The A24 Project - Episode 18 - Green Room & The Lobster

What's your desert island band and if you were to be transformed into an animal what would it be?

Lee Hutchison and Dallas King look at Green Room, about a punk rock band who are forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar. The film stars the late Anton Yelchin who died tragically after the film was released, we celebrate his short but special career. We also discuss The Lobster directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, one of the most original films in the A24 catalogue, it's set in a dystopian near future, where single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

In A24 Hour News, we look at the success of The Lighthouse at the Cannes Film Festival.

Listen to the episode online here - https://www.thenerdparty.com/thea24project/episode-18-green-room-the-lobster

Alternatively, you can download or stream The A24 Project on Apple Podcasts, GooglePlay, Spreaker and Spotify.

Green Room - Review

The date Friday the 13^th is synonymous with misfortune, horror and a guy with a hockey mask. Replace the guy with the hockey mask with an evil Patrick Stewart and you have this week’s new release Green Room.

Following a gig in a Neo-Nazi bar, punk band The Ain't Rights find themselves in a Green Room that is witness to more horror and carnage than the aftermath of an Ozzy Osbourne or Justin Bieber gig.

Forget a bottle of Jack Daniels or 1000 brown M&M's in a brandy glass, the only thing on their rider is staying alive… and that is not a copy of the Bee Gees song either.

The band must survive the night and fight their way out in the hope that they might play one final encore. Patrick Stewart however, in a role that is more American History X than Professor X, is determined to stop them. In fact you could say he will “make it so” that they are a one hit wonder.

With all great horror films, writer/director Jeremy Saulnier wastes no time in effectively setting up the band dynamics before it all goes south and he ramps up the tension and violence all the way to 11 whilst shredding more nerves than guitar solos along the way to a bloody crescendo.

Having filmed Blue Ruin and Green Room, one wonders if Jeremy Saulnier will complete his own Three Colours trilogy with a red-based film. Perhaps Red Rum? A sequel to The Shining or a biopic of the Grand National-winning horse maybe?

4 stars

X-Men: Days Of Future Past - review

If I were to try and sum up the plot for X-Men: Days Of Future Past in one paragraph, I might say that Wolverine is sent back in time to persuade Charles Xavier and Magneto to come together to stop Mystique killing Bolivar Trask which prompts the creation of the Sentinel program which ultimately wipes out mutant kind in the future.

Follow that? No? Doesn't matter. You could try watching all the X-Men films, including the Wolverine ones, and all the end credits stings to re-familiarise yourself with the storyline and characters but it might just end up creating more questions than answers.

An action-packed opening sequence in the future which introduces us to some new and familiar faces under attack from sentinels poses such nerdy questions like "How has Wolverine got his adamantium claws back?", "How the hell is Professor X alive and looking like himself?", "Kitty Pryde has always been able to walk through walls but how can she now send people back through time?".

But before we are given time to think too hard about these questions, Bryan Singer quickly sends Wolverine back through time and presents the audience with a shot of Hugh Jackman's naked arse in order to distract us.

As much as this is the X-Men version of The Terminator storyline where someone is sent back in them to prevent the creation of robotic creatures that will wipe out an entire race, it is also paralleled with Singer's return.

Having left the franchise after X2 in order to make Superman Returns, he returns to a storyline where he uses the characters developed in First Class to retcon the universe to alter events that he wasn't happy with in X3: The Last Stand which mishandled The Dark Phoenix saga among other things, effectively giving him a clean slate to work with in the future in The Age Of Apocalypse (which I can't help but sing to the tune of Age of Aquarius).

But you can't make people excited for the future unless they enjoy the current film (take note makers of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice).

Luckily this instalment is the most enjoyable since X2 from the opening attack which highlights the future sentinels and new mutants including Blink whose power of creating temporary portals is used to terrific visual effect or the sequence where Quicksilver infiltrates the Pentagon to break out Magneto with the best use of bullet-time since The Matrix.

Despite switching between the two time frames and featuring as many characters as you would find in a tweet, the main focus of the plot is the younger versions of Charles and Eric, who are further at odds than when we last saw them in First Class.

James McAvoy really gets to stretch his acting legs (pun intended) with the biggest character arc, starting as a drunk, disillusioned man who has given up his powers in exchange for the use of his legs (again not fully explained), completely uninterested in Wolverine's "future-shite" but must grow into the man who eventually becomes Patrick Stewart's calm, noble Professor X (with whom he shares a geek-tastic time-bending head-to-head).

The all-action climax helps to start reassembling the jigsaw pieces together to head towards the world already established in X-Men and X2 and it will be interesting to see if the next instalments feature the younger or older X-Men as this almost feels like a passing of the torch between casts.

An X-Cellent ensemble that successfully mutates between post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi and funky seventies blockbuster with the overall result being a bright future for the franchise.

If it was sitting an X-am, this would get a Days Of Future Pass.

4 stars