Three Films Make A Post: Long live adventure… and adventurers!

The Tank (2023): I’m not really sure why this movie from New Zealand directed by Scott Walker is trying to pretend it’s American, even though there’s no reason at all for this to be taking place anywhere specific. But then, I’m equally unsure why this has to be a period piece, either. Or, come to think of it, why the film has to drag its feet for nearly an hour until anything of interest happens in it – the character work certainly isn’t so deep it needs the time.

What the film has going from it – apart from a perfectly capable cast – is a really great monster design; the monster just comes in much too late.

Sideworld: Haunted Forests of England (2022): If I were a cynical man, I’d look down on George Popov’s documentary for being quite as cost-consciously produced as it obviously was: the film’s tales of dark folklore, myths and rural legend are told from the off, accompanied by creepy low angle shots of British forests and art from the public domain, and everything is accompanied by dark ambient – and that’s really all there is to it, formally.

However, the script by Jonathan Russell puts the well-worn and not not so well-worn tales the film tells into efficient little packages, and Popov applies his background in indie folk horror filmmaking of the more directly fictional variety nicely to the material, shaping the minimalist set-up into something effective and interesting.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975): John Huston’s adaptation of the Kipling tale is a well-loved classic, and that’s no wonder at all: not only is this one hell of a traditional colonialist adventure movie full of invention, charm, and one great damn thing after another; it is also a film that has a lot to say about what’s wrong about colonialist adventures and the mind-set they are born from, as well as the kind of men they tend to champion. Still, it never feels schizophrenic in its approach, but manages to be a film about the joys and the horrors of the same ideas at the same time.

That it also contains wonderfully larger-than-life performances by Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer only adds to the film’s specific magic.