#john ovans

[thefilmdaily]

School of Rock (2003), dir. Richard Linklater 

Things aren't going well for Dewey Finn (Jack Black) – he's jobless, is constantly getting hectored by his best mate Ned's bothersome girlfriend (played by a spectacularly annoying Sarah Silverman), and he's been kicked out of his band for being a bit overzealous with guitar solos. And that's all he really wants to do, poor old sod—play in his band. The chips are down, but in opportunistic fashion, he takes on a job as a substitute teacher—only problem being, he's pretending to be Ned, who actually is a substitute teacher. Cue the classroom, and Fake Ned realises these children are ripe for exploitation, because they can form a brand new rock band with him as the star. It's not as creepy as it sounds; in fact it's got a whole lot of heart, and some banging singalong tunes, too. One thing, though—it made us really pissed off that we never learnt the bass guitar properly when we were a kid.

[thefilmdaily]

Jumanji (1995), dir. Joe Johnston 

Imagine if you started playing a board game and suddenly it got really windy and Robin Williams sporting a great big beard popped out. If you’re familiar with kids’ classic Jumanji, which you jolly well should be, you’ll know that it’s a film in which this exactly happens, in a manner of speaking. It begins with 12-year-old Alan Parker having a bit of a shitty time of it with school bullies and a harsh, overbearing father; and things only get worse when he discovers a quirky-looking board game in a building site emitting the sound of jungle drums like some sort of freaky boombox. It gets worse because it sucks him in for 26 years, and he only reappears when a pair of children (one of whom is played by Child Actress Kirsten Dunst) start playing the game themselves. Imaginative and wholly unique, Jumanji is one of those movies that made you really crave a sequel, which unfortunately never came—although somebody is, apparently, planning a reboot, which is thoroughly good news. 

[thefilmdaily]

9 to 5 (1980), dir. Colin Higgins

Back when the cast of Bridesmaids were still in nappies, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and left-of-field feminist pinup Dolly Parton were already busy schooling audiences in the art of ‘womance’ (like bromance but with less aggressive hugging). Here, the ladies get stoned, drunk, and seriously antsy when men with comedy moustaches keep passing them over for promotion. Then arch nemesis boss Franklin Hart Jr stares at Dolly’s general chest area one time too many and she gets a gun out and shouts, ‘I'm gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!’ She doesn’t, but she does kidnap him and attach him via winch to the ceiling of a Tudor mansion, which looks almost as painful, only kinkier. Hart makes like a whale tangled in a trapeze, but his captors just fix their perms and get on with running his company. The feminine touch means flexible working hours, a crèche, Dolly singing, and lots of flowers: sure, it plays straight into the ‘caring woman’ trope, but at the end of the day Hart gets eaten by savages in the Amazon (this part is blurry) whereas Dolly Parton has a waterpark in Tennessee named after her. Fact, fiction, and peroxide blondes collide, and the girls come out on top.

[thefilmdaily]

EDtv (1999), dir. Ron Howard

As if foreshadowing an era of Karadashians, Osbournes, and jiggling Honey Boo Boos, EDtv appeared before the dawn of the new millenium and serves a veritable parable for modern times, and also falls into the esteemed category of not-dreadful-Matthew-McConaughey flicks. An ailing television channel decides it might be interesting to show somebody's life 24/7—eating, shitting, shagging, the whole shebang. The chosen candidate is Ed (McConaughey), a regular (yet hunky) Joe, an ordinary guy with an ordinary life. So ordinary that the show proves pretty dull viewing—until he starts getting it on with his brother (Woody Harrelson)'s girlfriend Shari (Jenna Elfman) and all hell breaks loose—and as we know from watching Nadia lose her shit over not having any cigarettes in Big Brother, hell breaking loose makes really good television. With McConaughey's charm offensive ramped up to the max and a cameo from Liz Hurley, what's not to love? Maybe it's not quite a classic, but surely it's 122 minutes better spent than staring at Simon Cowell's shiny plastic face on a Saturday night. 

