Given its largely banal story and undeniable visual flair, the obvious conclusion to draw is that Hurry Up Tomorrow is a 105-minute music video. Although director Trey Edward Shults works very hard indeed to shoot and cut the offstage action like a thriller, he drenches so much of it with a purple rain of pulsating epileptic light that it has a soporific effect which no amount of frantic cocaine-rush editing can awaken us from.
Stew Mott
44 posts
After more than a decade away, the disembodied spectre of Death returns to haunt a new shoal of hapless victims by masquerading as a series of stylishly mounted and entertainingly ridiculous ‘accidents’. In an attempt to freshen its foul breath, this time the filmmakers have gone big AND gone home – the initial premonition of mayhem that kicks everything off takes place decades in the past, therefore our conceptual baddie decides that entire generations of a family need to be wiped out.
Gloriously mental psychological thriller in which Nicolas Cage’s frayed masculinity is subjected to a series of Herculean tests by a gang of malevolent larrikins on an Australian beach, when all he wants to do is hang ten in the swell (or whatever surfers do) while reconnecting with his teenage son.
A clinical psychiatrist gets a taste of his own medicine when his treatment of a semi-schizophrenic patient backfires, so that his own grasp on reality grows ever more tenuous, taking us on an arresting, genre-splicing adventure through a version of Hong Kong choking on the fallout of the 2008 financial crash.
In this stylish but circuitous and needlessly complicated kidnap thriller, cuddly Nick Frost takes a sharp left turn away from his comedy origins and unearths his inner psychopath, as a taxi driver who may sound like a harmless cockney oaf, but who would give Travis Bickle a run for his fare.
Marvel’s latest concoction sees a team of perfectly cast rogues, all of them at least vaguely familiar from supporting roles in prior movies and TV shows, taking on an impossible mission during which they can run, jump, punch, shoot, kick, stab and perhaps find their inner heroes along the way.
The central cinematic thesis is that music is a mystical force that can be used either to heal or to harm. In this particular context the dichotomy goes from gospel, by which one can commune with God, to the blues, by which the guitar becomes a totem of the devil. It’s an idea as old as the Mississippi Delta, and allows the story to dig deep into the roots of African-American culture, by repurposing classic horror tropes and by the selective perversion of religious symbolism.
"Single mum seeks cute, kind man with GSOH; let’s meet in penthouse restaurant for drinks, giggles and … MORE??" At least that’s how Violet hopes her evening will go, until ‘more’ turns out to be a mysterious text message revealing that her young son’s being held hostage and the only way she’ll get him back is to murder her rather promising date.