Review #70 THE LAST TREE (2019, Shola Amoo)

 

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A young man faces challenges growing up in London, having been suddenly transplanted there from his idyllic countryside adolescence.

Starring  Sam Adewunmi, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Denise Black, Tai Golding, Ruthxjiah Bellenea

Written by  Shola Amoo

Produced by  Myf Hopkins, Lee Thomas

Duration  99 minutes

 

Trees are important. Everyone knows that: the whole taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen thing. As the Woodland Trust says, “Trees are our lungs. Trees are our guardians. Trees are our health service and wildlife champions.”

But what about trees in movies? Most of the time, they get a bad rap. If they do feature, they tend to be lumped together as a collective and portrayed negatively. They're often the scene of spooky woods (think THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), or a place where teens run to escape a maniac (countless slashers), or an isolated location for a mob hit and subsequent burial (MILLER’S CROSSING). In THE EVIL DEAD, a tree even takes the worst possible advantage of a young lady who's staying in a cabin nearby. Not nice.

But sometimes, movie trees are the good guys. ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES comes to mind. You could even call it a 'tree film', all in all, what with the Merry Men’s elaborate village high up in Sherwood Forest. Plus, all the fight scenes use arrows, which of course are made from trees.

But more than that, the 1991 movie featured one particular tree that became legendary: the Sycamore Gap next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. Early on in the movie, Kevin Costner’s Robin of Locksley and his pal Azeem (Morgan Freeman) pass the tree as they approach Nottingham (which in real life is nowhere near, but anyway). It came to be known as ‘the Robin Hood tree’ and was a popular tourist site. Then, early one morning in September 2023, it was found cut down, devastating millions of fans. Even the film’s director Kevin Reynolds chipped in, telling the BBC, “This is the second loss PRINCE OF THIEVES has suffered in the last couple of years – first Alan Rickman and now this." (Not reported: what the Rickman family made of this statement.)

The Robin Hood tree also featured in the music video for Bryan Adams' ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, a song that spent a record 16 consecutive weeks at number one in the UK Singles Chart. As such, you might expect me to hate it, but in fact I find it to be a superb power ballad that won't let go of the ’80s -- in all the best possible ways. So there.

So, this brings us to THE LAST TREE. Is it truly another 'tree movie', beyond the somewhat cryptic title? There was little hint from the synopsis I read of how exactly trees would feature. The protagonist is moving from the countryside to The Big City, so I guess an environment where there are fewer trees? (Even if in reality London has loads of parks, but I digress.) Does he miss trees in general? Was there a special tree that had come to symbolize the innocent youth he is torn away from, possibly one that he carved his name into? Or is the whole tree thing purely allegorical?

Something that was clear from what I'd read about THE LAST TREE is that this is another ‘moving to scary London’ story, and I wasn’t too keen on the last ‘last’ film about that. My hope going in was that this one would be a little more nuanced, a little less melodramatic, and much keener to acknowledge that the Capital is more than a square mile of tourist-friendly shops, restaurants and West End post-production places.

Well, the London our protagonist Femi ends up in is Walworth, sandwiched between Camberwell and Elephant & Castle. Which is fine, although I object to the south of the river being represented as gang-infested crime-hole, yet again.

Much more appreciated was that Femi is into stuff like New Order and The Cure, despite this apparently not being a period piece (they use mobile phones). When his pal asks him what he's listening to through his headphones, Femi tells him "Tupac – 'Hit 'em Up', innit?" So clearly there's a bucking of social expectations here.

But the trees! What about the trees? I decided to keep a tally of whenever they appeared and in what quantity. (Please note that many of these are estimates.)

 – Opening sequence of 10-year-old Femi and pals playing outside during magic hour, tree count: 2

– Femi plays football in the park with his mates: 12

– Femi storms off down the road after learning he has to go to Evil London to live with his birth mother: 4

– Femi in the garden for a farewell party: 3

– Montage of Femi travelling to the airport: 10

– Femi walking to his first day of school: 2

– Femi runs away from his mother after she chastises him for getting into a fight at school after a boy makes fun of his name: 3 – and a tree stump is framed prominently in the foreground!

