Reviews
A reboot and a return to basics in Alien: Romulus, in which Ridley Scott hands over the franchise to Spanish director Fede Alvarez, who returns the favour by handing producer Scott a spectacular sci-fi horror movie up with the best (ie the first two) of the series. We’re on a grungey spaceship on a timeline … Read more
Two boys hang out with their dad for the day in My Father’s Shadow, an enormously artful film using pace and rhythm, light, shade and colour as its warp and weft. Or, if you prefer a more thematic description, a warm and intimate film about memory and the family bond. Akinola Davies made it and … Read more
A heartfelt attempt to save a bossa nova pianist’s name from oblivion as his peers die, They Shot the Piano also sees Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba collaborating again for the first time since 2009’s Chico & Rita. That was a bright, busy, noir-tinged animation aiming to lever Cuban and Latin musicians back into the … Read more
Wrath of Man is director Guy Ritchie and actor Jason Statham’s fourth collaboration since they both broke through in 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s a remake of the 2004 French movie Cash Truck and opens with the Metro Goldwyn Mayer logo emblazoned in orange lettering against a hazy cityscape. All very 1970s … Read more
Mrs Peel comes of age in The Hour That Never Was, the ninth episode of series 4 and a typical classic-era Avengers based on unlikely goings-on in locales almost devoid of people. “Comes of age” because in this episode she is clearly smarter than Steed, being the first one to notice that time appears to … Read more
Set mostly in the airport at Marseille (a studio just to the north of London, apparently), this tight and fast episode gets underway with a passenger on a plane arriving from Tripoli getting very distraught and claiming he’s about to die. Without giving too much away, he does die, gratifyingly for the foreign spies who … Read more
In La Grazia (aka Grace) Paolo Sorrentino once again gives us what we expect – a lushly gorgeous movie about a man in an existential funk – except this time he’s turned the power down a couple of notches. We’re back (almost) in the realm of his breakthrough, The Consquences of Love. It’s a fugue of … Read more
Richard E Grant’s autobiographical book With Nails (a reference to his film debut in Withnail and I) having been something of a hit, it was probably only a matter of time before he tried his hand at directing. He’s once again in loosely autobiographical territory in this drama set in Swaziland during the late 1960s … Read more
Seedy atmosphere is Riptide‘s USP. So seedy is it, in fact, that when Une Si Jolie Petite Plage (its original title) debuted in 1949 it was felt necessary to add a little disclaimer up front for French audiences in an attempt to head off complaints. The makers of the film meant no offence to war … Read more
Screwball but not comedy, 1933’s Mystery of the Wax Museum is less well known than its remake, 1953’s House of Wax, but more fascinating in many respects, particularly in its portrayal of liberated young women making their way in the world. There’s sex and drugs too, though you wouldn’t bother with it for those. The … Read more
Lean On Pete isn’t at all like Andrew Haigh’s last film with the word “Pete” in the title. Greek Pete was a biographical mostly-documentary about the life of a London rent boy. It was adult in both senses of the word. Lean On Pete is YA, young adult, the coming-of-age tale of a lonely 15-year-old … Read more
The thing about those murder mysteries full of celebrity names, where Faye Dunaway or Lauren Bacall swan about among fellow stars until they either wind up dead or are revealed as the killer, is that everyone on the train or in the country house deserves what’s coming to them. There’s an uber-entitlement payback thing going … Read more