Steve

The Axe

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Bruno with a gun in his car

What is a man in capitalism if not his job? Costa-Gavras asked the question in The Axe (Le couperet) in 2005 in much the same way that Park Chan-wook did in 2025’s No Other Choice. Both are working from the same source material – Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax. Both come to pretty much the same conclusion – shorn of his job and his title, a male in this situation loses his status and becomes dangerously unmoored. This, both conclude, is not a good thing. The stories are similar right down to the little details. A man who works as an executive for a paper company gets made redundant and cannot find other … Read more

Club Zero

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Ms Novak

Movies starring Mia Wasikowska used to make waves but when Club Zero came out in 2023 it did so to little fanfare and then more or less disappeared. This seems to be the way Wasikowska would like it. After a run including Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton, Jane Eyre for Cary Fukunaga, Crimson Peak for Guillermo Del Toro and Stoker for Park Chan-wook, she seemed to deliberately left-turn her already arthouse-adjacent career into more rarefied territory – Damsel for the Zellner brothers, The Devil All the Time for Antonio Campos and Bergman Island for Mia Hansen-Løve. That’s the niche Club Zero sits in. Written and directed by Jessica Hausner, whose films situate … Read more

Call Northside 777

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McNeal in shirtsleeves with a coffee

Call Northside 777 tells the true story of a miscarriage of justice – Joseph Majczek framed for killing a cop in 1932 and sentenced to 99 years – and the crusading journalist from the Chicago Times who got the case overturned. The same story was the source material for Railroaded!, released the year before in 1947. It’s probably the better movie all told – better pace, fewer digressions – but Call Northside 777 has the advantage of a big spend and very well cast actors in its lead roles. James Stewart as cynical journalist PJ McNeal , Lee J Cobb as ballsy editor Brian Kelly and Richard Conte as the wrongly imprisoned man. Joe … Read more

Sound of Falling aka In die Sonne schauen

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Hanna Heckt as young Alma

A remarkable “if these walls could talk” movie set in the same big farmhouse over the generations, Sound of Falling (In die Sonne schauen, in the original German), is a bold and hypnotic drama starting with the eye-catching image of a pretty young woman with one leg hobbling along on crutches. It turns out that the young woman doesn’t have a leg missing at all. She’s just tied it up, possibly in sympathy with the young man who is lying feverishly in bed in an adjoining room. He really does have a leg missing, though what Erika most notices about him when she looks in on him is the way his sweat is … Read more

Without Pity aka Senza Pietà

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Jerry and Angela at a funfair

Matter-of-fact neorealism meets its opposite, torrid melodrama, in Senza Pietà, aka Without Pity. Remarkably, it’s a successful meeting of equals, probably thanks to director Alberto Lattuada’s decision to go at his material at breakneck pace. Whatever else you can accuse this film of, it isn’t slow or lacking in incident. It throws its two main characters together early on. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, displaced Italian Angela (Carla Del Poggio) is hitching a ride when she first bumps into Jerry Jackson (John Kitzmiller), a black US sergeant who jumps onto the goods train Angela is on and winds up taking a bullet for his efforts. Because she’s a good … Read more

Marty Supreme

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Marty seen close up

Timothée Chalamet spent five years in training for Marty Supreme, dragging a table-tennis table from one film to the next, so he could hone his skills by banging out a few games between takes. There’s lots of spare time on film sets, especially on the sort of big productions Chalamet has got used to appearing in – Dune, Wonka, A Complete Unknown. It has paid off. Whatever else Marty Supreme is, it’s exhibition-class proof that Chalamet put in the hours and became a plausible table tennis dynamo. As for the rest of it, it’s director/co-writer Josh Safdie’s first film made without the support structure of brother Benny. The Safdies did Uncut Gems together, … Read more

Shoot to Kill

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Marian in a car with DA Lawrence Dale

1947’s Shoot to Kill (aka Police Reporter) opens with a car crash. Two people dead. One is Lawrence Dale, the district attorney, the other a known gangster, Dixie Logan. The DA’s wife has somehow survived. But what were she and her husband doing in a car with Logan in the first place? From her hospital bed, and with a shimmer of flashback, injured Marian explains all to pushy reporter George “Mitch” Mitchell. Back, back we go, to when the DA was just an ambitious assistant district attorney, and Marian was starting out in his office. Soon, having proven herself to be more than a capable secretary, she is practically running Larry’s office. She … Read more

Hamnet

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Agnes and William running

Jessie Buckley does the acting and Paul Mescal once again plays Paul Mescal in Hamnet, a biopic of Shakespeare tilting the spotlight towards his wife, Anne Hathaway. Agnes, in fact, pronounced the French way, or that’s the way this sweet and salty adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-seller has it. Mescal, so often in a metaphorical leather jerkin, wears a real one this time around, playing the de-mythologised Shakespeare as stressed, hungover, doubtful of his own talents, a “useless… tradeless” (says his useless father) Latin teacher who meets a weirdo, “the daughter of a forest witch”, while she is out flying her hawk one day. He falls for her instantly, and she for him … Read more

Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould

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A troubled Gould (Colm Feore) in the studio

The title describes it exactly – Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould is 32 short films about the celebrated pianist Glenn Gould, all directed by François Girard, who squeezes his compendium into just over 90 minutes. Which is pretty good going considering he’s covering quite a lot of territory and doing it in a multiplicity of styles. The film came out in 1993, when the cult of Gould was still in full spate. It has since abated a touch, though the Canadian pianist is still the maverick genius to many – a humming cantankerous weirdo to others. Girard takes his cue from the 32 individual pieces in the Goldberg Variations, one of … Read more

Nowhere Special

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John gives Michael a ride on his shoulders

The terminal-illness weepie needs a firm hand or it can run off all over the place. Nowhere Special is a great case in point. Writer and director Uberto Pasolini keeps a tight grip, and James Norton’s impassioned but restrained performance is a thing of wonder. It’s so good that – as happens with proper acting – barely anyone noticed him when it came to awards time. Check it out, though. This is an undeniably simple film, but like a fine meal made from a few good ingredients, it just all comes together. Norton plays John, a window cleaner with some non-specific cancer. The entirety of Nowhere Special consists of John trying to find new … Read more