Review

Twisters

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Kate in shades sits on the roof of a chaser truck

No one was exactly clamouring for it but Twisters, the imaginatively titled sequel to Twister, turned out alright in the end anyway. The original, complete with flying cow, came out in 1996, 24 years ago. At that point Lee Isaac Chung, director of this sequel, was a fresh faced 18 years old, star Glen Powell was eight and co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones was minus two. To the film’s credit it leaves Twister where it was, not referring back to it at all. There are no cameos to remind us when Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton were the plucky duo chasing tornadoes around the mid-West, trying to heal a broken relationship as they dodged airborne … Read more

The Witches

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Miss Mayfield comforts Linda

1966’s The Witches (aka The Devil’s Own) is another great opportunity to indulge the guilty pleasure of watching a once-glam Hollywood goddess at the tail end of her career being relentlessly monstered in a down-market movie. Think Joan Crawford in Trog or Bette Davis in Burnt Offerings. Here it’s Joan Fontaine getting the treatment, the one-time star of Rebecca, and Oscar-winner for Suspicion, returning to the land of her British parents to play a teacher recruited to run a primary school in a picture-postcard English village. In Wicker Man style, Miss Mayfield does not realise that almost everyone in the village is involved in something untoward, and that one of her charges has … Read more

Perfect Days

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A smiling, happy Hirayama

We have Covid to thank for Perfect Days, the best film from Wim Wenders in some time. The original idea was to get Wenders to Tokyo to make a documentary about the toilets built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (a gig is a gig). But the Olympics first got postponed to 2021 and then eventually took place behind closed doors without any spectators. The toilets barely got used. Wenders, however, did get to make his film. But instead of a documentary, Wenders pushed to make a feature film, incorporating those 17 toilets designed by leading architects, with the action focused not on the toilets themselves – though they do feature prominently – but on … Read more

The Forest for the Trees

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Melanie in front of a class of kids

Here’s Maren Ade’s first feature, The Forest for the Trees (Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen in the original German), made in 2003. Though low in budget – it was a film-school project – it instantly established her as one to watch. The remarkable thing is that in the two decades since, Ade has made only two more films, 2009’s Everyone Else and 2016’s Toni Erdmann, the one that made her name internationally and won her an Oscar nomination (she lost out to Asgar Farhadi, who isn’t a bad name to lose out to). So what’s she been up to all this time? Producing, is the answer. Ade’s name turns up all over the … Read more

Blood for Dust

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Scoot McNairy as Cliff

Sometimes you like something but you’re not sure why. Case in point: Blood for Dust, a 1990s style “who’s zooming who?” thriller full of bullets, bad guys and cases of money being swapped for white powder in remote locations. It is very familiar. And yet. The two central performances help a lot. First up, Scoot McNairy, so good in Gareth Edwards’s feature debut, 2010’s Monsters, a smart reworking of 1930s screwball comedy It Happened One Night as sci-fi. Underused almost ever since, he proves himself again here, his dustbowl features lending a haunted aspect to his portrayal of Cliff, a travelling salesman lured into taking a courier-level gig with a gang who run … Read more

Ivy

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Ivy with Miles Rushworth

Sick of “sad sack” roles, Joan Fontaine struck out for the border with 1947’s Ivy, a pivot away from the passive wallflowers of Rebecca and Suspicion, roles that had made her Hollywood’s biggest star and won her an Oscar, and towards something much ballsier. She plays Ivy (as in Poison Ivy), a woman in Edwardian Britain who sets her cap at a rich bachelor and decides to make him her husband no matter what’s in her way. Problem one: wealthy Miles Rushworth (Herbert Marshall) is in a long-standing relationship with young Bella Crail (Molly Lamont), and everyone knows they will soon be engaged. Two: Ivy is already married, to Jervis (Richard Ney), a … Read more

Cadejo Blanco

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A bloody Sarita

A naive young woman searches for her missing sister in Cadejo Blanco, a bloody coming-of-age thriller featuring a fabulous performance by Karen Martínez. If you’re wondering what the title translates as, the cadejo blanco is a mythical white dog – a spirit animal of Central America folklore. And once you know that you might also start wondering what it has to do with Guatemalan gangs and the sentimental education of an innocent young woman. You might still be asking that question as the film winds to a close and director/writer Justin Lerner is teasing us with a shot of a white dog roaming in the forests of Guatemala, where Sarita (Martínez) has finally … Read more

Our Mother’s House

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Dad and the kids group shot

Our Mother’s House didn’t get the acclaim of Jack Clayton’s previous film about spooky kids, The Innocents, when it debuted. Partly because The Innocents is one of the all-time greats. But also because Our Mother’s House appeared in 1967, and with its message of children going to the bad because of a lack of parental supervision it was out of step with the letting-it-all-hang-out ethos of the age. Lovers of Victoriana, feast your eyes on the interiors of the huge house where seven children and their rabidly religious but mortally ill mother live, with only a daily help in the shape of Mrs Quayle (Yootha Joyce) to keep the show on the road. … Read more

Firebrand

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Alicia Vikander as Katherine Parr

Unusually for a film concerning King Henry VIII of England, Firebrand is not interested in wife one (Catherine of Aragon) or wife two (Anne Boleyn). Instead focus is on the last of Henry’s six wives, Katherine Parr. And, no bones about it, she is the focus of this film, not the king. A history lesson. At the time this film is set Henry has broken politically but not entirely religiously with Rome. The Church of England has been established and Henry is its head. But because he’s relied so heavily on Protestants to support his break, Henry’s brand of Catholicism is on the defensive and the Protestants are on the prowl. It’s against … Read more

Cripple Creek

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Henchman Emil with Bret and Larry

Cripple Creek takes place against the backdrop of the Colorado gold rush of 1892 and is a genre movie with an unusual slant, a western with a secret sauce. It’s introduced by a stern voiceover giving us chapter and verse on gold reserves in the USA, and how smugglers are undermining the American economy by spiriting bullion out of the country. Patriotic essentials duly established, the voice retreats after we’ve been introduced to Bret Ivers (George Montgomery) and Larry Galland (Jerome Courtland), a pair of secret service agents posing as gold thieves. Ivers and Galland arrive in a one horse town they reckon is at the centre of a smuggling operation and have … Read more