Films

Maika Monroe as Jay in "It Follows"

The Yorkshire Pudding blog admin team frequently report that my devoted worldwide audience greatly appreciate my erudite film reviews. It is a huge weight of responsibility that I bear - knowing that what I say about a new film can make it or break it.

This evening as Shirley watches the new "Poldark" period drama on the BBC, I have two recent film expeditions to report upon. The first concerns a horror film called "It Follows" and the second which we saw together just this afternoon  is "Still Alice" in  which Julianne Moore plays a middle-aged academic with early onset Alzheimer's disease. As you will recall, for this performance Ms Moore won the best actress award at this year's Oscars.

Let's get back to "It Follows". I had read or heard several positive reviews about it and that is what led me to view it. Directed by David Mitchell it is an American suburban tale of an evil spiritual relay. The only way you can pass on the awful baton is through sexual congress.

The cinematography was excellent and there was a tense, nervous  trepidation throughout. However, it occurred to me as I was watching the tale unfold that for fantasy horror films to ring true, the onlooker must admit some susceptibility to ideas of haunting, zombies and the after life. From my perspective such things are pure nonsense so I find it impossible to accept the underlying premises of the majority of horror films. And that is how it was with "It Follows". I just couldn't believe it.

Apart from anything else it is essentially a film about teenagers in which the adult world is noteworthy because of its absence. I had the impression that the teenage focus was probably deliberate in order to rather cynically encourage youthful audiences - surely the main consumers of the horror genre. Though the BBC's Claudia Winkleman had, in all seriousness, warned filmgoers not to see "It Follows" alone, I came out of the cinema whistling like a sandboy.

Alex Baldwin and Julianne Moore in "Still Alice"

It is easy to see why Julianne Moore won this year's best actress Oscar. She demonstrated Alice Howland's gradual decline very sensitively and convincingly. However, there was something unbearably sugar-sweet about the context of her descent into the darkness that Alzheimer's brings. The Howland family was abnormally all-American - glittering with talent and white Anglo Saxon promise. I felt that there was another "Still Alice" story to told - more edgy, more ordinary, more tearful.

Alzheimer's is a cruel affliction that blights memory and communication and turns sufferers into utter shadows of themselves. The condition deserved a more powerful, more earthy exposition  but as I say I take my hat off to Julianne Moore who singlehandedly lifted "Still Alice" from the unmemorable mire of Hollywood pap.