Review

Monkey Man

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Dev Patel close up

Monkey Man is the latest in a string of John Wick-adjacent movies. Blame Liam Neeson for starting it, with those Taken movies. Or the Incredible Hulk, and his “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” warning. Or even, just maybe, the vengeful God of the Old Testament. You don’t want to get any of these guys riled. It’s Dev Patel this time around, returning to the India of his breakthrough movie role. Slumdog Millionaire made Patel movie-famous after TV show Skins had made him TV-famous (in the days when there was still a big difference). Here he is playing a guy from the streets wangling a job in a high-end brothel so he … Read more

Dangerous Voyage

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William Lundigan and Naomi Chance publicity shot

Cheap, badly written and not very well directed, Dangerous Voyage (aka Terror Ship) is the classic British B movie, directed by Vernon Sewell, a journeyman who knocked out a lot of films like this. The actors gabble, the plot isn’t particularly convincing and psychologically it never quite adds up. But, if nothing else, Sewell has an eye for a lovely image, and there are plenty of those in a plot that starts on the British South Coast before venturing into the English Channel and then on to France, from where Sewell sends us one picture postcard after another: of Trouville, of Deauville, of Paris, of Honfleur and from many a charming spot along … Read more

Megalopolis

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Adam Driver as architect Cesar Catilina

Well, whatever else it is, Megalopolis isn’t boring. Mad, megalomaniacal, chaotic, absurd and confused, certainly, but also inspired and weird in a good way, it’s a deliberately difficult piece of “late style”, financed entirely by Francis Ford Coppola out of money made from his wine business. Not beholden to anyone, the director can do what the hell he wants, and he has. The closest thing to it in intention is Godard’s late works – odd movies like Film Socialisme or Goodbye to Language, doggedly playful and wilfully experimental attempts to say everything there is to say about everything. At another level it’s an 85-year-old man’s confusion about the way the world has gone … Read more

Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead

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Close up of Momoko in tears

Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead is its full title, though Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s film from 2012 also goes by the more decorous and bare-bones Lust of the Dead, which makes the debt to George Romero’s Dead movies even more stark. The twist this time is that it’s only men who are becoming zombies, and they’re raping their way towards a zombie apocalypse by violating everything female they come across. Isn’t that just men all over though? The film has a bit of fun with this idea. In early scenes just after the worldwide epidemic has taken hold, a scientist on a TV news item informs the Japanese viewing public that these zombies have … Read more

Final Destination: Bloodlines

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Stefani in a burning building

As witty and ingenious as the best of its predecessors, Final Destination: Bloodlines revives the old franchise after a 14-year hiatus, number six in the series keeping faith with an idea originating in a script for The X-Files that was killed off before making it to the screen. Which is appropriate, since the Final Destination franchise is all about death. Capital D Death, who will not be cheated when he comes for you. And should you by some chance manage to elude him, he’ll be back to reap his grim harvest, going to elaborate lengths to achieve his goal if necessary. We never see Death, so he could be a she or an … Read more

The Magic Mountain

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Hans kisses the hand of Clawdia

There are two versions of the 1982 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s weighty novel The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg). One is the theatrical cut, which came in at about 153 minutes. The other is the TV cut, which weighs in at an epic 312 minutes over three instalments. That’s the one I watched yesterday, all five hours and a chunk of it, having taken heed of reviews complaining about the theatrical cut’s lack of coherence. The theatrical cut is a lousy edit is the gist of the complaints. As to the full-fat version, it was easier to digest than I’d expected. I suspect the complaints about the theatrical cut are right. In the long … Read more

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

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Shula in her fancy dress outfit

Well it’s an African Festen, isn’t it? I’m going to say immediately what most reviewers seem to get around to saying eventually. But On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is much more than just a dark drama about family secrets coming to light at a family gathering, so memorably wrangled in Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film. The director/writer is Rungano Nyoni, who swept all before her with feature debut I Am Not a Witch in 2017. Also suggesting excellence is the fact that it’s an A24 production, and they are rarely putting a foot wrong at the moment when it comes to intelligent, entertaining and original drama (see The Brutalist, Midsommar, Aftersun and The Whale). … Read more

Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street

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Nyura and Sasha in the taxi

A Soviet Brief Encounter of sorts, Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street is the sort of film you don’t really imagine coming out of the USSR, if grand epics featuring the entire Red Army are what you are used to. It’s a small-scale but beautifully crafted romance and in its day it was hugely popular. That side of it completely stands the test of time and, thanks to the passage of the years and the change in political landscapes, there’s now an added fascination to it which wasn’t there when it came out in 1968. It’s also a very neat example of the directorial work of the quietly fabulous Tatyana Lioznova, who starts us … Read more

Jericho Ridge

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Deputy Tabby aiming a gun

No one involved in Jericho Ridge thinks they’re making art, but neither do they think they’re making trash. It’s the sort of movie that keeps an industry alive – well made, well acted, decent-enough if familiar story and a satisfying conclusion all round, especially if you like happy endings served with lashings of gory violence. The plot is a slight steal from Assault on Precinct 13 – cops under siege on their own turf – but first it sets up its underdog hero as a person who has a lot to get out from under. Nikki Amuka-Bird plays smalltown cop Tabby Temple, a smart and resourceful deputy who’s recently had her rank reduced because … Read more

Renoir

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A sun-dappled Jean and Andrée

There’s a fascinating factoid at the centre of Renoir, Gilles Bourdos’s film about the old painter Pierre-Auguste and his son, the future-filmmaker Jean. Both men shared the same muse. Andrée Heuschling was the last in a long line of life models for the aged Impressionist, a celebrity painter who by the end of the First World War was wracked with rheumantoid arthritis and coming towards the end of his life. She was also the woman who encouraged his son, Jean, wounded and back from the battlefront, to give up ideas about being a ceramicist and to go into film-making. In Bourdos’s telling of the story, Heuschling essentially offers Renoir a deal – you … Read more