Film Round-Up: Smile, Enola Holmes 2 and My Policeman
I’m writing some of this in 2022.
Smile
Rose becomes victim of a curse after seeing a suicide and must investigate it before it eventually forces her to commit suicide as well. Every year, we seem to get at least one new classic horror movie. This is 2022’s classic horror movie. In essence, it’s a modern day retelling of The Ring where someone gets a curse and only has a short amount of time to try and work out how to beat it. With a whole load of hauntings to deal with during the investigation of course. The real strength is not just the portrayal of trauma, but just how it can make standard horror stuff so terrifying. None of the violence here is particularly novel or upping the ante compared to other horror movies, but what this film does is so unsettling and horrifying because of the atmosphere set up. The film is relatively slow paced and it takes a little too long to get to the actual plot moving, especially annoying when you’ve seen the trailer and you know what the shape of the movie is going to be, but overall this is a fantastic movie which will stay in your mind for long after the movie has ended.
Enola Holmes 2
Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes, is trying to make her way as a detective but is struggling due to being young and a woman. However, she gets enlisted to look for a missing girl and becomes wrapped up in a conspiracy involving a matchstick factory. This film is just a whole lot of fun. It’s not that original and it’s probably not going to stick very long in my memory. But it’s a lot of fun and will very simply put a smile on your face. A lot of that is thanks to Millie Bobby Brown as Enola. She’s just a bagful of energy and the narrative trick of having her speak to the audience adds a lot to the movie, as well as keeping younger viewers up to date with the mystery who may be watching their first film in this genre. It’s very similar to the first, so don’t expect to have your mind changed if you didn’t like the first film, but if you want a fun family romp with a lead character daughters everywhere will idolise, this is your film.
My Policeman
Marion invites former friend Patrick into her home in order for him to recover from a stroke but this provokes memories of why her and her husband Tom no longer talked to him. This is basically two stories. You have the period piece which initially seems like a romance between Tom and Marion until it turns out Tom is batting for the other team as an outdated saying would go. Then you have the modern day film, which shows 40 years later where something has happened to wreck all the relationships. And despite this, the film is mostly just ok. The biggest draw back is Harry Styles, who is completely exposed while trying to act out subtleties and add that deep emotion under his lines necessary for his role to work. There’s also some links between the stories which don’t quite work. But as an attempt to do a British Brokeback Mountain, a film this one is definitely looking to copy in some aspects, it’s not the worst, it’s just nothing that great either.
