Review

Lurker

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Matthew close up

A knuckle-chewing debut by Alex Russell, Lurker updates All About Eve for the Instagram era, looking on with a raised eyebrow as a nobody gets whisked up into the entourage of a big music star, finds he likes it and then hangs on for grim life when the beast tries to spit him out. It’s a brilliant portrait both of needy, paranoid fan worship and of needy, paranoid stardom – both parties require constant reinforcement, though only one of them can be open about it. Théodore Pellerin plays the nobody, a guy working in a clothes shop in LA when big star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) and crew bowl in one day to browse. … Read more

Westward the Women

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Fifi and Buck in a clinch

No “bundling” – that’s the law as laid down by Buck Wyatt (Robert Taylor). Female-centric western Westward the Women is not only a clear influence on Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff but a great demonstration of the talents of director William Wellman, who’d been doing westerns for 30 years by the time he got round to shooting this 1951 movie, so knew exactly what it was all about. The story is about a convoy of women making the arduous journey out West, where there’s a chronic shortage of men. Sign up and choose your husband is the big idea – it’s the women who do the choosing, picking out the man they fancy from … Read more

Motel Destino

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Elias and Heraldo confront each other

Sexy, sweaty, panting film noir goes splashily, vividly neon-hued in Motel Destino, a vague updating of The Postman Always Rings Twice done with all the Insta-filters selected. Very nice. As in Postman, it’s a threeway affair. Heraldo the minor criminal hiding out in the Motel Destino, a sex motel run by the slightly older Dayana and her older-again husband Elias, who have no illusions about what their hotel is for – orgasmic moans echo down the corridor, it sells cock rings and dildos as a sideline. To earn his keep while laying low, Heraldo starts doing odd jobs for Elias and Dayana. Dark-skinned, sexy young buck Heraldo often has his shirt off as … Read more

The Mask of Dimitrios

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Pter Lorre grabs Sydney Greenstreet's lapel

Writer Eric Ambler was the British spy guy in the mid 20th century and The Mask of Dimitrios is a good example of what he was about – sinister people in exotic locations doing dastardly things. Ambler followed John Buchan’s lead in that respect – don’t trust a foreigner. It took until John LeCarré – who’d actually been a spy – for portrayals of fictional foreign spies to come in human shape, though Graham Greene was a useful warm-up act. The oddballs and gooks are out in their droves in this not entirely gripping but highly flavoured meta-fiction about crime writer Cornelius Leyden, played by Peter Lorre, chasing across Europe in search of … Read more

Relay

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A watchful Ash on the streets

Relay is the sort of slick, well crafted thriller George Clooney used to turn up in. A grungier, slightly less glossy Steven Soderbergh-style thing, ish ish ish, with Riz Ahmed taking the Clooney gig as a rather old-school detective of sorts – the conflicted, damaged dude doing what he does because it helps keep him on the rails. His character, Ash, is a recovering alcoholic. We get scenes set at Alcoholics Anonymous, usually a hoary old bit of character shorthand, though in this case writer Justin Piasecki has found a way of integrating Ash’s AA sessions and his demons into the plot. Ish ish ish. The audience’s familiarity with material like this means … Read more

The Ghost Ship

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Tom Merriam on the bridge with Captain Stone

The Ghost Ship isn’t a Jacques Tourneur film but it feels like one. Perhaps that’s because Tourneur’s editor, Mark Robson, is directing. And as well as misty gothic looks and a sense of foreboding, Robson has also borrowed from Tourneur his sense of psychological overload. The Ghost Ship isn’t a horror movie, or a supernatural tale, though it looks like one and even the title nudges us that way, much like Tourneur’s Cat People did. Instead it’s the story of a bright and capable third officer on board a ship who becomes increasingly alarmed at the behaviour of his captain, Will Stone, eventually blowing the whistle after becoming convinced that the captain’s cavalier … Read more

Shell

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Zoe Shannon with her arms around Samantha Lake

First The Substance, now Shell – is there room for more body horror about the perils of staving off the ageing process? Shell attacks the same subject from the same angle but uses different implements. The result is less Cronenberg-inspired, as Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance was, more Paul Verhoeven, a cautionary tale with a leer and yuks. Director Max Minghella signals he has Verhoeven in mind in his very first shot – of Elizabeth Berkley in a bath trying to hack black lumps off her leg. She was the star of Verhoeven’s infamous Showgirls, a film that all but ruined her career and didn’t do anything for his – two barrels of old-fashioned, … Read more

Manthan

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Dr Rao and Smita

The title of the Indian film Manthan is often rendered in English as The Churning – not some psychological state of distress but actual physical churning. As in rich, creamy milk into butter and whey. Because this is a film about the setting up of a milk co-operative, financed by the dairy farmers it’s all about. Before you doomscrool away, it’s a fascinating film, from its unique opening title card – “500,000 Farmers of Gujarat present… Manthan” – to its triumphant conclusion. Along the way there is triumph over adversity and collective action prevailing over greedy self-interest in what’s essentially an underdog story playing out under the umbrella of benign government intervention. How far away we … Read more

All of You

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Laura and Simon

Technophobe romance, kind of, All of You is a little bit Eternal Sunshine, a little bit One Day. Set in an adjacent future (the present day with a tech curlicue), it imagines a world where romance is curated by tech companies promising there is someone out there for everyone and that they are just the company to do the hooking up with Miss or Mr Right. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, it turns out. Because human emotions are not lines of code. They not only don’t play to a script, they’ll go out of their way to actively undermine it. Laura and Simon are old university buddies. He’s in love … Read more

Moonlight Sonata

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Paderewski at the piano

It’s not often that you get to see a former prime minister in an acting role. Or a great classical pianist, for that matter. In 1937’s Moonlight Sonata you get both, and in the shape of a single person – Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the Polish pianist who gave up his music career to serve his country as prime minister, then gave it up again decades later when his country repeated the call during the Second World War. There are two films awkwardly sandwiched together here, both featuring Paderewski, who’s functional in the first, ornamental in the second. The first opens with 20 minutes of straight-up footage of Paderewski playing in a concert hall. … Read more