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A “lost patrol” war movie, 1957’s Men in War shows that director Anthony Mann was as expert in this genre as he had already proved himself to be in film noir (Raw Deal), the western (Winchester ’73) and the epic (Quo Vadis). Made without any buy-in from the US military, it’s a pared-back affair and … Read more
There was a real-life person called Pyotr Kropotkin, he isn’t a fantasy creation of writer/director Cyril Schäublin, who is also excavating his own family’s connection to the Swiss watch industry in Unrest (Unrueh), a film as quiet and precise as a high-end timepiece. Schäublin’s film follows the bearded Russian political radical (played here by Alexei … Read more
With 1949’s La Silence de la Mer Jean-Pierre Melville got his shortish career off to the sort of start you might expect from a director who would go on to turn out one classic after another – Bob le Flambeur, Le Samouraï, Army of Shadows and A Cop to name but four. It is a … Read more
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wraps up the grungey offshoot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with grace and style, as well as big bangs and some good jokes. There’s a touch of cinematic pathos in there too, as if GOTG3 is also to some extent saying goodbye to the big superhero movie as a … Read more
What else did the director Mauritz Stiller do, apart from discover Greta Garbo and take her to America? Erotikon is one answer, a cult silent movie remarkably triumphing in a genre that usually needs dialogue to succeed. It’s a farce and Stiller gets it up and running in two opening scenes sketching his two main … Read more
Comedy horror – no surprise there, surely – Let the Wrong One In takes the vampire movie and does a Shaun of the Dead number on it. Which is to say: arcane lore is exposed to the withering light of everyday life. Result: funny, and another contender for the Ireland’s Comic Horror Hall of Fame, … Read more
The first of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “BRD Trilogy”, The Marriage of Maria Braun (aka Die Ehe der Maria Braun) is a canonical part of the New German Cinema era of the 1970s and in its key figure, Maria (Hanna Schygulla), gives us post-War Germany’s spectacular economic rebirth (die Wirtschaftswunder) distilled down into a single person. … Read more
Because it’s set in Vietnam, it’s easy if a bit crass to see Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell as a metaphysical Apocalypse Now, one man’s journey upriver in search of spiritual enlightenment. Well, that’s most of the readers gone. For those who remain, this remarkable debut by Pham Thiên Ân is pretty much as already … Read more
Clearly intending to do for Chicanos what Scorsese and Coppola did for Italian Americans, 1993’s Blood In, Blood Out cannot be accused of a lack of ambition. A big, long, zeitgeist-tasting tale of life in and around the gangs inside and outside prison, it follows three East Los Angeles guys on a journey from callow … Read more
Irish horror movies have a tendency to be inventive, ingenious and out there, and Double Blind ticks all those boxes. I told a mate I was watching an Irish horror movie and he wondered what categorised a horror movie as Irish. “Is it,” he ventured, “killer potatoes?” No, Mark, no. Like 2012’s massively underrated Stitches, … Read more
If you’ve never heard of Oldrich Lipský before, here’s your chance to get to know him. Second Run, purveyors of overlooked European movies, are re-releasing Happy End, Lipský’s 1967 comedy. Compared to the titles of other Lipský films – The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen and Adele Has Not Had Her … Read more
Mads Mikkelsen is a reassuring presence in any movie and is the making of The Promised Land (Bastarden in the original Danish), a movie that promises much and eventually delivers too much, but stylishly, always stylishly. He plays Ludvig Kahlen, an 18th-century ex-soldier who petitions the Danish king to allow him to cultivate the Jutland … Read more
