Reviews
Before Lee we’d kind of already had a movie about Lee Miller. Kirsten Dunst’s character in Civil War, an old-school photojournalist, had been named Lee in honour of Lee Miller, so she said, and her character was clearly modelled on Miller’s. Now here’s the real thing, a representation at least, with Kate Winslet applying herself … Read more
Servants is a story about the collusion between the Catholic Church and the Czechoslovakian StB (its secret service) in the days of the Cold War. It’s also a beautifully made film, full of arresting cinematography and a soundtrack so haunting that it alone makes the film worth catching. The opening shot, of a car seen … Read more
How odd. For the fourth entry in the Ju-On cycle, Takashi Shimizu, the director of the original Ju-On: The Grudge, has almost entirely ditched the muted ethos of the original in favour of a British Hammer Horror approach. “In America,” he says in the production notes, “people tend to be scared by a lot of … Read more
Clear-eyed but compassionate, Il Posto is the other film by Ermanno Olmi, the one that isn’t The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Both are neo-realist to an extent and are concerned, obsessed, with the stuff of everyday life. Here, though, the focus is on the city, whereas Clogs was resolutely a tale of rural peasant life. … Read more
Monkey Man is the latest in a string of John Wick-adjacent movies. Blame Liam Neeson for starting it, with those Taken movies. Or the Incredible Hulk, and his “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” warning. Or even, just maybe, the vengeful God of the Old Testament. You don’t want to get any of these … Read more
One of the great feature debuts, Milcho Manchevski’s 1994 drama Before the Rain announced the arrival of new talent and went straight onto the New York Times Best 1,000 Movies list. Manchevski has been busy ever since, making rap videos, directing episodes of TV shows like The Wire and cranking out films set in the … Read more
1947’s Shoot to Kill (aka Police Reporter) opens with a car crash. Two people dead. One is Lawrence Dale, the district attorney, the other a known gangster, Dixie Logan. The DA’s wife has somehow survived. But what were she and her husband doing in a car with Logan in the first place? From her hospital … Read more
Often pitched as Robert Bresson’s most accessible film, Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d’un rêveur) is, for him, a wild ride. Not exactly pulsing with vivid event, perhaps, but by Bressonian standards highly unusual. The people in it, for example, actually act, rather than read out the words with as little emotion as … Read more
Frank Sidebottom was the stage name of musician Chris Sievey, whose Frank was a cult novelty act that toured students unions etc in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, singing chaotically shambolic versions of well known tunes (it could be Kylie, it could be the Sex Pistols) in a wheedling high-pitched determinedly uncool accent. … Read more
Issue-driven but dramatic enough and making political points that still resonate, No Way Out is a film about racism and stars Sidney Poitier in his first major role. He’s 22 and his self-assurance is both remarkable and one of the key selling points of director Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film. Poitier plays Dr Luther Brooks, a … Read more
After the camp fun of the previous week’s episode, The Grandeur That Was Rome, a bit of a bump as we touch back down on planet Earth for a much more realistic Avengers episode – The Golden Fleece. Warren Mitchell gets the first word, only three years from starring in the series that would make his … Read more
Stirringly democratic and winningly romantic, The Clock is one of Judy Garland’s best films. She sings not a note, you may be surprised to learn, but brings a tear to the eye with her portrayal of a sweet young miss having a whirlwind romance in surely the most New York New York ever committed to … Read more
