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Tragic, ironic, thoughtful, romantic and bloodthirsty, A Bittersweet Life is a dramatic change of direction by writer director Kim Jee-woon, and a demonstration that he’s as good at action and martial arts as he was at horror and comedy in films like A Tale of Two Sisters and The Quiet Family. Kim’s cool, Alain Delon-esque … Read more
Silence is a power, and in Julie Keeps Quiet (Julie zwijgt) a story about abuse – never entirely defined – also gains force because of a determination not to sensationalise. Leonardo Van Dijl’s impressive film builds on his 2015 short, Umpire, to tell the story of a young female tennis player – Julie – who … Read more
Strangely enough there are two films called Hell starring Emmanuelle Béart. This one is from 1994 and is directed by Claude Chabrol. The other (which also goes by L’enfer in the original French) is directed by Danis Tanovic. None too shabby, either of them. More strangely, both films are other directors’ movies. Tanovic took on … Read more
What would happen if you crashed the most grounded, miserablist movie genre into the most flyaway and fantastical? Grim into Grimm. Bird is the answer, Andrea Arnold’s sixth film in 18 years. Again the great performances, again the ability to secure a name who you’d expect would be doing bigger things. Again Arnold makes us … Read more
A peculiar, interesting and not entirely coherent crime thriller about a woman who marries a man she barely knows and then starts wondering if he’s a killer. When Strangers Marry makes more sense as a title than Betrayed, which is the flag it flew under when it was re-released in 1949, five years after its … Read more
A knuckle-chewing debut by Alex Russell, Lurker updates All About Eve for the Instagram era, looking on with a raised eyebrow as a nobody gets whisked up into the entourage of a big music star, finds he likes it and then hangs on for grim life when the beast tries to spit him out. It’s … Read more
No “bundling” – that’s the law as laid down by Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor). Female-centric western Westward the Women is not only a clear influence on Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff but a great demonstration of the talents of director William Wellman, who’d been doing westerns for 30 years by the time he got round to … Read more
Sexy, sweaty, panting film noir goes splashily, vividly neon-hued in Motel Destino, a vague updating of The Postman Always Rings Twice done with all the Insta-filters selected. Very nice. As in Postman, it’s a threeway affair. Heraldo the minor criminal hiding out in the Motel Destino, a sex motel run by the slightly older Dayana … Read more
Writer Eric Ambler was the British spy guy in the mid 20th century and The Mask of Dimitrios is a good example of what he was about – sinister people in exotic locations doing dastardly things. Ambler followed John Buchan’s lead in that respect – don’t trust a foreigner. It took until John LeCarré – … Read more
Relay is the sort of slick, well crafted thriller George Clooney used to turn up in. A grungier, slightly less glossy Steven Soderbergh-style thing, ish ish ish, with Riz Ahmed taking the Clooney gig as a rather old-school detective of sorts – the conflicted, damaged dude doing what he does because it helps keep him … Read more
The Ghost Ship isn’t a Jacques Tourneur film but it feels like one. Perhaps that’s because Tourneur’s editor, Mark Robson, is directing. And as well as misty gothic looks and a sense of foreboding, Robson has also borrowed from Tourneur his sense of psychological overload. The Ghost Ship isn’t a horror movie, or a supernatural … Read more
First The Substance, now Shell – is there room for more body horror about the perils of staving off the ageing process? Shell attacks the same subject from the same angle but uses different implements. The result is less Cronenberg-inspired, as Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance was, more Paul Verhoeven, a cautionary tale with a leer … Read more
