Steve

Obex

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The shadowy presence

Shut-ins of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your screens. Obex is an ingenious bit of no-fi sci-fi and if you like this sort of thing – I do – then you will be hugely entertained by Albert Birney’s film folding blocky 1980s visuals and parping ancient synths into an Albert in Wonderland story of a recluse who enters a computer game. First, though, a bit of scene-setting. This starts with the opening credits, which show real production company idents rendered in clunky 8-bit. After which we meet Conor (Birney), a supernerd who lives alone with his dog (Birney’s own dog, Dorothy). Conor’s only communication with other humans is a weekly … Read more

Overland Stage Raiders

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Head shot of John Wayne in white hat

One of the Three Mesquiteers series of movies – there were 51 between 1936 and 1943 – Overland Stage Raiders is that strange thing, a cowboy movie set in the modern era. It opens with a gang of bad guys on horseback chasing a bus, shooting as they go. This seems like a foolish pastime, like a dog chasing a car. But it turns out that the bus is carrying bullion and this is the just latest of a string of attempts to heist the Overland Stage. What’s the solution? To switch the transportation of gold to an airplane, of course, which drives the raiders to take even more desperate measures and makes … Read more

How to Make a Killing

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Becket with a bow and arrow

Not to be confused with a 2024 French black comedy also with the title How to Make a Killing (in English at least), this is the one from 2026 starring Glen Powell that’s a remake of 1949’s Kind Hearts and Coronets. It is, you know, OK, demonstrating (yet again) how good those Ealing chaps were at cranking out superficially slight comedies containing a concealed stiletto. Director/adapter John Patton Ford updates things to the 21st century, where little Becket Redfellow (Powell as an adult, Grady Wilson as a kid) is born into a wealthy family but is kicked out of it when his mother marries beneath her. Having grown up broke, and having promised … Read more

Armored Car Robbery

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Mastermind Dave making a hoax call

Let’s hear it for Plod. With a bit of bad luck, a dangerous dame and a drop of hubris thrown in for good measure, that’s the idea behind Armored Car Robbery. Detail, detail, detail is the USP. The villains may be smart but the cops have something the bad guys don’t have – persistence. They do not give up and in the end it’s shoe leather and blunt-force cop procedure that does for a gang who – no surprise, surely – have carried out a robbery on an armoured car. First we meet the criminal mastermind, David Purvis (William Talman), outside Chigago’s Wrigley Field baseball stadium, where he’s just put in a call to … Read more

Miroirs No. 3

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Laura looking thoughtful

Because it’s a Christian Petzold film, Miroirs No. 3 is an exercise in watching with the head tilted to one side. How’s he going to do it this time? “It” being either a remake of a familiar film, done with plausible deniability (the classic being Jerichow, an oblique take on The Postman Always Rings Twice). Or a fairy tale/myth reworked in modern dress, Petzold’s other obsession (see Undine or Afire). Is it either here? Or neither? The set-up is downright strange. A piano student is involved in a terrible car accident in which her boyfriend is killed. Instead of heading off to hospital, she moves in with the woman outside whose house the … Read more

The Falcon Takes Over

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George Sanders and Lynn Bari in an open top car

The Falcon Takes Over could be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. First appearance of a Raymond Chandler story on screen? – this is it, a version of his Farewell, My Lovely, which would get a bigger-budget workthrough two years later as Murder, My Sweet, with Dick Powell in the lead. Here, it’s 1942, we’re in B movie territory and it’s George Sanders as the detective on the case of a missing person. Big bruiser Moose Malloy (Ward Bond) would very much like to know where his showgirl girlfriend has disappeared to, and so presses Gay Lawrence aka The Falcon (Sanders) to find her. Chandler’s loads up the plot – a jade necklace, … Read more

Crime 101

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Ormon at a public payphone

Slick operators meet slick movie in Crime 101, a drama about capable people being pushed out of their comfort zones for our entertainment. It’s 21st-century film noir, to a large extent, Michael Mann in its glossiness and sexing-up of the city, utterly familiar in its set-up, less so in its payoff. Bart Layton has made two feature films before, both with a strong documentary flavour. The Imposter was a full-on doc about one guy passing himself off as another, and everyone, including the replaced guy’s mother, somehow being taken in. The other, American Animals, used documentary elements to tell the story of an elaborate real-life heist. Both were remarkable. Layton edges more obviously … Read more

Eran Trece

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Charlie Chan and Inspector Duff

In Spanish it means “There were thirteen,” Eran Trece, and that’s the best title to use for a film originally called Charlie Chan Carries On. The original US version, in English, has been lost to eternity, it seems. But we still have this Spanish version, shot on the same sets with different actors and crew but working from the same story and using a lot of the same stock footage to set the scene. It’s a very trad whodunit about a gaggle of rich people travelling around the world on a grand tour. The action kicks off in London, where one of the party has wound up dead. There were 13… until old … Read more

Sunlight

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Monkey

You think you’ve seen all the variations on the road movie and then along comes Sunlight, about a suicidal man on a road trip with a woman in a monkey suit. With a giant monkey, in effect. Strange. Funny. It’s written by its two leads, stand-up comedian Shenoah Allen, and Nina Conti, whose comedic ventriloquism act often involves a little monkey sitting on her arm and saying rude things to hapless members of the audience she’s dragged on stage. That’s more or less what we have here, that naughtly little chappie but at Conti size rather than miniature, sitting next to Allen’s Roy and saying frank, awful, rude and disgusting things to him … Read more

Trace of Stones

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Balla lights a cigarette

Socialism good, the socialist party bad is the idea driving Trace of Stones, originally Spur der Steine, a film made in the German Democratic Republic in 1966. It was shown a handful of times and then withdrawn, not to be seen again until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Audience unrest, said the authorities. Don’t criticise the Party! The SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deustschlands aka Socialist Unity Party of Germany) really does get it in the neck in what’s otherwise quite a familiar film, not a long way from the “kitchen sinkers” being made by the likes of Lindsay Anderson in the UK, though director Frank Beyer’s direction is looser, his approach to dialogue … Read more