Film
Nope review - more a nope than a yepFriday, 12 August 2022
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s first two features were horror films with bells on, their genuinely creepy chills accompanied by sharp, satirical social comment. Both were so good that there seemed absolutely no reason to doubt the next. And for... Read more... |
Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC review - cheap thrillsSaturday, 06 August 2022
Bankruptcy, rubble, rape and murder: Manhattan in the Seventies could be grim, as multiple New York punk memoirs make clear. The trade-off was the art, steaming and burning in the stinking, crucially cheap degradation. Punk was just one symptomatic... Read more... |
Give Them Wings review - down but not out in DarlingtonSaturday, 06 August 2022
Give Them Wings is the biopic of Paul Hodgson, who seven months after he was born in 1965 was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. If that wasn’t bad enough, he survived his precarious childhood to become a devout fan of Durham’s hapless... Read more... |
Our Eternal Summer review - tragedy taps authentic teenage emotions in MarseilleFriday, 05 August 2022
The French seaside has been the setting for all kinds of summer holiday capers. We are used to the idea that this is a place where young people set about finding out who they are. At the top of the quality spectrum are Éric Rohmer’s well-observed... Read more... |
Bullet Train review - not really a first class ticketThursday, 04 August 2022
One of the best scenes in this Brad Pitt starrer takes place in the quiet car of a Japanese bullet train, as two men seek to kill each without leaving their seats or disturbing their fellow passengers. Aside from being amusingly and skilfully... Read more... |
Hit the Road review - leaving Tehran for truth and freedomSaturday, 30 July 2022
The trailer for Panah Panahi’s award-winning first feature Hit the Road is one of the most misleading I’ve yet seen thanks to its jaunty Western pop soundtrack and reassuring caption that the movie resembles an Iranian Little Miss Sunshine.Yes, it’s... Read more... |
The Fire of Love review - awe-inspiring footage of volcanoes marred by sentimental narrationSaturday, 30 July 2022
Katia and Maurice Krafft spent their married life going from one volcanic eruption to the next. These self-styled “volcano runners” were not just thrill seekers, but serious volcanologists keen to gain a better understanding of how volcanoes work so... Read more... |
Bob Rafelson (1933-2022): New Hollywood's raging bullTuesday, 26 July 2022
Bob Rafelson finally exiled himself, unable any longer to countenance the consuming nature of his filmmaking. As director, producer and writer in the Sixties and Seventies, he had helped create both New Hollywood’s fabled moment of auteur freedom... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Get CarterTuesday, 26 July 2022
Director Mike Hodges's Get Carter (1971) has been praised as the best British gangster film. I would go even further, and put it up against the best gangster films of all time, on the same level as Lang’s The Big Heat (1953), Melville’s Le... Read more... |
Where the Crawdads Sing review - picturesque film glosses over its darker themesMonday, 25 July 2022
Derived from Delia Owens’s massively successful novel, Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of Kya Clark, a girl from an abusive, broken home in the North Carolina marshlands who raises herself almost single-handedly. The few people she encounters... Read more... |
The Gray Man, Netflix review - the Russo brothers explore big-bang theorySaturday, 23 July 2022
Directed by the fraternal duo Anthony and Joseph Russo, who have helmed several of the colossally successful Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, The Gray Man ought at least to be entertaining and stuffed with blockbusterish thrills.And it is, darting... Read more... |
The Good Boss review - Javier Bardem at his creepy bestWednesday, 20 July 2022
The Good Boss's Julio Blanco (Javier Bardem) is not short of belief in his talents as a leader. Not just good, he evidently thinks he is the best boss ever. We watch him on the prowl, exerting influence and power over his family business, micro-... Read more... |
