Review

Viva

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A pouting Barbi aka Viva

The IMDb plot keywords for Viva include “large breasts” and “limp penis”, a rough indicator of what’s being served up in Anna Biller’s debut, a relentlessly accurate and grim pastiche of the pornified world of the 1970s sexploitation movie, or 1970s society itself. Biller wrote, directed, produced, edited, wrote some of the songs, designed the clothes and sets, painted the paintings, did the animated sequence and even played the organ. She also plays the main character. You could say it’s her film. What a world she’s conjured. Barbi (Biller), a suburban wife who we meet in her bath, tits prominent, smoking, drinking wine and looking pretty morose as she flicks through a magazine. … Read more

Carnival of Souls

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Mary crawls out of the river

Shot in three weeks by a guy on a break from his real job, 1962’s Carnival of Souls is a spooky thriller about a woman who somehow survives a fatal car accident then drifts around for the rest of the movie like a restless spirit in a too-concrete world. It’s been described as something like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone – something like the Black Mirror of its day – which is largely down to the spectral, evocative organ score by Gene Moore, as well as the gotcha reveal at the finish, which won’t gotcha anyone who’s consuming as much media product as 21st-century audiences do. Director Herk Harvey said he … Read more

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

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Ruby in the underwater realm

The Ruby in the jolly and entertaining Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is, true to billing, a Kraken. Which is to say, Wikipedia definition, a giant sea monster that’s found off the coast of Norway, according to old sailor lore. Krakens don’t turn up in movies as often as vampires, zombies or even werewolves, but there are more of these folkloric creatures about than you might think – Victor Hugo and Jules Verne wrote about them, so did Alfred Lord Tennyson and Herman Melville (in Moby-Dick). John Wyndham perhaps most famously, in his novel The Kraken Wakes. But they also make an appearance in Game of Thrones and Pirates of the Caribbean. So Krakens … Read more

Young and Innocent

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Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney in a car

Minor Hitchcock but a major surprise (to me at least), 1937’s Young and Innocent is terribly, terribly British and also terribly, terribly entertaining, a near-comedy that’s bright, sunny, fast, brilliantly made and very grin-inducing. Made two years after The 39 Steps it is basically the same film all over again, but with more comedy and less jeopardy and English rural locations standing in for the wilds of Scotland. Its stars don’t look too unlike Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll either. Derrick De Marney plays Robert, the square-headed decent chap accused of a murder he didn’t commit and Nova Pilbeam is Erica, the pretty blonde who helps him out. She’s not shackled to him, … Read more

Asteroid City

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Scarlett Johansson in red top and matching lipstick

Welcome to Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s companion piece to The French Despatch, another film appearing to take its inspiration from yellowing adverts in ancient back issues of Life magazine to depict a world where corporate capture by Hollywood, the military-industrial complex and Madison Avenue is rendered in Anderson’s ironic deadpan – the writing, the acting, the visuals, the soundtrack all point in the same direction. The action centres on a 1950s desert waystation where a motley group of people get trapped together after a recent atom bomb test, and then get locked down (spot the pandemic) after an alien arrives and steals the asteroid that gives the area its name. Anderson’s usual collection … Read more

Bad Girls Go to Hell

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Gigi Darlene in black negligee on a bed

What great tits Gigi Darlene has. They cantilever out from her body in a way that makes the star of cult sexploitationer Bad Girls Go to Hell hard to miss and easy to appreciate, from an engineering perspective if nothing else. They are the star of this film, the agents of all the action. Gigi Darlene uses them like weapons, pointing them in the necessary direction and making sure she’s got her target located properly, then leaves her breasts to do the rest. Gigi Darlene wasn’t her real name, nor was the actor playing her screen husband called George La Rocque (they were Heli Weinreich and Charles Mazin) but they fit their screen … Read more

The Flash

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The Flash, in close-up

The Flash is a superhero movie that knows exactly where it is in the scheme of these things – the end of days – and uses that as its own super power. This is a film that cuts quickly to the chase, doesn’t overdo the lore and knows that laughter is a good alternative to roughage in a superhero diet. It even understands that the obligatory “guys beating the shit out of each other” big finish is in need of an overhaul and needs freshening up a touch. We need to talk about Ezra Miller. The onetime star of a film about a teenager with serious issues grew into an adult with problems of … Read more

Odd Man Out

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Johnny hiding in a dark place

The tragedy is Greek but the accents are Irish in 1947’s Odd Man Out, a day in the death of a wounded Republican man on the run in Belfast. The film turned James Mason from a British star into an international one and is often rated as director Carol Reed’s best film. Peckinpah loved it. Polanski also. Mason thought it was the best thing he ever did. An opening statement declares that this isn’t really about partisan struggle in Northern Ireland, where Republican Catholics were engaged in a long struggle against Protestant Unionists. And, true to their word, director Carol Reed and writers FL Green (he also wrote the book the film is … Read more

Coup 53

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Ralph Fiennes as Norman Darbyshire

It took Iranian exile Taghi Amirani more than ten years to make Coup 53, a documentary about the 1953 coup against the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The coup was organised and paid for by the US and UK governments. While the US long ago admitted that the CIA had a role in bringing Mosaddegh down, the ever-secretive British have never owned up. At first it looks like that’s what Amirani is up to, getting the British to come clean. But as his film winds along, it becomes clear he has grander objectives. He unpicks the story of Mosaddegh’s downfall in detail – here’s how as a foreign agent you … Read more

I Saw What You Did

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Libby, Kit and young Tess

Master of the kitsch gimmick William Castle’s 1965 shocker I Saw What You Did is a cautionary tale about the terrible things that happen to nice teenage girls who make prank phone calls. It’s also notable for being the last appearance in an American film by Joan Crawford. Though not her last film – 1967’s Berserk and 1970’s Trog were shot in the UK – it is like them a horror film, as befits a star who had been around since the 1920s and had become along the way a bit of a gargoyle. However, it’s not really about her. Instead attention focuses on Libby and Kit, two teenagers having a fun night … Read more