– Femi, now a teenager who's got in with the wrong crowd, heads to school with his pals: 7

– Femi watches some fellow youths kicking a football to each other around a housing estate: 4

– Femi goes along with his mates' bullying of a girl at school, while privately disapproving: 1

 

Then there are very few trees for quite a while, as the film becomes more set at night, with Femi getting involved in drug deals, turf wars, etc. But then:

 – Femi goes back to the countryside to visit the lady who raised him, travelling by train during a contemplative montage: 20

– Femi sits with the aforementioned lady in her garden: 4

– Back in London, Femi gets the shit kicked out of him by the dealers who he thought were his friends, then staggers home with the camera strapped to him pointing at his face, like that bit in MEAN STREETS when Harvey Keitel is staggering around the bar, or in any number of Spike Lee movies: 7

– Femi and his mum visit her home country of Nigeria, travelling to a posh home through a rural area: 5

– They then go to a spiritual retreat in the outskirts of Lagos: 16, and the final instance of trees in the film.

Approximate number of trees across the whole of THE LAST TREE: 101

So, what does it all mean? Does the specific number of trees matter? Was any one in particular more significant than the others? What was the meaning behind focusing on that stump? And – most crucially – which tree was the 'last'?

Let me assure you that I've ruminated over these questions long and hard and have failed to come up with any answers.

Film was OK, though.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  See review.

What would a movie called THE FIRST TREE be about?  It's tempting to say the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that was definitely not the first to sprout up in the Garden of Eden. First famous one, though.

Previously:  I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Next time:  THE LAST MAN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #69 I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1998, Danny Cannon)

 

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That crazy fisherman is still not dead and he still knows. So even when our heroes go to the Bahamas, he still stalks them because he still can't let go.

Starring  Jennifer Love Hewitt, Brandy, Mekhi Phifer, Freddie Prinze Jr, Bill Cobbs

Written by  Trey Callaway     

Produced by  Neal H Moritz, Erik Feig, Stokely Chaffin, William S Beasley

Duration  101 minutes   

   

 

 

Let's face it, a film like I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER has the odds stacked against it.

There's the assumption that a sequel will be rubbish. Yes, we all know the ones that turned out great and arguably better than the original, like ALIENS (agree), TERMINATOR 2 (disagree) and THE GODFATHER: PART II (too close to call). But the vast majority of follow-ups are either disappointing when compared to what came before or just plain bad.

And that anti-sequel prejudice becomes more pronounced the faster the new film arrives. I'm not talking about ones that were filmed together, like BACK TO THE FUTURE PARTS II and III or the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy or the second and third MATRIXS – those were pre-planned. I mean the one-year gap between the first two SCREAM movies, or between all of the first eight FRIDAY THE 13THS, except parts three and four and parts six and seven (when they left a whole two years between entries). Or how the first six NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREETS span a mere seven-year period.

So, it does tend to be horror franchises that ruthlessly churn 'em out. And yes, they do mostly suffer from diminishing returns.

But before I dismiss quickie horror sequel I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (released 13 months after the original), two other part twos come to mind, both unfairly written off in the annals of film history: GHOSTBUSTERS 2 and PREDATOR 2.

Someday, I'm going to do a scientific study. I'm going to watch GHOSTBUSTERS and GHOSTBUSTERS 2 back to back and log each time there's a good bit: a funny line, a memorable delivery, a genuine scare. Because I've watched the latter as many times as the former and I swear to God there is no drop in quality, none whatsoever. It may be a carbon copy in many ways, but before it resets to formula it does an imaginative (and hilarious) job of following through with its "five years later" premise. And with all the major players back in front of and behind the camera, they know how to make that formula enjoyable.

PREDATOR 2, meanwhile, was dismissed as a cash-in because neither Arnie or director John McTiernan returned. But what Stephen Hopkins delivered actually has a better cast (Danny Glover! Gary Busey! Bill Paxton! Maria Conchita Alonso! Ruben Blades! Robert Davi! Adam Baldwin! Steve Kahan!) and a sweaty, near-future urban milieu unique to itself. It should be terrible; it has virtually no plot and skips having a second act altogether, instead just rushing from set up to resolution without worrying about narrative development or escalation. But I love it!

Both those movies are also often referenced by unimaginative critics as a way of giving backhanded compliments to the franchise's legacy sequels, trawling out the trite observation "well, it's not great, but at least it's better than part two!" (See also: the criminally underrated INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.)

The LAST SUMMER series itself is now receiving the legacy sequel treatment, too. But whatever the context, I was determined to avoid making any lazy assumptions about the quality of I STILL KNOW.

Silly me.

