Latest Posts
Haunters of the Silence
I got sent a link to Haunters of the Silence by its director, Tatu Heikkinen, with a nice note attached. Would I like to review it? Yes, of course, though my heart sank slightly. Not because I have anything against indie Finnish directors who have made a film for nothing ($2,000!) with friends and family taking on most of the duties (his wife, Veleda, is co-director, co-writer, co-star and cinematographer). The worry was that I wouldn’t like it and would feel obliged, out of a misplaced sense of personal integrity, to say so. Who wants to kick a struggling artist who’s just getting going? Well so much for that. I liked it! And … Read more
Moon Rainbow
Soviet sci-fi from 1983, the year after Blade Runner, Moon Rainbow is as good an indicator as any of the gulf between the communist and capitalist blocs when it came to this sort of thing. The special effects are rudimentary and much of the actual sci-fi action takes place off screen! Bizarre. But if shots of cosmonauts walking moodily about a space ship tickle your curiosity, this might be for you. After a calamitous mission to one of the satellites of Uranus, during which most of the cosmonauts were killed, the survivors return to Earth, where they are soon confounding scientists with their newfound ability to influence electrical and electronic equipment. Attention first … Read more
A Little Prayer
Writer/director Angus MacLachlan has built a career mapping the dynamics of functional and dysfunctional families. A Little Prayer slots neatly in alongside earlier films such as 2014’s Goodbye to All That and 2017’s Abundant Acreage Available. You could add his stage play The Dead Eye Boy to the list. I’ve not seen any of them but having now seen A Little Prayer I’d be interested in having a look, because MacLachlan has made an interesting drama in a genre I don’t generally have much time for. We’re in smalltown America where the tightly knit family of Bill (David Strathairn) and Venida (Celia Weston) is having a moment. Their son, David (Will Pullen) and … Read more
I Walk Alone
Big acting is the offer in I Walk Alone, the first of many teamings for Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and the first directorial effort by Byron Haskin, up till this point an effects guy. Haskin delivers nuanced, psychologically attuned drama while Lancaster and Douglas go at it like fighting dogs. The whole thing is great to watch and it’s easy to see why Scorsese is such a big fan (it marks a transition from one type of film-making to another, he says). The critics of the day were less enthusiastic. “Low grade of melodrama,” said the New York Times. “Dreary,” said the Chicago Tribune. Variety liked it, though. So let’s side with … Read more
Familiar Touch
Familiar Touch is Sarah Friedland’s gruesomely poignant feature debut, about a woman going into care because she’s old and losing her mind. Depending on your age it’s about people in your generation, or your parents’ or grandparents’. But no matter how far removed you feel from the events on screen, there’s a very good chance the same will happen to you. And that’s if you’re lucky. We first meet Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) at home making herself some lunch. Something on toast with a few herbs scattered on top, which Ruth snips from pots on the windowsill. She seems alert, capable and content. Her life appears to be orderly and OK. Then a younger … Read more
Blood on the Moon
Blood on the Moon sounds like it might be sci-fi. It’s directed by Robert Wise, who’d later do The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Without any other clue that would be a fair assumption to make. Until you learn it’s from 1948. Bit early for sci-fi. It’s a western, in fact, and a good propulsive one, even if character is occasionally sacrificed to the need to get on and tell the story, almost as if this were an episode in a western serial. The dynamic is homesteaders versus ranchers, with neither side over-demonised as they square off over who’s going to get control of a big swathe of fertile land … Read more
Kokuho
The highest-grossing home-grown live-action movie in Japan’s history, Kokuho is a decade-straddling epic about the sacrifices required to make great art, served up as a Jacob and Esau tale of two boys – one who has all the gifts, the other not so many. The twist being that the talented kid is the son of a dead yakuza, and so cannot move easily, if at all, in the rarefied world of the kabuki theatre – his chosen field. As Lee Sang-il’s sumptuous film opens, young, orphaned Kikuo’s talent has just been spotted by one of kabuki’s masters, Hanjiro (Ken Watanabe). Soon, the disadvantaged child (Soya Kurokawa as a pretty boy, Ryô Yoshizawa as a … Read more
The Axe
What is a man in capitalism if not his job? Costa-Gavras asked the question in The Axe (Le couperet) in 2005 in much the same way that Park Chan-wook did in 2025’s No Other Choice. Both are working from the same source material – Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax. Both come to pretty much the same conclusion – shorn of his job and his title, a male in this situation loses his status and becomes dangerously unmoored. This, both conclude, is not a good thing. The stories are similar right down to the little details. A man who works as an executive for a paper company gets made redundant and cannot find other … Read more
Club Zero
Movies starring Mia Wasikowska used to make waves but when Club Zero came out in 2023 it did so to little fanfare and then more or less disappeared. This seems to be the way Wasikowska would like it. After a run including Alice in Wonderland for Tim Burton, Jane Eyre for Cary Fukunaga, Crimson Peak for Guillermo Del Toro and Stoker for Park Chan-wook, she seemed to deliberately left-turn her already arthouse-adjacent career into more rarefied territory – Damsel for the Zellner brothers, The Devil All the Time for Antonio Campos and Bergman Island for Mia Hansen-Løve. That’s the niche Club Zero sits in. Written and directed by Jessica Hausner, whose films situate … Read more
Call Northside 777
Call Northside 777 tells the true story of a miscarriage of justice – Joseph Majczek framed for killing a cop in 1932 and sentenced to 99 years – and the crusading journalist from the Chicago Times who got the case overturned. The same story was the source material for Railroaded!, released the year before in 1947. It’s probably the better movie all told – better pace, fewer digressions – but Call Northside 777 has the advantage of a big spend and very well cast actors in its lead roles. James Stewart as cynical journalist PJ McNeal , Lee J Cobb as ballsy editor Brian Kelly and Richard Conte as the wrongly imprisoned man. Joe … Read more
Sound of Falling aka In die Sonne schauen
A remarkable “if these walls could talk” movie set in the same big farmhouse over the generations, Sound of Falling (In die Sonne schauen, in the original German), is a bold and hypnotic drama starting with the eye-catching image of a pretty young woman with one leg hobbling along on crutches. It turns out that the young woman doesn’t have a leg missing at all. She’s just tied it up, possibly in sympathy with the young man who is lying feverishly in bed in an adjoining room. He really does have a leg missing, though what Erika most notices about him when she looks in on him is the way his sweat is … Read more
Without Pity aka Senza Pietà
Matter-of-fact neorealism meets its opposite, torrid melodrama, in Senza Pietà, aka Without Pity. Remarkably, it’s a successful meeting of equals, probably thanks to director Alberto Lattuada’s decision to go at his material at breakneck pace. Whatever else you can accuse this film of, it isn’t slow or lacking in incident. It throws its two main characters together early on. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, displaced Italian Angela (Carla Del Poggio) is hitching a ride when she first bumps into Jerry Jackson (John Kitzmiller), a black US sergeant who jumps onto the goods train Angela is on and winds up taking a bullet for his efforts. Because she’s a good … Read more
