Review #1,480: 'Fighting with My Family' (2019)

Wrestling movies don't come along very often, at least not those that take the sport seriously. Perhaps the idea of adults dressing up in ridiculously skimpy costumes and acting out a pre-choreographed fight is theatrical enough already, so a leap to the big screen would be ultimately redundant, or maybe the sport is simply too niche to guarantee a healthy return on a studios investment. But ever since The Wrestler put Mickey Rourke through the ringer, there has been a newfound respect for wrestling and the athletes who push their bodies to the very limit, particularly from those who have never sat down to watch a WWE event in their lives. Fighting with My Family continues this trend, loosely retelling the story of Saraya-Jade Bevis , aka Paige, who emerged from a working-class wrestling family in Norwich, England to become a WWE champion.

The film begins in 2002, with wrestling-mad 10 year-old Zak Knight getting pumped for the start of a WWF pay-per-view event before his younger sister Saraya turns over the channel to watch her favourite show, Charmed. Fast-forward a decade, and the two siblings have embraced their parents' passion for wrestling and have adopted ring names of their own. Zak (Jack Lowden) has become 'Zodiac Zak' and Saraya (Florence Pugh) is now 'Britani Knight', and they perform regularly at their wrestling club. The dream of dad Ricky (Nick Frost) and mum Julia (Lena Headey) is for their kids to make the transition to the big leagues, and tapes are regularly sent off to promoters in the hope of catching their eye. They finally receive a call from WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) and receive an invitation for try-outs, but after a gruelling audition, only Saraya, now using the stage name Paige, is selected.

As Zak is sent into a spiral of anger and depression, Paige struggles to work out who she is in Florida's sun-drenched world of golden-skinned models. Somewhat an outsider even back home (outside of the close-knit wrestling community), she feels isolated, mentally unprepared for the rigorous workout schedules and the standards required for the big-time. Fighting with My Family often flirts with cliche, but this is a sports movie after all. It works by developing characters we can relate to and truly root for, regardless of how ridiculous you may find the whole wrestling craze. This is down to the combined efforts of writer/director Stephen Merchant, who seems like the unlikeliest candidate to helm a wrestling picture, and the cast, who are all entirely believable.

Pugh in particular finds the right balance of inner vulnerability and the outer toughness Hutch no doubt signed her up for, and Merchant helps bring out these traits with the right balance of comedy, drama and sentiment. Frost is also perfectly cast, showing once again that he's a terrific actor in his own right and not just Simon Pegg's sidekick. For wrestling fans, there are plenty of cameos to spot, with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson showing up for an extended cameo that may feel like a gimmick until you learn of his role in Paige's real-life story. Above all, Fighting with My Family is a heartfelt tale that celebrates embracing the inner weirdo and the sport that welcomes such misfits with open arms - if you're tough enough.


Directed by: Stephen Merchant
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,380: 'Brawl in Cell Block 99' (2017)

For his debut film, 2015's Bone Tomahawk, writer, director and composer S. Craig Zahler delivered one of the most unforgettable films of the year. As it begins, Bone Tomahawk seems to be a familiar men-on-a-rescue-mission movie set in the Old West, with four vastly different personalities set up to clash on the way. If you've seen it, you'll know that the western tropes soon give way to something all the more horrifying and tense, before descending into a horrific gore-fest at the climax. It was one of the best films of 2015, and Zahler once again rummages around in the genre sack for his follow-up, Brawl in Cell Block 99, another unpredictable and incredibly violent genre-bender that seems to take much of its inspiration from the grindhouse films of the 1970s, both visually and tonally. It also features a career-best performance from a monstrous Vince Vaughn.