Let's start with the good. Jennifer Love Hewitt is a solid lead (she's back for the 2025 edition, having ducked out of the DTV part three), resourceful and compelling, more than capable of shouldering a multi-entry horror franchise like her Party of Five alumni Neve Campbell has been with SCREAM. Brandy, famous for singing 'The Boy is Mine', is a charismatic addition to the I STILL KNOW cast. For a while, it's fun to play 'spot the character actor': John Hawkes, Bill Cobbs, Jeffrey Combs, Mark Boone Junior ... um, how about a dreadlocked Jack Black, overacting as usual and playing Drexel from TRUE ROMANCE as in a weak SNL sketch? And, well, the Bahamas-during-monsoon-season setting is novel for a slasher. And ... er ... Freddie Prinze Jr also returns? Yay?

Unfortunately, quirky casting and impressive location scouting are about all I STILL KNOW has going for it. 

So now onto the bad.

Its first sin is opening with a cheap fake-out opening, as JLH is attacked in a dream and wakes up having fallen asleep in her college class. From this inauspicious start, things never pick up. There is no suspense. There is no sense of dread. The jump scares barely elicit a tremor. And there are no decent kills – well, unless you count Jack Black’s, but only because it's satisfying to see him go. And Mekhi Phifer and Matthew Settle are saddled with the thankless roles of 'horny, insensitive jock' and 'no personality beyond wishing he was Freddie Prinze Jr', doing no one any favours. I spent most of the movie idly wondering how many of the poor cast came down with hypothermia due to every scene taking place in the pouring rain.

Plus, serious minus points for forcing a horrible alt-rock cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday' upon us during a cheesy 90's clubbing scene, following the original movie's butchering of ‘Summer Breeze’ by Seals & Crofts. Much more painful than anything a hook-handed grudge-bearing homicidal maniac could dole out.

Alright, alright. So sometimes our negative assumptions about movies do turn out to be correct. But hey – every now and then we're pleasantly surprised and get possessed bathtubs, sentient paintings and rivers of slime; or an alien hunter administering self-surgery in an elderly lady's bathroom while she hesitates outside brandishing a broom. A little misplaced optimism's gotta be worth the chance of getting that kind of stuff, hasn't it?

Next time you want a franchise sequel set in the Bahamas, go for JAWS: THE REVENGE. (Note: JAWS: THE REVENGE is a little underrated, but this is not a recommendation.) 

One star out of five.

Additional: There used to be a trend for naming sequels with 'too' instead of '2', to imply 'as well'. SPLASH TOO, TEEN WOLF TOO, LOOK WHO'S TALKING TOO... so why didn't they do that here to both stop the title being chronological gibberish? I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER TOO sounds like a much better movie, maybe one that could have mixed things up by introducing a new villain.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  JLH actually points out the inaccuracy herself by explaining how "two summers ago, we (etc etc)". Poor show, whoever signed off on that title, I'm telling you.

What would a movie called I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID FIRST SUMMER be about?  Excessive pride about having such a good memory for early-years details.

Previously:  LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN

Next time:  THE LAST TREE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #68 LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN (1989, Uli Edel)

 

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Life, love, loss and labour disputes in 1950’s New York City.

Starring  Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang, Burt Young, Peter Dobson, Jerry Orbach

Written by  Desmond Nakano

Produced by  Bernd Eichinger

Duration  103 minutes  

 

 

Sometimes, you see the reference before you know the thing it's referencing.

The early, golden episodes of The Simpsons were chockablock with brilliantly conceived movie references. CITIZEN KANE was a favourite, getting a whole episode with Mr Burns' childhood teddy bear substituting the sled Rosebud. Hitchcock came up a lot, too, specifically PSYCHO, VERTIGO and REAR WINDOW – which also got its own whole-episode parody, when Lisa and Bart think Ned Flanders has murdered his wife.

One of my favourites is 'Last Exit to Springfield'. The one where Homer becomes the head of the power plant's workers' union to try to get free braces for Lisa. ("Dental plan!" "Lisa needs braces." "Dental plan!" "Lisa needs braces." "Dental plan!" " ... If we give up our dental plan ... I'll have to pay for Lisa's braces!")

It's an episode that makes several references, among them THE GODFATHER PART II; 1989's BATMAN; the Beatles' YELLOW SUBMARINE; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; and Moby-Dick. But I didn't at first know what that title was alluding to. It definitely sounded like a reference, and I just supposed that it must be somehow relevant to the episode's plot.

I came to realise that it was a nod to an '80s-shot, '50s-set movie called LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. But I never saw it back then, and my interest was only piqued (before now) after I became a fan of drugged-up misery-fest REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, and learned that both it and LAST EXIT were adapted from novels by the same author, Hubert Selby Jr.

