly being exasperated by Charley Brewster's claims of his neighbor's blood-sucking exploits. Marti Noxon's script tweaks roughly ninety percent of the plot points from the original which avoids giving this a prominent air of redundancy, plus many of the changes that she makes are clever ones that could have made this stand apart from the franchise. Unfortunately though, she throws in a few too many Buffy-esque/undercutting quips, plus the CGI is horrendous and will frustrate fans of the fantastic practical makeup in Holland's landmark original.
Dir - Byun Seung-wook
Overall: MEH
A generic K-horror offering from writer/director Byun Seung-wook, The Cat, (Goyangi: Jukeumeul Boneun Du Gaeui Nun, The Cat: Eyes that See Death), is both pointless and harmless in its vengeful spirit by-way-of feline agenda. The script appears to have a quota of cliches to meet; the female protagonist with a troubled past, creepy ghost kids hiding under beds and popping up for predictable jump scare purposes, a friendly male acquaintance to help investigate the mystery, some nightmare sequences, old people behaving aloof and therefor "creepy", and an explanation as to what is going on that is easily foreseeable. Some of the details surrounding Park Min-young's character like her suffering from claustrophobia, her and Kim Dong-wook's vague romantic inclinations, and her father being an invalid in an old folks home who she never visits are only provided to fill-in some dialog sequences as these elements have no necessary barring to the plot. Thus by being inconsequential, they are regularly forgotten about and make for a messy whole. Seung-wook goes through the motions agreeably enough from a pacing perspective, but this is an all too easy one to tune-out of and it is neither atmospherically chilling or interesting at any instance.
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