Review: Tickled (2016)

In between the cinema trips and desperately trying to catch up with Westworld (which I’ve done - yay!) I put some time aside to check out a documentary that I’d seen reviewed on a few blogs I follow called Tickled. I can count the number of documentaries I’ve seen on one hand, so although I was curious to add to the number, I did wonder how interesting it could be without the dramatics of a regular movie.

Tickled was funded by both Kickstarter and the New Zealand Film Commission in 2014, and is directed by journalist David Farrier and his colleague Dylan Reeve. David makes a living from looking into all things unordinary, so when he saw videos online of ‘Competitive Endurance Tickling’, needless to say his curiosity was tickled! Har har har. That’s where the laughs stop though. These videos are far from ordinary, and feature young men bound by their wrists and ankles, and then tickled by other young men.

There didn’t seem to be a sexual connotation about the videos, the young men were clothed at all times, but the ‘sport’ was certainly weird enough for David to want to look into it. The videos were produced by a company called Jane O’Brien Media, which had it’s own Facebook page, so David sent a message asking if he could conduct an interview with either Jane herself or another producer to learn more for his article.

Rather than be welcomed with open arms, or politely turned down, David was instead bombarded with hostile responses, pointing out David’s own sexuality and firmly stating that this sport is a “passionately and exclusively heterosexual athletic endurance activity”. When David persisted with his line of enquiry, Jane O’Brien Media sent legal threats and even flew out 3 members of staff to intimidate David and Dylan.

Really, that’s as far into it as I want to go in this post. This is all most other bloggers wrote about, and honestly, if that alone is enough to get you interested than you’ll find the rest of the documentary absolutely fascinating. The way it had me chuckling at how absurd the sport is to suddenly feeling shocked at what was happening is just a little bit unreal.

As I said, I watch very few documentaries so I don’t feel able to comment on how well it was filmed, edited, etc, but I was hooked from the very first minute right up until the credits rolled. Then I had to sit in silence for about ten minutes while I took it all in. If you’ve already seen Tickled, then check out the Wikipedia page for it, right at the bottom is a section about the response to the documentary from the people involved, and that in itself is quite shocking. It’s definitely a subject that I want to keep updated with!

Has anyone else seen Tickled? If you have it was probably your blog that led me down this rabbit hole! I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you, ha!

Review: The Visit (2015)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t do horror. But I am a downright sucker for a plot twist, mainly because I’m too oblivious to ever see it coming. However, knowing a movie has a plot twist always kicks your brain into overdrive, doesn’t it? Being told The Usual Suspects had an amazing plot twist ruined it for me a little, because for the first time ever I worked it out halfway through, and don’t even talk to me about The Sixth Sense!

So, all I can really tell you about The Visit is that it’s shot documentary/found footage style by brother and sister Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) when they go to stay with their grandparents (Deanna Dunagan & Peter McRobbie) for a week whilst their mother (Kathryn Hahn) is on a cruise with her boyfriend. That’s all I can say! Trust me, the less you know, the better.

Knowing how terrible I cope with horror movies, I tried to extensively research The Visit before deciding whether I could actually watch it or not. Most reviews I read were similar to this, and gave nothing away, which was of course no help in my quest. Then, I remembered the Parent’s Guide on IMDB. See, I can cope with gore and nasty images, but it’s the cheap thrills that absolutely kill me, so I was hoping IMDB’s guide would help me out with that. This is what I was greeted with:

Thanks, IMDB. At least it warned me of ‘various jumpscares’, my worst nightmare. But look at all those spoiler warnings! It was just too much for my curiosity threshold, so I put on my big girl pants and gave it a go. For the hardened viewers out there, you would probably rate this one as quite tame, but for me, I was nervous laughing to myself throughout, and found something very interesting to look at on the ceiling any time Becca and Tyler wanted to open the bedroom door after 9:30pm.

From what I’ve read, The Visit has really split opinions, with people either hating it or loving it, but I feel like I fit somewhere in the middle. The parts I could bring myself to watch, I enjoyed. I thought the kids did a great job, Ed Oxenbould in particular. I have a 13 year old brother myself and their personalities are a great match. I would image horror fans wanted more, but that would have been too much for me. I read that M. Night Shyamalan prepared 3 different cuts of this film, one pure comedy, one pure horror, and the final product, a mix of the two, and I think it works well. 

I wouldn’t class The Visit as a comedy, but there are enough laughs to break up the tension, which I needed!

Mini Reviews: Citizenfour (2014), Self/less (2015) & Spooks: The Greater Good (2015)

I’m back with a round of Mini Reviews! I haven’t done a post like this for a while, but there are 3 films I’ve watched recently which have either been a bit ‘meh’ or just far too mind blowing and terrifying for me to review properly. Here we go!

Citizenfour (2014) has been on my radar for a while. It’s a documentary by Laura Poitras about the findings of Edward Snowden, who has evidence of the illegal surveillance programs ran by the NSA in conjunction with other intelligence agencies around the world. It was a fascinating watch, but it was only went I went to bed that night that it really hit me, how terrifying it actually is. and I’ve been thinking about it ever since whilst using my phone or tablet. Is someone really watching me right now? Freaky! Citizenfour is a must watch.

I watched Self/less (2015) purely down to my undying love for Ryan Reynolds, but I wish he would stop appearing in terrible movies. Ben Kingsley is a dying man, but a highly successful and clever man, so he spends million on a dubious scientific program to have his mind transferred to a younger body. Only now, he can’t use his actual identity, rendering the point of the program useless. That’s just the start of the many plot holes, but it was an entertaining watch at the very least. 

I’ve never watched the TV Show, Spooks, but assumed Spooks: The Greater Good (2015) would stand on it’s own, which it did. It’s a typical terrorist on the loose movie in every sense, with the added twist of a traitor amongst the MI5 staff. My fiance and I took a stab in the dark guess on who it was within the first 10 minutes, and err, we were right. An interesting and fun watch, especially for Jon Snow fans, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.