Skip to main content

Tales from the Lodge review – schlocky country cabin scares

A group of grieving friends gather at a remote lakeside and start telling spooky stories in this effective comedy-horror

As the title suggests, this portmanteau film tips a wink to the multi-stranded spookfest Tales from the Crypt (1972), but this time with even more winking and a fair few nudges thrown in for good measure. The umbrella narrative finds five university chums in their late 30s – two couples and another bloke, Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) who’s brought along his trashy new girlfriend, Miki (Kelly Wenham) – assembling at a remote lakeside cabin to scatter the ashes of a sixth pal who drowned there a few years back, the result of a misadventure, suicide or maybe something more sinister.

There’s good-natured sniping over who forgot to bring food, moaning over the lack of phone signal and bitchier remarks from tart-tongued Martha (Laura Fraser) directed at Miki, who no one really likes. With well-timed rhythms and backchat, the ensemble is quite credible as a gaggle of slightly obnoxious, mildly likable millennials on the brink of middle age.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2BUCaz4

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4

Thirty Years of Adonis film review: sexually explicit gay drama mixes porn and pomposity

1/5 stars The line between soft-core porn and pompous art-house cinema grows ever finer in the seventh feature by writer, director and producer Danny Cheng Wan-cheung, also known as Scud. Intended as a philosophical statement about the meaninglessness of life, Thirty Years of Adonis instead comes across as a badly misjudged piece of sensationalist filmmaking. God’s Own Country review: gay love story set in the Yorkshire countryside The film revolves around aspiring gay actor Adonis Yang... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2qgQkop

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV