Review

La Bouche de Jean-Pierre

by
Mimi and Jean-Pierre

La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (sometimes known as Mimi) was the first film Lucile Hadžihalilović directed and in its short 52 minutes’ running time it introduces the theme she’d more fully explore in later films – the arduous, abusive, coercive, manipulative way that human beings are tamed, trained, civilised, call it what you like. The work of the philosopher Michel Foucault, in particular Discipline and Punish – which deals with social control – seems to lurk in the background of all of Hadžihalilović’s films, all of which are extraordinary, often in a quiet and unassuming way. In this one the action opens with a woman taking an overdose, witnessed by her daughter, Mimi, who ends up … Read more

100 Years of… Robin Hood

by
Lady Marian and Robin Hood

Accept no substitute. This is the original Robin Hood, or Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (as the registered title insists), the one that Errol Flynn’s 1938 version modelled itself on, the one that gets all the Merry Men, Maid Marian, good King Richard and bad King John, Sir Guy of Gisbourne and the Sheriff of Nottingham into forms so recognisable that even at 100 years old, it’s instantly obvious who is who. This wasn’t the first screen outing for the mythical character, in fact there had already been five before (if we include 1919’s My Lady Robin Hood), so Robin Hood as a movie character was at least fairly well known, though of … Read more

The Hunt

by
Crystal led away by a military man

Very much a Trump-era movie, The Hunt is the story of a gang of the “elite” going on their annual “deplorables” hunt (spot the Hillary Clinton reference), with a ragtag bunch of gagged and tied rednecks as their quarry. Interesting concept. The idea is that the elite set the rednecks running and give them something of a head start before coming after them with an intention to kill. The reference point for this sort of thing is usually Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 bloodfest Battle Royale, though it wasn’t the first movie to present hunting as some sort of bloodsport – 1987’s The Running Man springs to mind, or going even further back there’s 1965’s The … Read more

Head

by
Mickey, Peter, Mike and Davy

Head is many things. The Monkees’ declaration of independence, a psychedelic beanfeast, a wackadoo retread of Help by the Prefab Four, director Bob Rafelson’s big screen debut and one of Jack Nicholson’s rare writerly contributions to the movies to list just a few. What it isn’t is a good film. Tiresome in the extreme, it wears out its welcome very quickly. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Monkees are an extremely likeable foursome, it would be barely watchable at all. But there is something to be squeezed from it, and it’s not just the chance to see cameos by Frank Zappa, Sonny Liston, Victore Mature, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson himself … Read more

Walk a Tightrope

by
Dan Duryea

Walk a Tightrope, a British B movie from 1964 packs more of a punch than you might expect, thanks to a properly ingenious story and a great performance by Dan Duryea, who adds the all-important element for British B movies of the era, a starring role for a second-string American actor at the tail end of his career. Duryea was 57 when this was made and looks older. Often cast as a villain, this “heel with sex appeal” (as the New York Times called him in his obituary) would be dead of cancer within four years and looks gaunt here, so maybe it was already taking its toll on his health. His appearance … Read more

The Beast

by
Yoo Jae-myung and Lee Sung-min

You’ve seen the South Korean movie The Beast before even if you haven’t seen it before. It’s a tremendously familiar generic thriller, and in many respects it really is a case of same old same old. That said, it’s well worth checking out if stylish brutality is your thing. The plot is slightly serpentine, as it was in the 2004 French film 36 Quai des Orfèvres (36th Precinct) on which The Beast is partly based, but can be boiled down to this: two cops, once partners, now hungry for promotion to a job that’s about to fall vacant, try to out-compete each other in pursuit of a high-profile killer, using fair means and … Read more

Detour

by
Ann Savage and Tom Neal

While scrolling through a list of “100 Best Film Noirs of All Time” I was struck by Detour. Number 10 on a list that kicked off with In a Lonely Place, Out of the Past, The Big Sleep and The Third Man (so, not one of those mad lists), it stood out because I’d not heard of it before, even though it was the first B movie (and film noir) to be chosen by the US Library of Congress for its National Film Registry. I’d only barely heard of its director, Edgar G Ulmer, and its stars, Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake and Edmund MacDonald, were hardly A listers, even in 1945. … Read more

Bergman Island

by
Chris and Tony

French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve genuflects before the master, Ingmar Bergman, in her playful and reverential drama set on Fårö (pronounced foe-rer, more or less), the island where Bergman wrote and shot some of his films, and which is now dedicated to promoting his legacy. In meta fashion, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony are a pair of film-makers arriving on Fårö to seek inspiration for the next projects they are working on. Renting the house where Bergman once shot parts of Scenes from a Marriage, or so they (and we) are told by the woman showing them around, they get down to work, him beavering away in the bedroom, her in the mill next … Read more

All Is Forgiven

by
Constance Rousseau as teenage Pamela

All Is Forgiven (Tout est pardonné) was the first feature Mia Hansen-Løve made, in 2007, when she was about 25/26. It’s an interesting debut and sets the tone for a career built on small, carefully crafted human-relationship dramas going for the slow burn rather than the big melodramatic bang. The Nordic name is a bit of a bum steer. Hansen-Löve is French, was born in Paris, and works in the distinctly French cinematic tradition, itself a continuation of the French literary tradition – Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola etc. Which is another way of saying that her films are about recognisable people having a bad time. Here it’s never really certain whether it’s the … Read more

Welcome to Chechnya

by
David Isteev

A deeply ironic title, Welcome to Chechnya is a documentary about the treatment of homosexuals in the Chechen Republic, a largely Islamic part of the world which fought for its independence against Russia in two wars in the 1990s and is now embroiled in a culture war over LGBT rights. Chechnya is a country where anal sex is punishable by a caning for a first or second offence and the death penalty for a third. It’s run by self-styled strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin appointee who wants his people to be fit, devout and ready for combat, he says. Like Putin he walks about as if he has two sets of balls. In … Read more