Bradley (Vaughn) is an ex-con and former drug addict earning an honest living at an auto-repair shop. When the state of the American economy ensures that his services are no longer required, the imposing giant returns home to the revelation that his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) has been having an affair for the past 3 months. Bradley deals with the situation calmly, informing his wife that he is to return to his drug-dealing roots to earn the cash required for a fresh start, but not before tearing her car apart with his bare hands. Fast forward 18 months later, and Bradley is still peddling drugs, getting involved with a Mexican gang and a couple of their idiot enforcers. When a deal goes horribly wrong, Bradley is sent to the slammer to serve a hefty 7 year sentence, but the cartel aren't quite done with him. In order to repay his debt for the lost property, he must carry out a hit under the orders of Euro-sleaze 'the Placid Man' (who else but Udo Kier?), otherwise a surgeon will remove the limbs of his unborn child and ensure that it lives on to be deformed. With his target in Cell Block 99, a maximum security prison ran by the sadistic Warden Tuggs (Don Johnson), Bradley must brutalise his way through the system until he is close enough to carry out the hit.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 begins as a slow-paced crime drama, establishing Bradley as a wall of strength when taking care of business, before moving on into wince-inducing, bone-cracking, head-stomping B-movie territory. It maintains an atmosphere of tension throughout, with each scene carrying a sense of dread and an expectancy that violence could erupt at any second. At the centre of it all is Vaughn, who laces the character with a dry wit and a simmering rage. He has no desire to hurt people without reason, so often turns his rage elsewhere. His first few minutes within a jail cell is spent looking for something, anything, to smash. But hurting people is what he does best, and he thumps, stomps and breaks his way through anyone foolish enough to stand between him and his quest to save his family. In many ways, the explosions of violence and gore mirror the second half of Bone Tomahawk, and while we may not understand why, it feels utterly exhilarating while we watch on between our fingers. It seems to have flown under many people's radar, somewhat unfairly, but cult adoration will surely come. It further cements Zahler's reputation as a filmmaker to keep an eye on, and while his second feature could certainly do with a 15 minute trim, Brawl in Cell Block 99 explores the nature of rage with ferocious and unflinching execution.


Directed by: S. Craig Zahler
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier, Marc Blucas
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,158: 'Hacksaw Ridge' (2016)

Whatever your opinion is of Mel Gibson, the once-Hollywood A-lister turned exile following that infamous drunken rant at the police back in 2006, it's unlikely that any other living director could have told the tender and bloody story of World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss with quite the same mixture of visceral horror and religious bent. There have been a myriad of movies recounting the acts of heroism and barbarism that occurred during the conflict, but most fail to stand out or tell their tale in a way that is unique. Gibson has defied his (understandable) haters and crafted a fine piece of work, and a story that will no doubt be compared to the actor/director's own personal plight.

Essentially a movie of two parts, both in terms of tone and quality, screenwriters Robert Schenkkan (HBO's The Pacific) and Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner) take the conventional biopic route by going way back to Doss's childhood living with his mother (Rachel Griffiths) and abusive, alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving) in Virginia. He is raised a Seventh-day Adventist and works in the local church, and as he eventually grows into Andrew Garfield, starts to romance the pretty girl who will later become his wife, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). These early scenes have a corny gloss to them, like watching a big-budget Lifetime movie with a slightly better script. While the incredibly cute romance between the couple is beautifully played by the two main leads, the movie doesn't really get going until Doss follows his brother in volunteering to fight against the Japanese.

Undeterred by his restrictive religious beliefs, which forbid him to even touch a gun, Doss hopes to do his part by working as a medic. He first must go through boot camp, where he quickly finds himself in hot water with his drill instructor Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington) when revealing himself to be a conscientious objector. Rejecting a ticket home by way of psychiatric discharge, Doss becomes an outcast in his unit and is bullied by his fellow recruits. A stint in army jail and a trial ensues before Doss is eventually allowed to rejoin his squad before they are shipped off to the Pacific. It is during the Battle of Okinawa, and more specifically the mission to secure Maeda Escarpment - nicknamed 'Hacksaw Ridge' - that Doss will prove his worth, while the unrelenting horror of war explodes around him.

Anyone familiar with Gibson's previous work will know what to expect: No punches are pulled in the truly horrific battle scene, which lasts for pretty much the entire second half. Doss rushes somewhat elegantly through exploding heads and young men holding their own guts, as a seemingly endless wave of Japanese screamers lunge at them with rifles and swords. To call this the most disturbing depiction of war would be untrue (Elem Klimov's Come and See will forever hold that title), but it's damn near close. Though the splatter is relentless, it also manages to wear you down psychologically, so you can almost feel the weight of every bullet-ridden body Doss manages to drag to safety. Garfield is terrific, managing to charm with a near-permanent goofy grin that makes it seem like Doss knows and is comfortable with exactly what life expects of him. Somewhat surprisingly, so is Vaughn, who injects what I expected would be a cliched boot camp montage with some laugh-out-loud humour. Bravo then, and welcome back Mel (haven't we forgiven actors for much worse?).


Directed by: Mel Gibson
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Rachel Griffiths
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #935: 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park' (1997)

My main memory of seeing Steven Spielberg's sequel to his 1993 mega-hit Jurassic Park is leaving the cinema with one of the worst migraines I've ever suffered. My head pounded so hard that I couldn't even eat my caramel sundae purchased from the drive-thru McDonalds on the route home. Seeing it again all these years later I approached the film with a clear head and a box of painkillers on hand as a precaution. But as the credits rolled after an exhausting 129 minutes, I found myself in pain yet again. Not pain of the physical kind, but the dull emotional pain of sitting through a pretty bad movie. The Lost World's aim is to make everything bigger and better, and while the dinosaurs are certainly more technically impressive this time, there is little of the original's magic here.

