Latest Posts
An all-you-can-eat buffet of Superman, or James Gunn’s Superman, as it’s invariably called, presumably to set it apart from the crowd. Not that Gunn seems interested in standing out from the crowd too much. His Superman’s tights are baggy, like the cheapo ones from the black and white era, though most of Gunn’s inspiration comes … Read more
Rutger Hauer was 69 when he turned up in Il Futuro in 2013. He’d die six years later, in 2019, having clocked up another 35 or so screen credits in the interim. Always working, not always in quality product, Hauer was good even in the most disappointing films. But Il Futuro isn’t one of those. … Read more
A man killed by vape, a woman blown to bits on diving into a swimming pool. Fish hooks, a coffee steamer, on they go, the vectors of weird death, in Osgood Perkins’s The Monkey, a Stephen King story tricked out with Final Destination-style ingenuity and given a comedy-macabre polish. Groans followed by chortles is the … Read more
Paul Henreid got sick of playing bland heroes like Casablanca‘s Victor Laszlo and in Hollow Triumph set out to prove he could be just as convincingly bad. Having optioned the novel this crime drama was based on, he produced the film himself and, according to legend, directed most of it too, once original director Steve … Read more
Danny Boyle has at least gone for it in 28 Years Later, a not always exciting but relentlessly interesting capstone on the 28 trilogy. After 28 Days and Weeks Later, logically it should have been Months, but 18 years have passed since 2007 and 18 Years Later would have broken the poetics. So Years it … Read more
1965’s Repulsion is one of the greatest hits of the “apartment horror” genre. Expressionistic, claustrophobic and intense, it’s part try-out for Rosemary’s Baby, part grab for commercial success, so Roman Polanski could make enough money to finance Cul-de-Sac, his next film. He succeeded. Repulsion was a box office and critical hit, and is now considered … Read more
Straight out of the box – other viewing options are available – Gazer is a remarkable movie. How remarkable becomes clear once you know a bit of its backstory. But for starters let’s say what it’s about and who’s in it etc. It’s a neo-noir, more old-school noir than most, and stars Ariella Mastroianni as a … Read more
German film-makers of the post-Second World War era weren’t exactly falling over each other examining the country’s recent history. Which makes Rotation special. In episodic scenes it attempts a cool and not-too-political examination of what had possessed Germans to sign up to the Nazi project, and what Hitler had cost them in return. Significantly, it … Read more
Genres collide! Actually, in The Prosecutor, they don’t. Two distinct species of movie live separate lives in this odd courtroom drama with martial arts action bolted on. Strangely, it works, because Donnie Yen, who stars and directs, has decided to keep them as separate entities – he gives us a bit of this and then … Read more
Hippies! Bikers! Bikers! Hippies! They’re not really the same thing but 1971’s Angels Hard as They Come (aka Angel Warriors) doesn’t care. Get the women to take their clothes off now and again, add in some yowling rock boogie. Long hair! Marijuana! Yay – we got ourselves an exploitationer. Of course it’s a Roger Corman … Read more
Celine Song’s follow-up to 2023’s Past Lives is disappointing if you’re expecting Materialists to be more of the same – exquisite slow-burn romance done with a sadist’s sense of deferred gratification. Instead Materialists is… a satire? An attempt at a takedown of When Harry Met Sally soppiness? A reckoning with Clueless, Bridget Jones or Jane Austen’s … Read more
Italian neorealism meets the crime drama in 1949’s Bitter Rice (Ris Amaro), Giuseppe De Santis’s gritty fable about a pair of petty thieves joining a horde of itinerant workers to plant and harvest rice. If drama is life minus the boring bits, De Santis is aware that neorealism at its worst can be a bit … Read more
