Review | MovieSteve

Familiar Touch

2026-03-23 by Steve

Familiar Touch is Sarah Friedland’s gruesomely poignant feature debut, about a woman going into care because she’s old and losing her mind. Depending on your age it’s about people in your generation, or your parents’ or grandparents’. But no matter how far removed you feel from the events on screen, there’s a very good chance the same will happen to you. And that’s if you’re lucky. We first meet Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) at home making herself some lunch. Something on toast with a few herbs scattered on top, which Ruth snips from pots on the windowsill. She seems alert, capable and content. Her life appears to be orderly and OK. Then a younger … Read more

Blood on the Moon

2026-03-22 by Steve

Blood on the Moon sounds like it might be sci-fi. It’s directed by Robert Wise, who’d later do The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Without any other clue that would be a fair assumption to make. Until you learn it’s from 1948. Bit early for sci-fi. It’s a western, in fact, and a good propulsive one, even if character is occasionally sacrificed to the need to get on and tell the story, almost as if this were an episode in a western serial. The dynamic is homesteaders versus ranchers, with neither side over-demonised as they square off over who’s going to get control of a big swathe of fertile land … Read more

Kokuho

2026-03-21 by Steve

The highest-grossing home-grown live-action movie in Japan’s history, Kokuho is a decade-straddling epic about the sacrifices required to make great art, served up as a Jacob and Esau tale of two boys – one who has all the gifts, the other not so many. The twist being that the talented kid is the son of a dead yakuza, and so cannot move easily, if at all, in the rarefied world of the kabuki theatre – his chosen field. As Lee Sang-il’s sumptuous film opens, young, orphaned Kikuo’s talent has just been spotted by one of kabuki’s masters, Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe). Soon, the disadvantaged child (Soya Kurokawa as a pretty boy, Ryô Yoshizawa as a … Read more

The Axe

2026-03-20 by Steve

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

2026-03-19 by Steve

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

2026-03-18 by Steve

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

2026-03-17 by Steve

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

2026-03-16 by Steve

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

2026-03-15 by Steve

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

2026-03-14 by Steve

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