Latest Posts
100 Years of… The Salvation Hunters
Made in 1925, The Salvation Hunters was Josef von Sternberg’s directorial debut. It was a total flop, and only picked up a bit interest after it was endorsed publicly by Charlie Chaplin (who encouraged his business partners Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to go along with him). But in spite of newspaper advertisements tendering Chaplin’s personal seal of approval (“It’s a great picture and different”) it still refused to fly with audiences, who probably found its tone too didactic, its approach too abstract and its long scenes featuring people staring moodily into the middle distance too dull. They are right about all those things. But Chaplin’s point still stands. There is something important … Read more
One of Them Days
The inspiration for One of Them Days is the black cinema of the late 1990s, a period when actors like Taye Diggs and Gabrielle Union, Nia Long and Omar Epps were on early career highs. Though Dude Where’s My Car?, as white-sliced as it comes, might also be in the mix. That was a tale of two white teenage dudes having the day from hell, and One of Them Days does something similar with its story about a pair of young black women who suddenly need to raise a large sum of money or else be evicted from their fairly skanky apartment in a block called The Jungle. Unsurprisingly, given its name, The … Read more
The Disappearance of Flight 412
“This is a UFO,” says a disembodied voice at the beginning of The Disappearance of Flight 412. “It was photographed at Santa Catalina Island in April 1966.” A blurry colour image appears on the screen and an arrow points at something in the middle. It could be a flying saucer (as no one seems to call them any more). The Disappearance of Flight 412 then cuts to archive footage of various interviewees saying they saw something similar. As well as the talking heads there’s a montage of photographs, all blurry, none conclusive, of objects that might be a full-sized alien spacecraft or a dinner plate thrown frisbee-like into the sky. The blurriness adds … Read more
What the Waters Left Behind: Scars
No prizes for guessing that What the Waters Left Behind: Scars is a follow-up, to 2017’s What the Waters Left Behind. Or for guessing that it’s going to feature another gang of good-looking young people being given a maximally bad time in the same bleak, blasted evacuated city by some gnarly old guys. Torture porn they used to call this stuff back in the day. The original was directed by the double-teaming Onetti brothers, Nicolás and Luciano, but it’s just Nicolás this time out. Luciano is still on board, supplying the atmospheric score that’s a key part of the film’s success. If you like this sort of thing, which I don’t particularly. If … Read more
Dark of the Sun
One of those “dangerous train journey” movies, Dark of the Sun stars Rod Taylor as a mercenary pitching up in war-torn Africa and heading off on a rickety old steam locomotive to rescue some diamonds. Also known as The Mercenaries, it paints a particularly pitiless picture of war and the sort of men who fight it for money. But there is a soft heart beating in there somewhere. While he’s no hero, Taylor’s Curry is also on an internal journey to find his soul and by the movie’s finale has discovered or rediscovered what it means to be a decent human being. It sounds a touch soppy but isn’t, thanks in large part … Read more
Didi
Messy, but good-messy like real life, Didi is the coming-of-ager working most of the angles in an attempt not to do the “arcs” of this sort of thing, and mostly succeeding. The other thing it’s doing is successful too, maybe even more so – depicting that dewy moment in the early 2000s when social media was still fresh and new and offered a vista of exciting possibilities, exactly like this film’s subject, a kid on the cusp of the rest of his life. “Didi” is Mandarin for younger brother, and refers to Chris Wang, Wang Wang to his friends, an American Asian growing up in suburban Everywheresville with an absent dad, a typically … Read more
Two-Lane Blacktop
Pared right back, Two-Lane Blacktop is the petrolhead movie for those who like a lean burn. The actors are in the main non-actors, the dialogue is functional to the point of clinical austerity, there are no character names, just categorical slots for The Driver (James Taylor), The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson), The Girl (Laurie Bird) and GTO (Warren Oates), so named because he drives a yellow 1970 Pontiac GTO. Our guys, Driver and Mechanic, drive a 1955 Chevrolet 150, stripped back to the essentials to make it go faster, supercharged and painted in matt primer grey. As they drive across America, they challenge hotrodders in every small town they come across to race them, … Read more
Robot Dreams
Imaginative, sweet and brilliantly observed, Robot Dreams is a deceptively simple animation set in an alternate New York of the 1980s, where animals rather than people crowd the city streets, delis and subways, and a lonely dog living on his own decides, on a whim, to buy one of those flatpack robots he’s seen advertised on the TV. Before long he’s screwing together the bits and pieces delivered to his door. Eventually he hits the “on” button and, after a creak, lo and behold his robot rises, winks, smiles and the two of them fall almost instantly in love. In one of those romantic montage sequences, out they go into New York. Hot … Read more
Little Murders
1971’s Little Murders gets the jump on Annie Hall by a handful of years. Woody Allen’s 1977 film was originally going to be called Anhedonia (an echo remains in his ultimate title) and was about a guy who couldn’t feel anything, which is what the condition of anhedonia is. Little Murders takes the same idea in a different direction – bleaker, less digressive and only funny in a weird way. Originally Jean-Luc Godard was going to direct but instead Alan Arkin ended up behind the camera, honouring Godard with a New Wave-style approach to the material – fast edits, scenes crashed into and out of, nothing too fancy in terms of lighting, as if … Read more
National Anthem
A good way of coming at National Anthem, Luke Gilford’s debut feature, is to know a little bit about his own life. He grew up in Colorado, the son of a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Getting older, he became uneasy at, his words, how homophobic and patriarchal the rodeo was, and yet he still loved its mythical take on America. He started wondering if there were other people like him, who loved the Americana but wanted to come at the rodeo from a different angle. It turned out there were – the International Gay Rodeo Association. Gilford became a photographer and eventually produced a photobook called National Anthem – cover … Read more
100 Years of… The Gold Rush
Charlie Chaplin’s most famous film, the one he wanted to be remembered by, is The Gold Rush. It was not only sensational then but it’s amazing how well it holds up now. Fashionable though it is to be slightly down on Chaplin these days, The Gold Rush is the one doubters should see – inventive, dramatic and funny, it’s well made enough to convince all but the most prejudiced. I’d urge the Criterion version on you if you’re going to shell out for a physical copy. It contains the 1925 silent original and also the 1942 re-release, which Chaplin re-edited, rescored and overdubbed with a narration (an approximation of newsreel bombast done by … Read more
Vermiglio
Done a bit faster and with less attention to detail, Vermiglio would be a soap opera. Its story is pure soap – secret assignation, love, betrayal, jealousy, closely guarded secrets and the warm embrace/stultifying smother of the family environment. Maura Delpero’s film is set in northern Italy in 1944 where a deserter from the army – sensing war is over – is hiding out with a large family up in their barn on the hill. He falls for one of the daughters, and she for him, and in the natural scheme of things they get close. Then… disaster. And spoilers. Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), a dark and handsome Sicilian, woos Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), though he … Read more
