APRIL 12 — We’re still knee deep into the Raya month, so obviously there will be lots of events and open houses to attend courtesy of friends, colleagues and the companies we work in, which means that for a lot of us, myself included, going to catch a movie in cinemas will be a bit of a challenge in terms of trying to find some free time to squeeze one in.
There are a few movies that I’m hoping to catch in local cinemas once I do manage to find some free time, like The Amateur, A Working Man and local film Blood Brothers: Bara Naga, but these will have to wait.
Thankfully we have streaming and VOD platforms now to make watching movies a lot easier in the comforts of our own homes, and I’ve managed to watch a few new titles that I think will be worth your time, even if they might be a bit under the radar and unfamiliar to the general public.
The Rule of Jenny Pen
This Shudder original film from New Zealand is one of the year’s nicest horror surprises yet, with a mixture of tones that violently oscillate between shocking and shockingly funny.
If you loved “Hagsploitation” classics like What Ever Happened To Baby Jane and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, this one would be right up your alley, except that this is the male version of that short lived genre.
In place of ageing iconic female stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, we’ve got aging male stars Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow playing adversaries living in a nursing home.
Rush plays Stefan, a respected New Zealand judge who was sent to the care home after a stroke rendered half his body largely paralysed.
Sadistically ruling that old folks’/nursing home is Lithgow’s character and fellow patient Dave, who prances around the place carrying a baby doll hand puppet he named Jenny Pen.
It’s a terrifying exploration of issues like elderly people abuse, sexual abuse and medical gaslighting, with director James Ashcroft liberally sprinkling an irresistible dose of black comedy throughout, making this one an uncomfortable, visceral yet very funny viewing experience.
Black Bag
Hot off their critically acclaimed collaboration in Presence, director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp are back with the incredibly stylish Black Bag, a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as a married couple named George and Kathryn, who also happen to be spies working for the same organisation.
George has been informed that there’s a leak within his organisation, and the list of five suspects he was given also contains the name of his wife.
George has a week to figure this out before tens of thousands of people may potentially die because of it.
Exuding the sexy and stylish tension that made Soderbergh’s mainstream breakthrough Out Of Sight such a delight, the slight but crucial difference here is that the chemistry between the main couple here is more like a smooth and seasoned romance.
Consisting mostly of conversations, with only a few jolts of spy film violence like shootings and stabbings slipped in towards the end of the film, this film derives its tension not from action scenes, but from the suspense that’s set up by the film’s many dialogue-driven scenes, as almost every conversation here is a test of wills and smarts between experienced spies.
So, the fight and action here is in the dialogue, and it’s just wonderful.
This is a supremely confident piece of elegant entertainment, and I don’t think we’ve had many of those in the last few years.
The Parenting
If you want to have some great big laughs alongside some gross out horror comedy, this new film from director Craig Johnson (whose most famous work was probably The Skeleton Twins) now streaming on HBO’s Max will leave you in stitches.
It has a brilliant elevator pitch as its setup – imagine Meet The Parents set in a haunted house. The couple in question is Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) and the parents come in the form of Frank (a hilarious Brian Cox having the time of his life here), Sharon (Edie Falco) and Josh’s more warm-hearted pair of Liddy (Lisa Kudrow, doing her best to steal the show from Cox) and Cliff (Dean Norris).
Rounding up this class A cast are 90s indie queen Parker Posey as Brenda, who’s renting out the house for that weekend, and Vivian Bang as Sarah, who is Rohan’s and Josh’s best friend.
Cox has a lot of fun being possessed by the demon that haunts the house, and basically walks away with the movie, especially during a laugh out loud nude scene and one at the breakfast table where he casually slices up the arm of one of the guests.
I definitely did not expect such a simple setup to yield such fresh and entertaining results. If you’re looking for something fun, this will do very nicely.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
