Reviews
John Travolta won a Worst Actor Razzie for his turns in Trading Paint (aka Burning Rubber) and The Fanatic (a joy for another day) so you might expect this film to be terrible and Travolta’s acting ditto. But acting awards good and bad often go to the undeserving, which is the case here. Travolta is … Read more
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte tries to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle that was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? And fails. It’s not even a valiant fail, instead director Robert Aldrich and co cynically re-run the same basic idea – two vintage dames doing battle most foul – but this time around one essential ingredient is lakcing. Joan … Read more
Slick operators meet slick movie in Crime 101, a drama about capable people being pushed out of their comfort zones for our entertainment. It’s 21st-century film noir, to a large extent, Michael Mann in its glossiness and sexing-up of the city, utterly familiar in its set-up, less so in its payoff. Bart Layton has made … Read more
Genres collide! Actually, in The Prosecutor, they don’t. Two distinct species of movie live separate lives in this odd courtroom drama with martial arts action bolted on. Strangely, it works, because Donnie Yen, who stars and directs, has decided to keep them as separate entities – he gives us a bit of this and then … Read more
Here’s Kiss Me Deadly, the American film that gave birth to the French New Wave, or so said both Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, so that’s a claim made with some authority. It starts with a terrified woman flagging down a car containing private eye Mike Hammer and ends with another woman who opens a … Read more
For a good third of The Last Photograph, Danny Huston’s first directorial effort for nearly 20 years, there’s a distinct impression that something’s not right. The acting is wonky, some of the artistic choices are confusing (why has he put a soft filter on the camera at just this moment?), the narrative is playing out … Read more
The plot’s terrible but the mood is tasty in All the Colors of the Dark (Tutti I colori del buio), an Italian/Spanish giallo from 1972 that does its best – and breast – work early on. The opening sequence is formidably unsettling. A lurid montage of nudity, distortion, doubled imagery, a hideous pregnant woman in a fright … Read more
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” – to borrow a phrase often credited to John Lennon – is the movie This Is My Desire (aka Eyimofe) distilled down to an essence. Told in distinct chapters subtitled Spain and Italy, it follows two denizens of Lagos, Nigeria, and dives into … Read more
Nocturne is a story about two sisters. Twins. Both students at an arts academy. Vivian (Madison Iseman) is off to prestigious Juilliard soon; Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) isn’t. Vivian has a hot boyfriend; Juliet doesn’t. Vivian plays tricksy pieces by the likes of Saint Saëns; Juliet sticks with safe dependable Mozart. Vivian is feisty and popular; … Read more
Here’s a problem for anyone about to make a film about Jimi Hendrix, genius guitarist, 1960s icon, member of the 27 Club of rock’s premature expirers – how do you get inside a character who was private, taciturn, shy and elliptically cool? With a voiceover? A confidant? Newsreel footage? It’s a question that writer/director John Ridley … Read more
Something of an outsider, an unknown quantity even by the standards of old cinema from far-flung corners of Europe, Teuvo Tulio is quite a maverick and The Way You Wanted Me (Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit, in the original Finnish) is a great example of what he does. A stark and direct melodrama, it’s a … Read more
“Trash,” was MGM boss Louis B Mayer’s verdict on The Asphalt Jungle when he saw it in 1950. “Ugly people doing nasty things,” he added, possibly unhappy that John Huston had borrowed from the glamour-dodging European neorealists to make what’s now considered to be one of the pre-eminent films of the 1950s. Does Mayer have … Read more