Reviews
Manticore takes its name from the mythical beast with the head of a man, the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion. But writer/director Carlos Vermut has another beast in mind – two, in fact – in this Spanish film giving us a flash of what it’s about before lulling us into … Read more
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 Formula written, if you’re feeling grouchy, inspired by Hollywood’s golden era, if you’re not, Best Sellers has two great performers at its centre – Michael Caine, still pumping out the charisma and deadly comic timing at 88, and Aubrey Plaza, who ups her ante … Read more
Independent, hand-drawn, adult animation is rare, as Sundance programmer Charlie Sextro said at the premiere of Cryptozoo, which puts Dash Shaw’s busy and quirky adventure in pretty much the same category as its subject matter. A cryptid, an early intertitle card informs us, is a creature whose existence is unsubstantiated, or who remains hidden. As … Read more
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 Clyde two years later. They run through a few of the possibilities here. The film focuses almost entirely on Beatty, … 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
The Killing of a Two Lovers starts, unusually, with a climax, backs off quite a bit to let us work out what’s going on, before returning with another climax at the end, exactly where we’d expect one to be. It opens with two people in bed asleep. Hovering over them is a bearded man with … Read more
Albert Camus always rejected the queer reading of his novel L’Étranger, but director François Ozon insists on it in his adaptation. One of the urtexts of existentialism known for its blank refusal of emotion, the book famously opens with its antihero coolly announcing the death of his mother. Ozon’s Meursault (no cosy first name), for … Read more
In 1998 while Guy Ritchie was making his feature debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Fatih Akin was in Germany making his, Short Sharp Shock (Kurz und schmerzlos). There are parallels. Though Akin’s take on the whole “guys out of their league” drama doesn’t have the sheer entertainment sparkle of Ritchie’s, it does have … Read more
Bernie, a London Jewish boy who sees his barmitzvah as the very peak of his young life, suddenly realises it’s taking place on the same day as the 1966 football (soccer) World Cup final. Will anyone come, especially once the home team start morphing from total no-hopers to potential giant-killers? Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Serafinowicz, Eddie … Read more
The world is at Peak Ben Gazzara and Peak John Cassavetes in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, a neo-noir from 1976 full of techniques – handheld camera, sparse (if any) lighting, crash editing, semi-improv – that seemed weird at the time but have since been absorbed into mainstream film-making. Cassavetes had worked on the early … Read more
Young couple PJ and Brianne check in to a holiday cabin. They’re in love. He’s intending to propose later that evening. But before that, they go out to dinner, PJ gets on the wrong side of some local rednecks and things almost get physical. Back at the cabin, while PJ showers, Brianne is attacked and … Read more
Tran Anh Hung has only made five films in the years between his breakthrough and The Taste of Things (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant). Not much has changed since 1993’s The Scent of Green Papaya. This is also a languid and beautiful film full of longing for a bygone time when people did things properly … Read more