Love Sucks! and these movies prove it!

THE BEACH (2000)

By Neil Baker

Do you remember the adventure, opportunity, desire and wanderlust that followed you like a shadow during your late teens and twenties? This wanderlust sits at the heart of Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Alex Garland’s novel in a sexy yet dark story of decaying innocence and escape. As we follow our intrepid young backpacker Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), his journey morphs from adventure to deception and loss as sex and desire clash with a fairytale notion of escape.

Throughout Richard’s journey, the phrase “two’s company, three’s a crowd” resonates as a complicated friendship born of adventure leads to the destruction of individuals within a Garden of Eden that is, in fact, a sun-soaked prison.

TITANIC (1998)

By Neil Baker

Poor Leonardo doesn’t seem to have much luck in the love department. In The Beach, DiCaprio plays Richard, the third spoke in a complicated love triangle, and in Titanic, he plays Jack, a young whipper-snapper who meets the rich girl of his dreams on a doomed ship. In both cases, Leo’s characters really should have stayed at home! However, hindsight is a wonderful and profoundly unhelpful thing!

The ship in question is the fated RMS Titanic, and Jack is an aspiring artist working his way back to the United States of America after a stint painting prostitutes in Paris. As Jack walks the ship’s deck, he meets the depressed Rose (Kate Winslet), and his life instantly takes a decidedly deadly turn. The pair meet through Rose attempting suicide, which is not the best introduction, as I am sure you will agree. Jack saves her life and sees an opportunity to make mini-Jacks along the way. However, once again, I digress, as before, we have a sweet little romance that includes some sketching, spitting, and dancing before a heated shag on the cargo deck.

By the time the dreaded iceberg comes into view, the two are inseparable despite the snobbery and hate surrounding Jack’s presence. Therefore, it is all the more depressing that as the ship goes down, Jack is left to freeze in the water as Rose hogs a door plenty big enough for his slight frame.

I LOVE YOU TO DEATH (1990)

By Neil Baker

Lawrence Kasdan’s deliciously dark comedy about marriage, murder and mascarpone is loosely based on the 1983 trial of Frances Toto, a woman who repeatedly tried to kill her husband with little success. For his fictionalised comedy of errors, Kasdan brings together a truly sublime cast, including Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt, and Keanu Reeves, to create a sharp, entertaining comedy.

Exploring themes of revenge, love, coercion and forgiveness, I Love You to Death proves marriage can indeed be murder. So, pour a glass of wine and order a takeout pizza, but whatever you do, don’t invite the pizza delivery guy to join you on the sofa.

Read More: River Phoenix, the boy, the man and the movies

HARPOON (2019)

By Neil Baker

Are you dreaming of a luxurious vacation following the oppressive boredom of the global pandemic? If so, how about a leisurely trip out to sea on a yacht owned by your best friend? It all sounds so idyllic. But add to the holiday a brutal brawl just a few hours before departure, over a girl, and a toxic friendship based on jealousy, secrets, and lies, and maybe the planned excursion wasn’t the best idea. Thus begins Canadian writer/director Rob Grant’s delicious tale of friendship, betrayal, and bloody revenge, starring Munro Chambers, Chris Gray, and Emily Tyra.

Harpoon is packed to the gunwales with survival movie clichés, richly dark comedy and wince-inducing bodily trauma as the ocean gobbles up our dysfunctional trio. Harpoon takes its inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” and weaves it with the true story of the “Mignonette” from 1884, resulting in a darkly delicious joy that culminates in a beautifully twisted finale.

BONES AND ALL (2022)

By Neil Baker

Giving new meaning to the phrase, “Aww, you’re so cute, I could just eat you up!” The horror and beauty at the heart of Luca Guadagnino’s complex portrait of two lost lovers is stunning and bound to cause indigestion as it reaches a heartbreaking finale. Bones and All may well feature moments of gut-wrenching horror, but at its core, it is a coming-of-age road trip romance that transforms cannibal horror into something new through the dynamic performances of Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, and Mark Rylance’s chilling portrayal of Sully.

Based on the young adult bestseller by Camille DeAngelis, the macabre themes of Bones and All are laced with a disconcertingly tender tale of young love that transcends genre boundaries. There’s much to savour in this buffet of beauty and terror, but one can’t help but wonder whether our young lover’s fate was signed and sealed the moment they met!

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I LOVE MY DAD (2022)

By Neil Baker

Chuck (Patton Oswalt) knows he hasn’t been the best dad, but the rejection hits hard when his twenty-something son Franklin (James Morosini) blocks him on social media! He needs to suck it up, right? Unfortunately, that option doesn’t land with Chuck; instead, he creates a fake Facebook account, steals a picture of Becca, a young woman who works at a local diner, and adds his son as a friend! But what starts as a simple chat soon leads Franklin to fall head over heels for a girl who is really his dad! It’s like Chuck wrote the book “How to fuck up your son in five easy steps.”

Director James Morosini knows the subject will make his audience squirm, and he delights in it, turning the cringeworthy dial to the maximum as we watch through our fingers. There is undoubtedly bravery in doing this, and that bravery is only strengthened by the artistic decision to have the actors play out their online conversations in a physical space. The result is a ticking bomb that you know will explode, but the timer is faulty, and you have no idea when it will go off.