[thefilmdaily]

  Orphan (2009), dir. Jaume Collet-Serra

It seems a bit unfair to make us fearful of bereaved Eastern European children, but then again, the rules of horror movies state that children must always be a bit spooky, irrespective of their ethnic origins (see: The Omen, The Shining, and The Sixth Sense with Mischa Barton puking everywhere) so you'll just have to overlook the extreme case of Otherness going on in this psychological thriller. The story goes that a suburban couple decide to adopt a nine-year-old Estonian girl named Esther in order to help paper over the cracks of their doomed marriage; but there is, as the promotional poster declares, 'something wrong with Esther'. She seems to know an awful lot about sex, she dresses like a war-time governess, and generally lurks around mysteriously in the way that people in horror movies tend to. To top it all off, bad stuff always happens when she's around, but people are frustratingly slow on the uptake, which is why they end up getting hit over the head with hammers and set ablaze. So why is Esther so weird? Well, there's a mega-mega-twist, which we're not going to give away, but it's safe to say that it'll make you even more suspicious of children in the future. Scary stuff.

[thefilmdaily]

The Truman Show (1998), dir. Peter Weir

Truman Burbank appears to have it all.  He has a wife that smiles a lot, a lumpy best friend perpetually armed with a pack of beers, and an office job that involves sitting at a desk and looking vaguely important.  So far, so normal.  But Truman begins to realize that something is suspect with this suburban mediocrity and in a twist of fate that only Narcissus himself could dream up, soon realises that he’s the unwitting star of a reality TV show. Throw in Truman’s peculiar obsession with an almond-eyed beauty that he’s only met twice, an egomaniacal, beret-wearing show creator named Christof who lives in a giant moon in the set’s sky and a surprisingly nuanced lead performance from Jim Carrey and you’ve got a '90s cult classic that has been heralded as a thesis on Christianity, existentialism, or the downright meaning of life.

[thefilmdaily]

Bugsy Malone (1976), dir. Alan Parker

Before Jodie Foster was a famous lesbian, she was a famous child actress—and at the age of 14, she appeared as saucy chanteuse Tallulah in mobster musical Bugsy Malone. She was, of course, one of hundreds of adolescents in a cast entirely made up of them, yet playing adult roles. Its a pretty peculiar concept, when you think about it—creepy, even—especially when they open their mouths to sing and grown-up voices come out. The story, in case you weren't familiar with it from when you had that non-speaking role in your school play, is set in gangland Chicago during the Prohibition era. Speakeasies are in full swing; people wear zoot suits; and gangsters shoot each other with splurge guns (basically murder with a PG certificate—we're not ones for gore anyways). In the midst of all this, we meet charming boxing promoter Bugsy, and hat enthusiast Blousey, who mopes around looking pissed off because nobody'll hire her as a singer. There's singing and dancing—oh yes, there is indeed—and it ends with a great big custard pie fight. While we haven't got any kids ourselves, we'd be prepared to bet a pretty penny that it's pretty much the only school musical out there that doesn't make parents want to shoot themselves in the face. (Gif: The Televandalist) 

[thefilmdaily]

The Caller (2011), dir. Matthew Parkhill

When you've got a friend that really gets on your tits, is it OK to dump them? It's an age-old question, and the world of social media has made it a frightful lot more difficult, plus their annoying statuses and photos of their stupid cat are more likely to make you hate them even more. And anyway, what if they turned homicidal? In horror movies, it's the phone that's traditionally the catalyst of the shit hitting the fan (just ask Drew Barrymore) and in The Caller, it's a particularly quaint-looking antique one that turns out to be a cellular link between past and present. Curly-haired divorcee Mary moves into a—naturally—miserable new house, and begins receiving calls from aforementioned phone; on the end of the line is a lady called Rose, who used to live in the house, and claims to be from the 1970s. The two begin to natter daily, until Mary realises that Rose is a total fruitloop, as old ladies so often are. Rose, in the past, starts stalking her as a little girl; in a proper 'ooooh' moment, Mary looks through old family albums, and sees a mysterious figure pop up in the background of photos that wasn't there before. It's a neat time travel concept applied to the horror genre and when you finally get a glimpse of loony old Rose, it's a right treat. (Gif: Things I Cannot Escape)