Steve

Trading Paint

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Sam with a smiling Becca

John Travolta won a Worst Actor Razzie for his turns in Trading Paint (aka Burning Rubber) and The Fanatic (a joy for another day) so you might expect this film to be terrible and Travolta’s acting ditto. But acting awards good and bad often go to the undeserving, which is the case here. Travolta is not bad, nor is anyone in this film, nor is the film itself. It just doesn’t have much in the way of sizzle. It’s a drama about car racing so I’m probably contractually obliged to say “low octane” at some point. That was that point. Travolta plays Sam Munroe, a guy who runs a smalltime veteran race-car outfit. … Read more

Cut Bank

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Derby Milton

Look at the talent in Cut Bank – John Malkovich, Bruce Dern, Michael Stuhlbarg, Oliver Platt, Liam Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer. And Billy Bob Thornton. Clearly great things were intended. But maybe 2014 was just too early for a revival of the gonzo Tarantino movie of yore. Ten years later movies like Cut Bank were all over the place. Worth checking out, it’s likeable, well done and showcases Malkovich acting for a change, rather than turning in an “and featuring John Malkovich” performance, as a backwoods sheriff trying to get to the bottom of the murder of universally loved mailman Georgie Wits (Dern). The incident was captured on camera, just by chance, by two … Read more

Superboys of Malegaon

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Shafique as Superman

It’s pronounced “maa.lay.gao”, a screen note informs us, before Superboys of Malegaon gets properly underway. And that’s the tone of the entire film – nothing left to chance, a narrative that is laid out with one logical piece following another, nothing fancy, nothing tricksy, just the age-old “let’s do the show right here” tale, of an Indian guy in the small town of Malegaon in Maharashtra State, India, who decides to make movies – no money, no clue, just make them. It’s brilliant. Feelgood, funny, dramatic, tear-jerking, a feast of emotional manipulation by director Reema Kagti and co, who retell the true story first told in the 2008 documentary Supermen of Malegaon, which … Read more

The Philadelphia Experiment

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A ship re-appears

As any proper conspiracy theorist will tell you, 2012’s The Philadelphia Experiment is a movie based on a true incident, when the US government, at the conclusion of some weird research in 1943, disappeared destroyer escort the USS Eldridge in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. According to whichever version of the story you go for, the ship either simply stopping being visible as light waves were bent around it, or it teleported completely to Norfolk, Virginia, before re-appearing in Philadelphia. According to this second version of the story, when the ship re-appeared some unfortunate sailors had by that point become fused with the ship itself, a detail this retelling of the story leaves in. … Read more

American Refugee

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Winter patrols with a rifle

The IMDb plot resumé for American Refugee says it’s a film about race in America. There is a black family and a white family in it, and they come into conflict, that’s true. Race, however, is not mentioned once. In fact class and cultural politics, plus masculinity – toxic and otherwise – seem to be more of a concern for its writers, Allison and Nicolas Buckmelter. Maybe, being a white couple, the Buckmelters thought it best to stay away from overt references to race. Maybe, this being America in the 21st century, it doesn’t even need to be said. Here’s the situation. Things are bad out there in the USA. The stock market is … Read more

100 Years of… The Big Parade

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Melisande and James share some chewing gum

King Vidor’s first name really was King. It suited him. The master of the big Hollywood movie, here he is in 1925 with The Big Parade, laying down the template for all the war movies of the future. The Big Parade is the highest-grossing silent film of all time so it would be nice if we still had the original version. But it’s been lost. Instead there’s the 1930 re-issue – same movie but with sound effects and a score added. It’s the basis of the restoration done in the 1980s, which replaced the original score with one by Carl Davis. How good the film looks. It’s fabulously sharp, in fact, apart from the … Read more

Tarot

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Haley with her hand over her mouth

Tarot is a horror film for people who don’t like horror films. Or a horror film for people who like to shout at the screen, possibly after a couple of drinks. Or that’s the initial impression at any rate. It starts out in territory so familiar it feels like a large language model wrote it. A small language model even. A group of guys and gals staying at a big old house. The girls are hot; the guys have personalities. There is a room the visitors have been warned not to enter. And so they do. There they find a deck of tarot cards, distinctively designed, and one of the hot girls, who’s … Read more

The Unseen

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Close up of Gail Russell

Either a hopeless genre mishmash or a brilliant psychological thriller gone a bit wrong – probably both – 1945’s The Unseen was sold as a follow-up of sorts to the spooky thriller from the previous year, The Uninvited. In fact they have little to do with each other beyond the same director (Lewis Allen), one actor (Gail Russell) and that negative “Un” modifier. Russell had an “Introducing” credit in The Uninvited but she’s really the star here, though first-billed Joel McCrea would probably have disagreed. She plays a nanny brought in to tame the two children of widower David Fielding (McCrea) after their original nanny, Maxine, is mysteriously suddenly let go. There’s an aspect … Read more

Friendship

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Craig and Austin

It’s hard to discuss a film you viscerally hate, as I did Friendship. Call me a sensitive snowflake but I’m just not into protracted depictions of inadequacy leading to humiliation. This has been Tim Robinson’s shtick in the various TV shows he’s been involved with. Now he’s brought the same cringe persona to a film, all 100 minutes of it. Or writer/director Andrew DeYoung has, in his feature debut, which he wrote expressly for Robinson. And yet I’m giving it three stars. To explain: it’s the difference between liking and admiring, when it comes down to it. I didn’t like Friendship for one minute but it undoubtedly does do what it set out … Read more

La Cérémonie aka The Ceremony

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Sophie and Jeanne with shotguns

Ruth Rendell didn’t like many adaptations of her books but she did like 1995’s La Cérémonie (The Ceremony), a reworking of her thriller A Judgment in Stone. She wasn’t alone. Roger Ebert put it on his Great Movies list, the Cahiers du Cinéma people named it the best film of 1995, and Bong Joon Ho says it’s one of the main inspirations for Parasite, his Best Picture Oscar winner from 2019. It’s a chilly, anxious thriller about a mouselike maid working for a rich French family who strikes up a friendship with a woman who runs the local post office. Sophie is cool, efficient, doesn’t say much and does her job so brilliantly … Read more