Popular Reviews
Blast of Silence
Allen Baron. You’ve probably never heard of him. But he willed into being 1961’s Blast of Silence, a remarkable late noir – or early neo-noir, depending on which end of the telescope you’re looking through – which he wrote, directed and also took the leading role in when his original star, buddy Peter Falk, bailed out on him. Understandably, Falk was being offered a paying gig in the movie Murder, Inc. and Baron’s no-budget film looked like it might never get finished. There isn’t much of a story but there’s enough. A hitman (Baron) arrrives in New York, is given the name of the target, then sources a gun to do the job. … Read more
Patchwork
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 Motherhood is what Patchwork is all about, something women are meant to take to naturally, according to its central character, Chara, who really really wants to be the perfect mother to her lovely daughter, but something isn’t quite right. Chara just isn’t feeling it. Post-natal depression that’s gone on too long, maybe, or a marriage to a nice man that’s proving to be too cloying, perhaps. Or maybe, with a fulltime job and housekeeping to do, she’s just worn out. Director Petros Charalambous and writer Janine Teerling are wary about revealing what’s afflicting Chara. The focus stays so tight on her that … Read more
Shithouse
Shithouse is an attention-grabbing title for a film. It’s a title likely to put some people off, which is a pity because Cooper Raiff’s feature debut is a fantastic film. Writer/director Raiff also stars, as a homesick dorky freshman at university miles from where he grew up. Alex has no friends, is nervous and generally out of his depth. As the film opens instead of being in bed with a girl he’s almost by accident managed to get somewhere with, he’s out on the street having a panicky phone call with his mother. He cries. The baby. Co-star is Dylan Gelula as Maggie, the sophomore Resident Assistant at his dorm block, who Alex … Read more
Danger Man aka Secret Agent
Is Danger Man one TV series or two? It has two entries on the IMDb. There’s this one, for the original series, which ran 1960-1962, and this one for its second coming, 1964-1967, when the show in some places (the USA for example) went by the name Secret Agent and had a snappier theme tune (High Wire, played on a muscular harpsichord). In its native UK it was always Danger Man. There is an argument for treating them as different entitities but in essence they are the same thing, united by the presence of Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, dry spy extraordinaire – no guns, no girls, no gadgets, initially at least. Along … Read more
Queen of Hearts
What to expect of a film with the title Queen of Hearts? Well it stars Trine Dyrholm, an actor who guarantees a certain level of quality. English speaking audiences might remember her for films like Nico, 1988, in which she played the tragic junkie and onetime singer with the Velvet Underground, or alongside Pierce Brosnan in Love Is All You Need, a romantic drama for grown-ups. She also took a key role in the excellent TV series The Legacy, a tale of poisonous family dynamics, some episodes of which were directed by May el-Toukhy, who’s in charge here too. Though she can prettty much do it all from high drama to low comedy, … Read more
Soul
We’re so used to the phrase Pixar Movie that it’s often easy to forget that they are in fact directed by actual human beings, not rendering algorithms. Soul is co-directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers, says the imdb, but the end credits of the film itself tell us that it’s “Directed by Pete Docter” and “Co-directed by Kemp Powers”, not “Co-directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers”. Kemp was heavily involved in the film, particularly at the conceptual and writing stages, but even so it still feels like a Docter film. His last one was Inside Out, the story of a little girl’s personality in crisis. And before that Up and Monsters, … Read more
The Delinquents
A heist movie done as slow cinema, The Delinquents (aka Los Delincuentes) sets up genre expectations then delivers them with a twist. But mostly doesn’t deliver them at all. What a strange, big beast of a film Rodrigo Moreno has given us. Moreno gets straight into the meat of his story – Morán (Daniel Elías), a bank employee, realises that in one swift heist he can bag as much money as he’d make if he stayed in his job until retirement, 20-odd years in the future. Enough money, in fact, that he could split it with a fellow worker, Román (Esteban Bigliardi) and still be ahead. The plan: Morán will steal the money, … Read more
Support the Girls
Support the Girls is an Andrew Bujalski film and so comes loaded with expectation. He’s often cited as the “inventor of mumblecore”, the go-to genre for white hipsters of a certain age, the cultural late arrival at a party already full of shoegazey indie bands. Since breaking into the scene with 2002’s Funny Ha Ha and consolidating his status with Mutual Appreciation, Bujalski has edged away from the brand he helped build. Beeswax disappointed many fans because it looked like an attempt to go mainstream. Then Computer Chess came along, a “revenge of the mumblecore” movie about chess-playing nerds. Bujalski vindicated. Results was another shot at a Bujalski-meets-Hollywood movie, a look at the … Read more
Brighton Rock
Not many British films make the “Best Film Noir” lists but Brighton Rock regularly does. And unlike many a key “British” noir, this one was directed by a Brit, John Boulting rather than an American fleeing McCarthyism (Jules Dassin and Night and the City or Cy Endfield and Hell Drivers), a visiting Frenchman (Edmond Gréville’s Noose) or an expat Brazilian (Alberto Cavalcanti’s They Made Me a Fugitive). It’s also unusual because of the role it gives Richard Attenborough. Nice, cuddly Dickie later of Jurassic Park fame here plays a smalltime 17-year-old psychopathic mobster in the town of Brighton, a seaside resort with a reputation for kiss-me-quick hats and extramarital affairs conducted by people … Read more
Deep End
Jerzy Skolimowski, en route to America from his native Poland, stopped off in the UK in 1969 to make Deep End, a strange blend of farce with something much darker, a tale of stalking done almost as a sex comedy. It’s the story of an impressionable 15-year-old lad, Mike, who gets a job at a public baths – the sort that has both swimming and bathing, in “slipper baths” – and falls very hard for co-worker Susan, a young woman a few years older than him but way ahead of him in all the things that matter, most obviously sex. Mike is played by the pretty John Moulder-Brown, Susan by Jane Asher at her … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 11 – Epic
When writers run out of ideas, they either start cannibalising their own old ones (see the episode from two weeks’ prior – The Correct Way to Kill), they duck into comedy (no refuge for a series that already has its tongue boring a hole through its cheek) or they reach for genre parody. Epic dips its toe in the water of the third option in an episode that parodies old-school Hollywood excess. Kenneth J Warren, Isa Miranda and Peter Wyngarde are the guest actors drafted into play a trio of archetypes, arch types, even – Warren is an Erich Von Stroheim stripe of director, all monocle, bullet head and high-flown notions of the importance … Read more
The Street with No Name
Full of guys with nicknames like Mutt, Shivvy and Whitey, 1948’s The Street with No Name is your tough, streetwise crime drama making many claims to authentiticity. It was one of a run of “semi-documentary” movies made around this time, often by Twentieth Century-Fox, and shot out on the streets, in the bars and at the racetracks where ordinary Americans lived their lives in the boom that followed the Second World War. Don’t get too cosy is the message, delivered via stern voiceover and onscreen teleprinter in the film’s opening moments – gang activity is starting to re-assert itself now the peace has been won, it declares in so many words. If the … Read more