A few years after the incident on Isla Nublar, the InGen corporation are being hit with lawsuit after lawsuit, and former CEO John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is now a naturalist who has seen the error of his ways. When Hammond's slimy nephew (Arliss Howard) takes over the business, he plans to bring the dinosaurs back to the mainland and make them a sideshow attraction. Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is asked by Hammond to visit Isla Sorna, or "site B" - a breeding island where the dinosaurs roamed free - to document the dinosaurs in order to gather support for the island to be left to its own devices by humans. He initially declines, but then has a change of heart when he learns that his palaeontologist girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is already there.

Everything is certainly on a larger scale here than its predecessor. Instead of one tyrannosaurus rex we get two and a baby, and there's a whole pack of velociraptors for the group to contend with. Shortly after Malcolm arrives, he and his crew are joined by the Hammond nephew, who brings along a small army and bad-ass hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), the latter of whom simply wants a shot at taking down a T-Rex as payment for his services. Unfortunately, Malcolm's estranged daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) - a character taken straight out of Cinema's Guide to Annoying Children - also sneaks along for the ride, so we get to suffer through sentimental moments of learning the importance of family. The stand-out scene, which sees the characters attacked by the angry T-Rex's near the edge of a cliff, happens because Sarah takes their baby to bandage a wound. It turns out the dinosaurs value family too.

The fact that Sarah, an expert in her field, would even try to take care of a baby T-Rex demonstrates how stupid these characters are required to be in order for the film to deliver a set-piece. When you know there are huge, angry monsters out there, why would you park your trailer next to a cliff-edge anyway? So concerned is the film with entertaining its audience, Spielberg and writer David Koepp seem to have forgotten that a scene also requires a degree of logic to truly work. Most of the action falls flat, which is surprising given the talent for the genre previously demonstrated by its director, and it culminates in an unnecessary T-Rex rampage around San Diego. It isn't all bad - the dinosaurs are as wonderful and terrifying as ever and the late Postlethwaite is a fantastically conflicted antagonist - but there's a noticeable lack of heart and effort here.


Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Richard Attenborough, Vince Vaughn
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #730: 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy' (2004)

Will Ferrell is a very funny man. He has the ability to squeeze comedy gold out of the raising of an eyebrow or a silly accent, and usually steals whatever film he appears in, regardless of how long he's in it for. Somehow, his movies tend to be bad, relying on juvenile behaviour and frat-house antics for laughs, which would be fine if any real thought was put into it. Anchorman is a sort of different, mixing childish humour with first-class improvisation from some of the most talented comedy performers working at the moment, and featuring one of Ferrell's most inspired creations. Based on real-life anchorman Harold Greene, who had a talent for sharp suits and a formidable 70's 'tache, Ron Burgundy is an egotistical, chauvinistic and narcissistic ass, but boy can he read the news.

In the male-dominated workspace of 70's 'action news', Burgundy and his troupe are the cream of the crop in San Diego. Burgundy delivers the news, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) is the lecherous field reporter, 'Champ' Kind (David Koechner) is the loud-mouthed sexist sports reporter, and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) is an innocent with an IQ of 48, delivering the weather and being led astray by the groups antics. Everything seems harmonious until the arrival of the beautiful and ambitious Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate). Ron falls for her and she for him, until the word 'diversity' is introduced into the newsroom, and Ron finds himself with a new co-anchor.

Ron thinks that 'diversity' is an old wooden ship used in the Civil War era, a joke no doubt the product of multiple takes and the actors playing around with their lines. Due to this heavy reliance of improvisation, the film is scattershot and random, and by playing with the rules of random, as many jokes fall flat as they cause you to burst out in fits of laughter. So for every spontaneous accapella version of 'Afternoon Delight' or Burgundy wailing over the loss of his beloved dog Baxter, we have Koecher trying to squeeze laughs out of an unfunny character or an extended joke about Fanatana wearing Sex Panther, a rare and banned after shave which just happens to smell awful.

Anchorman's main success comes from, surprisingly, Christina Applegate. It was one of the first modern comedies to really put some thought into its female character, and rather than her playing the role of whiny other half trying to get her man to behave and grow up, she is vital in bringing to life this dark era of male-dominated office spaces, and she accepts Ron for the buffoon that he is. In the ten years since its release, it has garnered a huge cult following, and led to the release of it's sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues earlier this year. Though I don't share the hype surrounding this film, it's still a consistently funny oddity, and most probably Ferrell's best comedy work.


Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Fred Willard, Vince Vaughn
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie