Latest Posts
Into the Labyrinth
Dustin Hoffman and Toni Servillo in the same film? Into the Labyrinth (aka L’uomo del labirinto) is a properly intriguing prospect. Hoffman a madness-in-his-Method actor since his breakthrough in 1967’s The Graduate, Servillo the king
Mickey One
Old Hollywood meets new in Mickey One, a neglected thriller from 1965 directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty, both of whom would upend the cosy certainties of a sclerotic industry with Bonnie and
Giant Little Ones
Franky is a buff swimmer and from the moment Giant Little Ones kicks off it seems fairly certain, from the way the camera is lingering on his upper body as he wakes up in the
Yes Day
Yes Day not only stars Jennifer Garner but it’s produced by her. It’s her film. It’s another of those goofy family comedies that seem to be her default, the sort of film she returns to
Rose Plays Julie
Rose Plays Julie arrives on screens an entire year late. I have an email from January 2020 telling me it would be out in “Spring 2020”, but here we are in Spring 2021, after a
Lucky
And so, Lucky, a gigantically ironic title for a film about a woman being stalked night after night in her own home. It stars Brea Grant, who also wrote it, and until recently I’d not
Moffie
Strange film, Moffie. As if Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket had been crossed with Claire Denis’s Beau Travail, the brutal training discipline of the former with the shimmering lust-in-the-dust poetics of the latter. But first
Better Days
Better Days is a Chinese film about love, bullying, suicide, rape and murder… but mostly love. Adapted from a Young Adult novel (by Xi Jiuyue), it uses the relationship between a prim high school girl
So Pretty
I started out watching So Pretty convinced it was “not for me” but by the time it had finished I wondered if I was precisely its target audience. Me? Gammon-faced guy whose exposure to trans
