Review

Klute

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Donald Sutherland in Klute

Donald Sutherland died the day before yesterday, so I thought I’d rummage around and see what I had of his. Turns out I have Klute in Criterion’s 4K restoration. And, having now watched it, I can report that it delivers on many levels, not least Sutherland’s performance, which is a thing of minimalist wonder. It was made in 1971 so we’re at Peak Donald – Mash, his breakthrough, and Kelly’s Heroes had both come the year before. Don’t Look Now would come two years later. Then came 1900 and Fellini’s Casanova, probably the best of the bunch of around 18 movies Sutherland made in that hot streak from 1970-77. Klute is actually Jane … Read more

The Fall Guy

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Ryan Gosling in shades

For a while you couldn’t escape Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt banging the drum for The Fall Guy. They were everywhere, doing Herculean amounts of publicity, usually a sign that a big-bucks movie isn’t quite as good as everyone expected. Which turns out to be true. But The Fall Guy is not bad. It is entertaining enough, with diverting performances, cool action, stunts and so on. But it’s not a Tom Cruise movie, pleasing though Gosling is as the stunt guy who comes back from serious injury to save the day, get the girl and defeat the bad guy. We all know, don’t we, that it’s based on the successful TV show starring … Read more

Basic Instinct

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Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell

Everyone involved was having a bit of a moment when Basic Instinct was being made in 1991. Sharon Stone had just had her breakthrough in Total Recall. Michael Douglas was peaking as the go-to guy for reptilian charm – Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and The War of the Roses were in his recent past, Falling Down would follow shortly. Director Paul Verhoeven’s two most recent films were RoboCop and Total Recall, Showgirls was in the works. And Joe Eszterhas at this point was known as the man who’d written Flashdance and Jagged Edge. Basic Instinct‘s reputation precedes it, thanks to the bit where Sharon Stone in an interrogation room full of male cops … Read more

Turtles All the Way Down

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Aza leans her head on Daisy's shoulder

Can you have a boyfriend if even the thought of kissing someone distresses you? Turtles All the Way Down is the film equivalent of a Billie Eilish song, a tale of teenage angst written by John Green, who also did The Fault in Our Stars. And, as the Amazon algorithm puts it, if you liked that you’ll probably like this. Aza (Isabella Merced) has OCD, which manifests as an extreme aversion to germs. Microbes, bacteria and c.diff in particular are what Aza thinks about all day long. Which means dating boys – all that saliva and oral glop – is right out. But that’s fine. Aza has her bestie by her. A chatty … Read more

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round

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A smiling James Coburn

James Coburn’s time as an A list star lasted only… how long? A year? Three? 1966’s Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round is emblematic of the series of films that took Coburn to the top rung and then pulled him off it again. Key exhibit here is Our Man Flint, also from 1966 – a bona-fide hit giving him a star vehicle after having been eye-catching in other people’s films – The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Charade to name but three. Dead Heat was not a hit but it didn’t stop Coburn returning to the comedy caper teat again and again, milking it dry with successive films – In Like Flint, Waterhole Three, … Read more

Deep Sea

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Shenxiu all at sea

Deep Sea came as a genuine surprise, not that I know much about the state of Chinese animation in 2024, or any other year. But what a magical, remarkable, imaginative, technically inventive film this is. The story is pretty much Studio Ghibli – Shenxiu, a young girl whose mother has walked out and whose father has remarried and lost interest in her, falls over the rail of the ship her family are on and is instantly transported to a phantasmagorical undersea world. Here she ends up in a busy restaurant kitchen on board a cranky submarine powered by pedalling walruses and is taken under the wing of Nan He, an avant-garde chef (his estimation … Read more

Black Angel

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Dan Duryea, June Vincent and Peter Lorre

The final film of director Roy William Neill, who died not long after it was released, 1946’s Black Angel is one of those overlooked noirs that could stand a bit more attention. Neill was the director of the string of Sherlock Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, rattling yarns that all came in at around 60 minutes. Here he’s also wasting no time, though he has almost a feature’s length to play with – 80 minutes – introducing his characters and setting out his stall at speed. One femme fatale, three men. The femme is played by Constance Dowling, and what a magnificent firecracker of nastiness it seems like she’s going … Read more

Freud’s Last Session

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Freud and CS Lewis

Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis probably never sat down and had a conversation about the existence of God, a disclaimer at the end of Freud’s Last Session tells us, but that hasn’t stopped director Matt Brown and co-writer Mark St Germain (who wrote the play on which the film is based) from shaping a what-if drama about the event. We’re in London in 1939 as war is about to break out. Freud has recently arrived from his beloved Vienna, having been chased out by the Nazis because of his Jewishness. He has cancer of the mouth and only weeks to live – he’d opt for assisted suicide (a postscript also tells us) only … Read more

Thief

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Frank leans out of a car window

Know thyself, as the ancient Greeks used to say. 1981’s Thief is Michael Mann’s debut feature, one of James Caan’s finest films and though it’s neo-noir and set on mean streets (Violent Streets was its original title), it’s Greek to the bone – this hero is shot through with the tragic flaw of not knowing himself well enough. Caan plays the ex-con now running a car sales business who keeps his hand in by moonlighting as a jewel thief. He’s good, one of Chicago’s best. In an opening sequence Mann demonstrates how good, and that this film’s director has seen all the great heist movies, in a sequence where Frank (Caan) is shown … Read more

Rose

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Rose, played by Sofie Gråbøl

Rose is a film about a woman who’s mentally ill. And if that doesn’t set alarms ringing with you, it does with me. The easy sympathy vote is one reason, the gawp at the afflicted is another. But Rose does neither, probably because its director, Niels Arden Oplev, has based his film on his experiences with his own sister. Possibly also because the superb Sofie Gråbøl plays the lead character, named Inger, just to confuse things a touch. It’s the story of an institutionalised middle-aged schizophrenic who is plucked out of her safe, cared-for existence one day by her sister Ellen (Lena Maria Christensen) and her sister’s new husband Vagn (Anders W Berthelsen) … Read more