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Add Blue Giant to that big long list of Japanese animes about jazz. Yes, precisely. It’s a “how we got the band together” story of good-looking Japanese dudes meeting and becoming a tight jazz outfit, but mostly it’s concerned with Dai Miyamoto, a passionate saxophone player who outgrows his small town and so heads for … Read more
You might not have seen 1960’s The Old Guard (aka Les Vieux de la Vieille), a charming French comedy of manners of the old school. But you might have seen Last of the Summer Wine, the British comedy currently holding the record for longest-running TV sitcom in the world. Since it ran 1973 to 2010 … Read more
On 9 September 1971 the inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York State rose up, overpowered the guards and embarked on the largest prison rebellion in US history. Five days later, the authorities took back control in a brutal display of force, resulting in 29 dead inmates and ten dead hostages. Director Stanley … Read more
If you haven’t heard of The Brain (Le Cerveau), then you’ve missed the biggest box office hit in France in 1969 and a film that the New York Times described as “one of the freshest, fastest, nimblest and funniest comedies to hit town… in a long, long time.” I’ll just quickly add that the Times … Read more
Feelgood British low-budget whimsy, Brian and Charles‘s only real fault is that it’s taken the maddening decision to tell its story as a mock-doc. “Twee” – a regular criticism – could be lined up as another possible criticism, though I suspect that “fanciful” is what the naysayers really mean. In which case discard the bulk of … Read more
Avant-garde sci-fi stop-motion animation, anyone? French, as well, or made in France, at least, the only full-length feature made by Polish-born Piotr Kamler. “Full-length” is actually a bit of a stretch as a description. Chronopolis is only 52 minutes long, and the original version was 66 minutes, so hardly The Irishman. The shorter one is … Read more
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person does in six longish words what Snakes on a Plane does in four short ones – telegraphs a plot and a tone in a title. In the original French (or French Canadian, if you’re being picky), Vampire Humaniste Cherche Suicidiaire Consentant, it comes in one word shorter. So there’s … Read more
Dead of a heart attack at only 39, John Garfield’s final film, He Ran All the Way, is a typically punchy affair, the scrappy Garfield playing a smalltime criminal who holds a family hostage after a heist gone wrong results in the death of a cop. In early scenes reminiscent of Brighton Rock fugitive Nick … Read more
Do you believe in Bigfoot? Sasquatch Sunset does. It’s a 90-minute would-be nature documentary shot as if the big hairy cryptozoological beasts really did exist (but they do!), and follows them on the daily round – from eating and grooming to mating and dying – over the course of one year. It’s people inside impressive … Read more
1976’s Burnt Offerings can’t really bear the analysis often heaped on it. Regularly described as either a weighty commentary on materialism or as a metaphorical analysis of the dissolution of the American family, it’s much better seen as a mood piece with not that much to say but an awful lot to give if you … Read more
Five kids head for the coast in an old van in Gasoline Rainbow, the Ross brothers’ first feature since Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, their intensely evocative film about the last day in the life of a Las Vegas dive bar. Bloody Nose looked like a documentary but there were suggestions at the edges that everything … Read more
Secret Honor is one of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s favourite films, was loved by late lamented critic Roger Ebert and is one of the select fraction of movies given a home in Criterion’s choice “Collection”. Most people have never heard of it, though they do know its maker, Robert Altman, director of Mash, The Long … Read more
