Review

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

by
Close-up of Dr Mabuse

Technically remarkable, fitfully brilliant, not entirely successful, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) was Fritz Lang’s second time out with a character who fascinated him. His creation is the archetypal Bond villain, a criminal mastermind whose tentacular reach extends right through the city of 1930s Berlin and from the here and now into the afterlife, or so it appears. The story kicks off where 1922’s Dr Mabuse the Gambler ended, with Mabuse in an insane asylum after being apprehended by the police. Whether he is actually or just feigning it is moot, but one man on the case, Inspector Hofmeister, believes Mabuse is still somehow running his rackets. As … Read more

Chicken for Linda!

by
Linda, yellow all over

Linda wants chicken, that’s the plot and the literal translation of the original French title of Chicken for Linda! (Linda veut du poulet!), a farce of sorts about a young girl and her hassled mum, a dead dad and a search to get together the ingredients to make the dish that reminds Linda of her missing papa. Except. Maman does not cook. She’s a microwave queen whose cooking know-how extends about as far as the difference between shepherd’s pie and lasagne. But cook she must, because having accused Linda of stealing her ring she discovered that the cat had in fact swallowed it. And now that mum Paulette has found it again in … Read more

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte

by
Bette Davis screaming

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte tries to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle that was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? And fails. It’s not even a valiant fail, instead director Robert Aldrich and co cynically re-run the same basic idea – two vintage dames doing battle most foul – but this time around one essential ingredient is lakcing. Joan Crawford. Bette Davis is here, though, the other half of the duelling duo who’d made Baby Jane‘s so memorable. Crawford walked off the production of this follow-up claiming to be ill. Eventually the insurers demanded she be let go. Or that’s how the story goes. It’s just as likely that Bette Davis orchestrated her exit. If you remember … Read more

Deadpool & Wolverine

by
Publicity shot of Deadpool leaning on Wolverine

The quipping and meta-referencing have started even before the Marvel Studios ident is fully on the screen. Deadpool & Wolverine carries on in this vein, hitting Peak Ryan Reynolds at about the halfway mark, before realising it’s also meant to be a superhero movie, stops waving its hands around airily and finally balls them into fists. It also gets a bit dull at that point too, or less fun. Up till then this is a very funny film, making jokes about cocaine use, pegging, the shocking treatment that Fox meted out to Wolverine, how Disney saved the day, how Deadpool is “Marvel Jesus” and on and on and on it goes. Don’t even … Read more

Werewolf of London

by
The wolfman in the lab

So here’s the world’s first feature-length werewolf movie, 1935’s Werewolf of London, which wasn’t particularly successful financially or critically but did get into the ether most of the nuts and bolts, the lore, of weremovies to come. It owes a tiny bit to Frankenstein – gentleman scientist interfering with the nature of things in a lab full or arcing electricity – and quite a lot to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which had been a huge hit four years earlier. Whole chunks of Werewolf‘s story appear to have been airlifted from the 1931 movie, in fact, something all the critics noticed and a few were not happy about. While searching for a rare … Read more

Flow

by
The cat has caught a fish

Latvian animation phenomenon Gints Zilbalodis follows up his extraordinary debut, Away, with more beautifully rendered imagery in Flow, an Apocalypse Now-style quest, but with animals instead of people. They’re in a boat, in other words, sailing up a waterway and having adventures on the way, none of which ever look like they’re going to be fatally dangerous. If you were going to level an accusation at this gorgeous movie, its cuteness might be where you’d start. For those who don’t know Zilbalodis’s story, he’s the guy who couldn’t get a job after finishing college and so decided to write his own ticket, making Away all on his own, in his bedroom, taking on … Read more

The Black Panther

by
Donald Sumpter as Donald Neilson

If you were alive and aware of what was going on around you in the UK in the 1970s, The Black Panther will ring all sorts of bells. Because it tells the story of the man behind the abduction and death of Lesley Whittle. She was a blameless teenager who wound up suspended by her neck on the end of a wire in a reservoir drain, where her abductor had hidden her while he tried to scare up a ransom from her family. The tabloids ran with the story and it became a national talking point. So much so that when this film came out two years after Lesley’s death, many councils in … Read more

A Quiet Place: Day One

by
Eric and Samira in the dark with a torch

Hang on, A Quiet Place: Day One is the origin story, about how Earth is invaded by creatures who track humans using sound alone? Wasn’t that already covered in A Quiet Place Part II? Indeed it was, but if you are generous of spirit and reject the idea that A Quiet Place: Day One is just a reheat of old hash, you’ll be pointing out right now that A Quiet Place Part II did the whole “how the apocalypse arrived” thing in its first ten minutes, then zipped forwards in time about a year and a half to catch up with the Abbott family (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and co) as they came … Read more

Straight Time

by
Max, fresh out of jail

1978’s Straight Time would be a properly great film if it just stuck to being one story – about a felon trying to go straight. But instead it decides about halfway through that more juice can be squeezed by telling another story after the first one. The felon goes back to his old ways. Some exciting holdups and car chases and so on are the result, but a great film goes down the pan, to be replaced by one that’s merely OK. Massive pity. They’d be two great films, in fact. But the first is where the real meat is, in the performance of Dustin Hoffman as the habitual thief who gets out … Read more

Heretic

by
Hugh Grant with hands folded in prayer

What happens if you turn wayward, dithery rom-com Hugh Grant all the way up to 11? Heretic is the answer, a through-the-looking-glass turn by Grant whose good guy/bad guy turn as a householder giving two young Mormon women a night they won’t forget is this movie’s main event. First we meet the young women – Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) – in a scene designed to demonstrate to us their everydayness. With their coy chat about Magnum condoms, penises and online porn, Bates and Paxton also demonstrate to each other that they are everyday normal young women, just ones who happen to members of the Church of Jesus Christ … Read more