Apparently, the book is a loose collection of inter-connected short fictions set in the same area, rather like Trainspotting. If that's so, then screenwriter Desmond Nakano did a great job of blending them into a coherent narrative. 

Characters in the ensemble include Georgette (Alexis Arquette), a brash transgender prostitute; dockworker Big Joe (Burt Young, playing Paulie from ROCKY as if he finally left Philly and started a family), whose daughter's baby out of wedlock prompts a hasilty arranged wedding and christening; Jennifer Jason Leigh's Tralala, a prostitute who makes a few extra bucks from propositioning sailors and then robbing them when the deed is done; and Stephen Lang as Harry, a closeted factory machinist, who during the strike abuses his position in the union by using its funds to take his deadbeat mates out boozing, while exploring the local underground gay scene on the sly.

With the exception of Big Joe's, none of these storylines end well. Georgette is thrown out of the family home by her homophobic brother and is then killed in a hit-and-run. Harry is viciously beaten by the same buddies he had been trying to impress after they uncover his sexuality. And Tralala is brutally gang-raped in an abandoned car and then left for dead.

It's this last character who I found the most heart-breaking. Tralala meets a nice guy for once, a sailor who wants to get to know her and hang out for a few days doing 'couple' things before he ships out; when he does, he leaves her a love note that almost brings her to tears. 

But Leigh is playing a character who is so used to getting a bum steer from life that when she's shown a little glimmer of tenderness she can't handle it. She reacts by subjecting herself to self-flagellating humiliation – her fate at the hands of dozens of leering, drunken barflies comes at her own invitation, when she binge-drinks whiskey, rips off her own clothes and challenges them to do their worst. She doesn't think she deserves happiness and takes comfort in sinking back to the gutter, where the world has convinced her she belongs. 

Leigh is utterly mesmerising in the role; with this and 1990's MIAMI BLUES, she was truly graduating from teen films to more grown-up fare.

Stephen Lang, meanwhile, I mostly knew as psychotic serial killer The Party Crasher in mis-matched buddy action comedy THE HARD WAY; that, or for playing a psychotic military type in AVATAR, or even the psychotic blind dude in the DON'T BREATHE movies. But here, he's agonisingly soulful as a regular guy who's desperately trying to find his place in the world.

Also in the cast are Jerry Orbach (the dad from DIRTY DANCING) as a principled union boss; a young Stephen Baldwin as a local hoodlum; Ricky Lake as Big Joe's daughter; and apparently a pre-fame Sam Rockwell was in there somewhere too, but I didn't spot him and I don't think he has any lines.

German Uli Edel is example of a foreign director with an outsider's eye of New York City, like the French Luc Besson (LEON), Polish Roman Polanski (ROSEMARY'S BABY), Austrian Billy Wilder (THE APARTMENT), Italian Sergio Leone (ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA) ... does Canadian Ivan Reitman count, with GHOSTBUSTERS? Anyway, in LAST EXIT, the titular borough is depicted like another planet or a subterranean level of hell. Cinematographer Stefan Czapdky shoots it like Michael Chapman did Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER (that director being an actual New Yorker, of course): all rising steam and dark alleys and dirty puddles.

There's another Scorsese-style touch when the camera cranes away, ashamed, during Harry's beating. His assailants leave him bloody and propped up against wooden rafters in a crucifix pose – and then we cut to a christening! So, the religious allusions are very Marty, too.

This is a harsh film, despite them actually toning down the book – which had been strong enough to earn it a trial in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act. But LAST EXIT is more moving in its humility and rawness than anything I've seen for a good while. Ultimately, it's about trying to find pockets of happiness in an ugly world; just by keeping up that pursuit, you're not letting go of hope.

No mention of dental plans, though.

(Also, there's a beautiful score by Mafk Knopfler, although it can't quite match his masterful earlier work on LOCAL HERO – the theme from which is so good that Newcastle United Football Club run onto the pitch to it,)

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’? If we’re going to Brooklyn, where are we coming from? Tarlala romances the kind sailor in Manhattan, so in theory she could go back and forth on the Brooklyn Bridge. But chances are she takes the subway.

What would a movie called FIRST EXIT TO BROOKLYN be about?  There is apparently an album by something called The Foetus Symphony Orchestra entitled ‘York (First Exit to Brooklyn)'. So, some kind of concept movie based around that, I guess, like Pink Floyd’s THE WALL or The Who’s TOMMY.

 

Previously:  LAST CALL

Next time:  I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DIDLAST SUMMER 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com