The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Dracula from behind in silhouette

The Last Voyage of the Demeter lifts a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and turns it into a standalone story. Ambitious enough. If you haven’t read it, it’s a dark, storm-tossed episode told through the captain’s log of the doomed vessel the Demeter, a cargo ship which sails from Varna in Bulgaria, laden with boxes containing Transylvanian earth – plus one containing Dracula himself – destination London. By the time the ship reaches the UK, everyone on board is dead, having been sucked dry on successive nights by the Count. Spoiler? Yes, except the film gives us this grim conclusion right up front – a ship wrecked off the coast of Whitby and … Read more

The Suicide Squad

Harley Quinn screams

The Suicide Squad, not to be confused with Suicide Squad from five years ago, fixes the mistake made by the 2016 movie, which got bogged down in plot. The Suicide Squad does that by not really having one. Or if it does it treats it as something to be vaguely referred to now and again, like a map by a driver who knows his way. The driver here is James Gunn, who does just about everything right in this super-sequel follow-up to the Dirty Dozen of comicbook movies. The first film was quite simply terrible, though bursting with great things, a kind of satire on Marvel movies, if you wanted to see it … Read more