Review

The Trouble with Being Born

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Elli the android

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 too, though it also won a special jury prize, just one of many from film festivals. Not that awards and bans are usually much to go on, but in this case the various responses do say something. This is a tough film but a good one. Tough not because of the suggestions of paedophilia but because of its … Read more

T-Men

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Alfred Ryder and Dennis O'Keefe in character as gang members

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 dagger and maximum stakes. The voiceover goes on to tell us that the T-Men serve a crucial role in society and are a vital tool of the US government, protecting all citizens from the depradations of mobsters, smugglers, counterfeiters and the like. To reinforce the point, an earnest, to-screen homily follows, spoken by Elmer Lincoln Irey, real-life chief … Read more

Amsterdam

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Christian Bale as Burt Berendsen

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 could almost be safely removed without harming the texture of the movie. No, maybe not Taylor-Joy, one of the important components, it turns out, when Amsterdam finally gets round to revealing its nature – an angry political drama, and a good thriller, hidden inside a meringue of deflection, pastiche, jokes, songs, historical factoids, good performances and all the … Read more

Amour de Poche aka Girl in His Pocket

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Monette and the professor in the lab

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 her in his pocket until he can find an antidote. Sometimes she’s naked, too.” It’s the final sentence, “Sometimes she’s naked too” that’s the killer. That, really, is what Amour de Poche is about, a chance to see a pretty lady’s sexy bits, which the movie does oblige us with, once, maybe twice, depending on how sharp your … Read more

Oppenheimer

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Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer

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. Emblematic of the change in the perception of nuclear power from scientific miracle to bringer of armageddon, he fell foul of the McCarthyite anti-Communist atmosphere after the Second World War. The film delivers the proof that Nolan is now as at home making movies about historical events (alongside Dunkirk) as he is in the realm of the high … Read more

Foto Háber aka Haber’s Photo Shop

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Gábor and Anna in the darkroom

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 just say secrets, of which more, also, later. We meet Gábor Csiky (Latinovits) in a prison where he’s introduced as an ex-priest and theologian – the other inmates refer to him as “Reverend”. When they ask him what he’s in there for, Gábor replies “political stuff”, modestly. One inmate points out that, rationally, all crime, no matter how … Read more

Rotting in the Sun

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Jordan and Sebastián meet on a nudist beach

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 shots to one side, the first thing to say about this film is that the weird thing about the cock is that it’s absolutely not necessary. No one needs to see men getting it on together for the film to work. There is a wilful perversity to it. Silva is daring his audience not to be alienated. Because … Read more

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

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Delphine and Solange

As is often the case with sequels, “the same but different” is the big idea in the musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort), the 1967 follow-up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg). Largely it’s the same production team as on the 1964 movie – writer/director Jacques Demy, composer Michel Legrand, producer Mag Bodard, costume designer Jacqueline Moreau and production designer Bernard Evein. They gussie up this film in much the same way as they did the previous one. Bright lights, bold colours, big sets, grand camera movements, and locations tweaked till they squeak with pastel excess. Catherine Deneuve is the only key cast member to survive … Read more

The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra

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A victim of the fungus

The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra is about mould, not backbones. So why the weird title? Because, I’m guessing, debut writer/director Park Sye-young thought it had the right effect. This is a film that’s all about effect, mood, and Park conjures like a master right from the opening seconds, where a removal guy is talking on the phone to the woman whose stuff he’s meant to be moving. The woman isn’t there and he’s haranguing her. Meanwhile the guy next to him is talking right over the top of him in a separate conversation. It doesn’t overlap, as traditionally “realistic” dialogue in movies does (see Robert Altman), it attempts to overwhelm. After the removal guy’s … Read more

Ride the Pink Horse

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Gagin and Pila

Ride the Pink Horse? Strange title. A gay slur, perhaps? Like “playing the pink oboe”, maybe? But as the title music comes up, all clippity cloppity, this unusual movie from 1947 sends us off in yet another direction. Because this isn’t a cowboy movie either, or even something more esoteric, it’s an unusual slice of dark noir set, atypically, on the Mexican border, where an ex-soldier recently back from the Second World War arrives in town to exact revenge on the guy who caused the death of his old comrade-in-arms. Robert Montgomery plays the ex-soldier, Gagin, and Fred Clark plays the slippery Mr Hugo, from whom revenge will be extracted, that’s if Gagin … Read more