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1927’s Underworld is often described as the first gangster movie, or the first film noir. It’s neither really, but it’s easy to see why the tags stick. It is undeniably the movie that kicked off the gangster craze in the late 1920s and early 1930s and there’s enough moody lighting in it to tick any … Read more
If you’ve ever wondered where RRR came from, or how come Tollywood became bigger than Bollywood, Baahubali: The Beginning is the answer to both questions. RRR was the crossover all-action spectacular that forced the rest of the world to take notice of Tollywood in 2022, and finally pushed it to the number one position in … Read more
At first sight bizarre, and at second sight even weirder, 1968’s Secret Ceremony is the sort of arthouse thriller that Elizabeth Taylor apparently never made. For Mia Farrow, her co-star, it looks like a warm-up for the following year’s Rosemary’s Baby. Robert Mitchum, yes Robert Mitchum, makes up the third leg of this very wonky … Read more
For her debut feature as a director, French actor Sandrine Kiberlain has decided not to take the easy route and instead go for something a bit bolder. Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien (A Radiant Girl) is a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way. Kiberlain returns to the grim history of the Jews of … Read more
The film that killed the great director Anthony Mann, A Dandy in Aspic didn’t get killer reviews when it debuted in 1968. “Completely devoid of suspense” and “bland,” said the New York Times. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide declared it “wooden”. Mann died of a heart attack towards the end of shooting and the movie’s star, … Read more
The Melbourne International Film Festival wouldn’t screen The Trouble with Being Born when it debuted in 2020. Likely to be “used as a source of arousal for men interested in child abuse material,” said the two forensic psychologists who informed its decision. Director Sandra Wollner’s German-language film ran into trouble at the Berlin Film Festival … Read more
The T in the T-Men stands for Treasury. As if to bolt cinema doors to stop people escaping, this 1947 crime drama opens with an urgent voiceover informing us that T-Men are actually really exciting and not boring at all. Think of them more like secret agents, it insists in footage that’s all cloak and … Read more
That looks like Taylor Swift, I thought to myself, watching the opening moments of David O Russell’s promising looking Amsterdam, his first film since 2015’s Joy. It actually is Taylor Swift, just one of a galaxy of stars in a cast list so luminous that the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough and Zoe Saldana … Read more
The IMDb plot summary for 1957’s Amour de Poche (aka Girl in His Pocket) credited to Keath brought a smile to my face. “A professor experimenting in suspended animation accidentally shrinks his dog and later, his female lab assistant, when she drinks the liquid by accident and shrinks to 3 inches tall. The professor keeps … Read more
Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s epic ode to Robert J Oppenheimer, the “father of the bomb” who masterminded the development of the first atomic bomb in the 1940s and later went sour on the US government’s use of nuclear power just before the US government went sour on him. Oppenheimer’s is a fascinating story to tell. … Read more
There’s a lot that’s good about Foto Háber (aka Haber’s Photo Shop), a pithy Hungarian spy thriller from 1963, but it does have one obstacle to surmount. Of which more later. One of the best things is Zoltán Latinovits as the cool, calm spy infiltrating an espionage ring that steals state secrets. Or secrets, let’s … Read more
Sebastián Silva’s films are never boring and Rotting in the Sun is no exception. Alienating, sometimes. In this case it’s the male genitalia on display – big and small, in various hues and states of turgidity – that’s going to put off a lot of people. Difficult to swallow, handle, choose your own innuendo. Cheap … Read more