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SUPERMAN II (1980)

By Neil Baker

Everything was going well for the Man of Steel until he went soft for one Lois Lane. After turning the Earth back to save her from a gigantic earthquake caused by Lex Luther’s stray missiles, before once again saving her from a bomb at the Eiffel Tower and from drowning at Niagara Falls, Superman is happy to give up his powers for a shag in his ice fortress under some lovely fur throws. Hey presto, the Man of Steel gives up his powers for Lois, with Clark Kent now entirely in charge of the romantic endeavours, which clearly involve marriage and many mini-Kents.

However, Clark didn’t expect three deadly villains from his home planet to turn up and trash the party! So he ditches Lois and searches for a way to get his powers back before the baddies destroy everything in sight, including, god forbid, the Marlboro cigarette delivery vans and Coca-Cola hoardings all over Metropolis!

THE SOUVENIR (2019)

By Neil Baker

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, The Souvenir was Joanna Hogg’s most personal work to date. Using film to explore the intensity and naivety of first love, Hogg’s delicate yet striking drama is a palette of emotions, from manipulation to unconditional love and acceptance, as she dissects the light and dark of relationships and the abundance and drawbacks of a privileged life.

The Souvenir is a melancholic film, a slowly unfolding character study of a woman learning the harsh truths about a relationship. Julie’s frailty maddens and frustrates you so much that you are shouting at the screen! While Tom Burke’s deception, control, and fragile state of mind weave a new world through addiction and lies – a world that demonstrates how much blind love can suck! However, it also feels detached from the majority of its audience, with wealth, privilege, and opportunities that are a world away from most people’s experiences. For this reason, The Souvenir ultimately left me cold, despite its beauty and exquisite performances.

SPENCER (2021)

By Sebastian Astley

Told over Christmas at Sandringham, Spencer shows us its heart from the outset: a fictional tale of a real tragedy. This is not to be taken as historical gospel, partially because of the Royal Family’s iron-clad silence. Instead, this is an emotional excavation of her psyche, honing in on the suffocating claustrophobia of Royal life and the knife-edge she danced on daily.

Spencer’s title shot is reminiscent of The Shining’s opening, as the inescapable scope of Sandringham is set against Diana’s microscopic vehicle. It’s beautifully haunting, impounding us with this Gothic sentimentality that Larraín plays with throughout.

This is our last breath of space, as cinematographer Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Atlantics) pushes us closer and closer to Diana with an erratic, unstable anxiety. Here, Spencer feels like a Royal version of Shiva Baby. 

There’s a strong psychological bond between Mathon’s camera and Kristen’s Diana, creating intimacy and helping us disconnect from everyone else. With moments like Timothy Spall’s Major Gregory or Sean Harris’ Chef Darren, the camera is impossibly still, as though frozen out of fear of acting out. It’s a talented marriage of style and substance that uplifts the Gothic sentimentality instilled in this feature by Larraín.

As Diana pushes on, Mathon’s camera becomes more erratic, at times flying around Diana like a cinematic phantom, surrounding her with little to no escape. This emotional intimacy becomes suffocating, creating a physical reaction of panic. For a moment, you no longer just watch Diana; you feel her feelings.

Spencer is secretly a psychological Gothic horror, but in an understated manner. Larraín flirts with the genre by taking us directly inside Diana’s mental snap at unexpected moments. Our closeness to Diana equally makes her an unreliable narrator, but Larraín skillfully plays on our trust to craft some unsettling visual discordance. People appear and disappear at will, and dinners become nightmares without warning.

Kristen Stewart’s Diana remarks that to the Royals, the past and present are one and the same – there is no future. Just like the Overlook Hotel, Sandringham seems to prey on the vulnerability of Diana’s mind to play host to a menagerie of horrors personally tailored for her. 

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DO NOT DISTURB (2022)

By Neil Baker

For any couple, their honeymoon is supposed to be a time of love, desire and memory-building. But what if your relationship was rocky before you said, “I do”? 

For newlyweds Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher), their honeymoon in Miami may look ideal, but scratch the surface, and you will find a miserable couple who should have separated long ago.

Jack has an alcohol problem he has yet to accept or deal with, while Chloe desperately seeks emotional attachment and physical desire, something Jack cannot offer her. All in all, it’s a relationship that two gold rings were never going to save, and deep down, they both know it.

Do Not Disturb is best experienced without prior knowledge of the story, and, therefore, apart from my brief introduction above, I do not intend to go into the film’s main plot points. John Ainslie’s cutting and gory exploration of toxic relationships and entrapment plays with the audience like a cat with a mouse as he chips away at the very foundations of the couple’s relationship through a drug-fuelled haze. In the claustrophobic confines of the couple’s small hotel room, their relationship is duly dissected as they bite chunks out of each other due to years of unspoken frustration and anger.

From the start, there is a sense that we are spying on Jack and Chloe, which is only enhanced by an ultra-wide ratio and voyeuristic style that unnerves from the outset. Do Not Disturb ventures into themes that many may find disturbing as it explores toxicity, sex, escape and control before entering a world of horror that is not for the squeamish. But Ainslie’s horror is one of the best of the year for all those willing to check in and hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.