Review

Evil Does Not Exist

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Takumi out with daughter Hana

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi originally intended Evil Does Not Exist to be a 30-minute short but realised somewhere along the way that he had the makings of a bigger film on his hands, one that’s part thriller, part meditation on (and manipulation of) audience sympathies. In a variation on the WB Yeats line “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met” – beloved of expat Irish bars – Hamaguchi seems to be saying that in the movies there are no bad guys, just characters we haven’t been introduced to properly. Get close and evil does not exist, just complexity. See also Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy for more on this. First up, in what’s … Read more

Four Nights of a Dreamer

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Close up of Marthe

Often pitched as Robert Bresson’s most accessible film, Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d’un rêveur) is, for him, a wild ride. Not exactly pulsing with vivid event, perhaps, but by Bressonian standards highly unusual. The people in it, for example, actually act, rather than read out the words with as little emotion as possible. There is music, it’s in colour. There’s nudity… sex… heartbreak. Wind the expectations in a touch for the actual film, which follows two young people over four nights. Jacques is a whimsical poetic type who falls in love with women – women on the street – too easily. As we meet him he’s gazing longingly at one … Read more

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

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Spinal Tap on stage

It’s taken a long time but maybe that’s as it should be. As Spinal Tap II: The End Continues opens, the cultural landscape is awash with ancient rockers back on the road cranking out their greatest hits one last time. In that context the four decade gap since the original movie isn’t all that inappropriate. The reason for the wait is prosaic. A legal wrangle over the rights to the Tap name, which were only concluded favourably (if you’re the band) in 2020, paving the way for the reunion. In the intervening years rock as a vital musical form has died. In fact it was already dead in 1984, which is one of … Read more

Fudoh: The New Generation

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Riki wielding a sword

The title Fudoh: The New Generation begs the question: was there a Fudoh: The Old Generation? There wasn’t, strictly speaking, though there was a manga series called Fudô, which Takashi Miike based this film on. And there were some subsequent regenerations, with Fudoh 2 and 3, neither of which were directed by Miike. Miike was largely an unknown quantity outside Japan when this film debuted in 1996. It made his name, which isn’t bad for something originally slated for home-release only. It also started Miike’s golden run – see Audition (still brilliantly yuk after all these years), Ichi the Killer or The Happiness of the Katakuris for examples of that. What impressed audiences … Read more

The Ice Tower

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Marion Cotillard as the Ice Queen

Lucile Hadžihalilović has been making films like The Ice Tower ever since her feature debut, 2004’s Innocence, an allegorical semi-fairytale in which a young Marion Cotillard played a pivotal role in a story that wasn’t about her character at all. Same here – Cotillard pivotal, playing Cristina, an actress in a very non-specific 1970s whose latest role, as Hans Christian Andersen’s Ice Queen, gets her caught up with a young runaway hiding out in the studio where the film is being shot. Mistaken for an extra, Jeanne (Clara Pacini) is gradually wound into the movie itself, into the life of Cristina and into the world of the Ice Queen. Hadžihalilović slides about between … Read more

A Bittersweet Life

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Profile shot of Seon-woo holding a gun

Tragic, ironic, thoughtful, romantic and bloodthirsty, A Bittersweet Life is a dramatic change of direction by writer director Kim Jee-woon, and a demonstration that he’s as good at action and martial arts as he was at horror and comedy in films like A Tale of Two Sisters and The Quiet Family. Kim’s cool, Alain Delon-esque “hero” is an enforcer called Seon-woo (Lee Byung-hun). And in a cool opening sequence we learn all we need to know about him as he goes at three badass gangsters with a spectacular display of martial arts bravado – here is a man who’s ruthless, efficient, unemotional and loyal to his boss. Seon-woo is more carapace than character, a … Read more

Julie Keeps Quiet

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Julie shouts at herself on the tennis court

Silence is a power, and in Julie Keeps Quiet (Julie zwijgt) a story about abuse – never entirely defined – also gains force because of a determination not to sensationalise. Leonardo Van Dijl’s impressive film builds on his 2015 short, Umpire, to tell the story of a young female tennis player – Julie – who refuses to play along when her trainer, Jeremy, is suddenly suspended after the death of fellow player Aline. What Jeremy did to Aline, if anything, is teased away at but really the film is more interested in Julie and her silence, which she wields in much the same way as a young anorexic woman refuses food – it … Read more

Hell

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Paul holds Nelly close

Strangely enough there are two films called Hell starring Emmanuelle Béart. This one is from 1994 and is directed by Claude Chabrol. The other (which also goes by L’enfer in the original French) is directed by Danis Tanovic. None too shabby, either of them. More strangely, both films are other directors’ movies. Tanovic took on the second of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Heaven, Hell and Purgatory trilogy after the director died. As for Chabrol, he was completing the film that Henri-Georges Clouzot started in 1964 with Serge Reggiani and Romy Schneider in the leads, which Clouzot abandoned when he got ill (he got better but never went back to it. You can see his footage … Read more

Bird

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Bailey and Bug on an eclectric scooter

What would happen if you crashed the most grounded, miserablist movie genre into the most flyaway and fantastical? Grim into Grimm. Bird is the answer, Andrea Arnold’s sixth film in 18 years. Again the great performances, again the ability to secure a name who you’d expect would be doing bigger things. Again Arnold makes us work for a redemptive moment, a shred of hope and humanity. Look at those closing credits though, Arnold’s cast dancing to Fontaines DC’s Too Real. Pure joy. Arnold is like a cat playing with a mouse. The big name is Barry Keoghan, Oscar-nominated for Saltburn, who dropped out of Gladiator II to do this. Playing skanky drug-dealing Bug, … Read more

When Strangers Marry

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Millie with new husband Paul

A peculiar, interesting and not entirely coherent crime thriller about a woman who marries a man she barely knows and then starts wondering if he’s a killer. When Strangers Marry makes more sense as a title than Betrayed, which is the flag it flew under when it was re-released in 1949, five years after its debut. The re-release also allowed a bit of rejigging of the pecking order. Third-billed Robert Mitchum – who’d become a star in the interim – is top-billed second time round. To be fair to everyone, Mitchum is in it more than Dean Jagger, who plays the mysterious salesman Kim Hunter’s wide-eyed Millie Baxter has married more or less … Read more