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From my favorite movies..

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

"Nina Forever" starts out a bit chaotic, but it sets a pretty good mood for the movie.However, that mood was quickly gunned down by the utter boredom that trailed along with this movie. I managed to get maybe just about 30 minutes into the movie before I had to give up out of sheer and utter boredom. I managed to get to the part where Nina returned from the dead for the second time, then I just couldn't take it anymore.The story is about Nina, who dies in a traffic accident, leaving her boyfriend Rob on the brink of suicide and in a very dark place. When he does manage to find a shimmer of hope in the form of colleague Holly from the supermarket, Nina returns from the grave to interfere whenever they are being intimate.What killed off my interest in "Nina Forever" was the excessive focus on sex in the about 30 minutes or so that I managed to watch of this ordeal of a movie. It was just too much, and it wasn't helping the movie in any bit. Quite the contrary actually, it was a cumbersome anchor dragging the movie down.I didn't care one bit for the characters in the movie, as they were essentially as interesting as wet cardboard. Nor can I claim to find much of any interest in the storyline. Sure, the synopsis sounded like this could actually be a fun movie to watch. But it was just painfully killed off by the focus on sex and directors Ben Blaine's and Chris Blaine's urge to show nudity on the screen.Sure, I had expected this to be a comedy of sorts, and perhaps one that would bring zombies into the frame. But it just wasn't that at all.I am not going to bother with a second trip to finish "Nina Forever", because it just didn't appeal to anything for me. And I am rating it a mere three out of ten stars, given the fact that it had good camera work, good cinematography and good editing. The rest, nah, not so much...

I felt that this was an interesting premise and I really enjoyed the first half hour of the film. However I have to admit that ultimately by the end I was left with an overall feeling of disappointment and missed opportunity.The overall highlights were the scenes between the main character Rob, Cian Barry, and Nina's parents. Nina's first appearance is also striking but I felt the scene itself was too rushed and the build up and gradual indications that Nina was in the background could have been handled with greater subtly which would have created more tension. However after this excitable rush to reveal Nina the second half of the film drags so there are definitive issue with the pacing of the film.In some instances the casting was also far from ideal. The actress who played Holly, Abigail Hardingham, was a very natural and engaging presence, hanging on in there with the relationship despite all of the bizarre difficulties because she wanted to appear "dark" and not "vanilla" and to be committed to her first real boyfriend (although in reality the actress is too pretty to have been "left on the shelf"). However Holly is given no back story and due to the underwriting of her character we become increasingly frustrated that the motivations of Holly become blurred in the second half of the film as her love for her rather dull boyfriend starts to become diluted.There are two serious problems with the film. The first is the casting of Fiona O'Shaugnessy as Nina herself. The character as written and acted is a highly un-haunting presence. Nina as portrayed in the film is lacking in charm, beauty or personality. Her mocking baby like voice is so irritating that you'd have probably been glad to see the back of her not be so haunted by her to the extent that you couldn't move on from her!! Not to be ungallant but Ms Shaughnessy is also much too old to be playing the fantasy girlfriend role – more suited to the bitter divorcée! -and this unbalances the whole film.The last half hour was a bit of a drag and the other serious problem, the "twist" ending of switching over the "curse of Nina " to Holly, was silly and felt tagged on. The Writer/Directors., the Blaine Brothers, should have had the conviction to retain faith in the subtext of people being unable to move on from a relationship.If we had a much sweeter and charming Nina and a more grown up conclusion ( perhaps along the lines of Morettoi/Grimaldi's "Quiet Chaos" ) in which eventually Nina disappeared because the main character was able to finally move on we would have had a poignant conclusion and a more consistent tone to add to the humour and interesting premises. Instead the filmmakers resorted to immature gimmicky that betrayed the original theme of the film.So maybe next time gentlemen make a film that has the conviction to respect people's intelligence rather than assuming film goers need juvenile sarcasm and a twist ending?

It has always been us Americans that like to remake films, but this is an example of the Brits doing it, and doing it badly.Maybe the filmmakers were just not aware of the excellent Life After Beth from 2014, and maybe it's just one of those occasions when two lots of people have similar ideas, but this film has just recently come out, so I'm not sure. Whatever the reasons this film is pretty bad. It's mediocre in almost every respect, which makes it less entertaining than if it were truly bad. The actors try their best and I commend them for that, but it's just not a good enough vehicle for them to shine. The directors, and I think I'm right when I say there are two, which explains a lot, seem muddled in their storytelling. But my main argument is that this has been done before, quite recently, and better. So why bother?I hope, and think that they will, go on to better things, but they need to learn from this film and see it for what it is before they move on. I wouldn't recommend it. Just watch Life After Beth. (I have nothing to do with that film!)

This Frightfest 2015 favourite is the first gem of 2016. A British indie written and directed by Ben and Chris Blaine, it's a jet-black sex comedy about a dead young woman who comes back to life whenever her ex-boyfriend has sex. And he's having a lot of sex with his new girlfriend, Holly (Abigail Hardingham).Avoiding potentially tiresome scenes of endless disbelief, the central couple accept the bizarre situation far more easily than their zombie. Indeed, Holly is actually turned on by the presence of Nina (Fiona O'Shaughnessy). The latter is in no mood for a ménage a trois, and proceeds to torment the new lovers. She's the embodiment of guilt.Nina Forever doesn't go for scares. But neither does it go for the surreal. The grounded way in which it depicts its essential weirdness is one of its main appeals. It's reminiscent of the deadpan exchanges between David and his dead buddy in An American Werewolf in London – that's the tone.Another key element is the characterisation. Holly and Rob (Cian Barry) are entirely convincing as the late-teenage lovers, swept up in their twisted, hermetically-sealed fantasy. And the Blaine brothers throw into the mix Nina's grieving parents, whose struggles to cope (dad's writing a terrible book; mum's trying to keep her daughter alive through Rob) are funny and moving.The Blaines' control of the material is seriously impressive. Everyone knows comedy-horror is a virtually impossible balancing act, but they mostly nail it, lightening the darkness of the material without ever taking the camp way out. It is horrific and it is funny, which is all you can ask. The balance is achieved through an unholy trinity of sex, death, and love. There's something here about faithfulness. If you never had a chance in life to stop loving someone, how do you have consent to love another? Real thought has been put into the script, creating a uniquely involving genre-evading experience. Its central romance is as carefully rendered as its gore. Nina doesn't just mean different things to different people; she means different things to the same people over the course of the story. She plays a key part in the ending, where quiet revelation awaits.And that's what this highly original film is: a quiet revelation.