#Riyad Barmania

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Ashens and the Quest for the Gamechild (2013)

My rating: 6/10

Starting to show its age a little bit, what with the Topical Humor (TM) and all, but still a lot of fun.

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"Ashens and the Polybius Heist"

"Ashens and the Polybius Heist" is a movie that's aimed squarely at the Comic-Con set and is made by geeks, for geeks, and starring geeks.

An urban legend about a 1980s government-run psychology experiment involving a mind-controlling video game lays the foundation for “Ashens and the Polybius Heist,” a delightfully goofy comedy from director Riyad Barmania. Rumor has it that sinister men in suits would place the game into arcades and if a player got the high score, they’d fall into a euphoric trance. The film puts a modern spin on…

[grigori77]

Guilty Pleasure #22

ELFIE HOPKINS

Dir. RYAN ANDREWS; Wri. RYAN ANDREWS & RiYAD BARMANIA; Music. JORDAN ANDREWS; Starring. JAIME WINSTONE, ANEURIN BARNARD, STEVEN MACKINTOSH, RUPERT EVANS, KATE MAGOWAN, JULIAN LEWIS JONES, KIMBERLEY NIXON, GWYNETH KEYWORTH, WILL PAYNE, RAY WINSTONE, RICHARD HARRINGTON; R.T. 82 mins; 2012, United Kingdom

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: 22-year-old slacker Elfie Hopkins (Jaime Winstone) dreams of escaping her dull life in a small country village, spending her days getting stoned with best friend Dylan (Barnard) and living vicariously through her obsession with noir detectives while spying on her neighbours. Then a new family moves in next door, the seemingly perfect Gammons, and Elfie can’t help digging a little deeper, only to uncover a truly terrifying secret that threatens everything she holds dear.

WHY IT’S GUILTY: This marks the only feature-length offering to date from writer-director Ryan Andrews, and it smells acutely of first-film-indulgence, its creator clearly having thrown EVERYTHING at it in the hopes that something stuck.  As a result it’s a bit of a mess, never quite sure of its tone and therefore continually shifting between satirical black comedy and slowburn creepy cannibal horror, never able to settle.  You can see most of the twists coming from miles away, while there’s real frustration to be found in the fact that this marked the first time Ray Winstone got to work with his little girl on the big screen, and yet he’s barely even in the movie – his character is one of the most interesting here, but he ultimately feels like he’s popping in briefly from another, much better film … in the end this was absolutely PUMMELED by the critics, and suffers a truly ignominious ZERO PERCENT SCORE on Rotten Tomatoes, and I can kind of see what they’re on about – there’s SO MUCH potential here, but by and large Andrews failed to deliver …

WHY IT’S A PLEASURE: And yet, there IS some good stuff here if you’re willing to dig and you don’t mind the smell too much.  (Sorry … couldn’t resist that one.)  Jaime Winstone is DEFINITELY one of the film’s major saving graces – in her hands, Elfie is a playful, snarky little minx who SHOULD come across as irritatingly self-centred and intrusive but is in fact such an adorably stubborn little busybody you can’t help liking her; it also helps ENORMOUSLY that Aneurin Barnard (Hunky Dory, Citadel, Dunkirk) is SO lovable as Dylan, a shy, down-to-earth, geeky genius who provides a strong grounding anchor to keep Elfie from getting TOO full of herself.  And then there’s Rupert Evans (Hellboy, The Man in the High Castle, the new Charmed series), not so much chewing the scenery as furiously devouring it as the head of the Gammon household, seductively suave one minute and downright TERRIFYING the next – films live or die by their villains, and in this regard at least this one of truly blessed.  Winstone Sr. is also typically brilliant in his frustratingly brief role, and at least he does get to play ONE cracking scene (definitely one of the film’s actual HIGHLIGHTS) with his daughter.  There are also moments of genius scattered amidst the more clunky material, Andrews occasionally showing glimmers of genuine talent that make you hope he can get his act together sometime with something genuinely GOOD, while the film is often genuinely enjoyable when Winstone and Barnard get together, and things do finally kick into gear in the last half hour once the Gammons’ nasty little secret finally comes to light.  Shame it takes so long to get there, really. Ultimately, there’s a lot wrong with this film, but there’s enough right that you might enjoy yourself if you’re willing to just GO WITH IT …

[moviesandmania]

Elfie Hopkins (2012)

‘Who are the neighbours having for dinner?’

Elfie Hopkins – aka Elfie Hopkins: Cannibal Hunter – is a 2012 British comedy horror film directed by Ryan Andrews from a script co-written with Riyad Barmania. It stars Jaime Winstone, Ray Winstone, Steven Mackintosh, Rupert Evans, Aneurin Barnard and Kimberley Nixon.

The film was released in the UK on 20 April 2012 by Black & Blue Films…

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Ashens and the Polybius Heist (2020)

My rating: 7/10

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Ashens and the Polybius Heist (2020)

My rating: 7/10

Well that was jolly good fun, innit?