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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 … Read more
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 … Read more
“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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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, … Read more
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 … Read more
