Reviews
A Viking orphan is raised by American Indians in Newfoundland, circa 1000AD, only to be confronted with the mother of all identity crises when the warlike Norsemen return years later, and set about raping and pillaging their way through the villages of his adoptive nation. Which call is he going to obey – blood or … Read more
Know thyself, as the ancient Greeks used to say. 1981’s Thief is Michael Mann’s debut feature, one of James Caan’s finest films and though it’s neo-noir and set on mean streets (Violent Streets was its original title), it’s Greek to the bone – this hero is shot through with the tragic flaw of not knowing … Read more
Sci-fi or is it? Omni Loop certainly doesn’t look or feel like a sci-fi movie. In fact it’s all about human foibles, regrets, the life lived rather than the life that could have been lived. But its ostensible story – a woman reliving the last week of her life over and over again thanks to a … Read more
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying was a massive hit on Broadway in 1961, winning seven Tony awards, including best musical and book, plus a Pulitzer prize. It was quite the thing – Bob Fosse did the choreography, Frank Loesser did the music, audiences flocked to see it and it ran for nearly … Read more
A young woman in Detroit for a job interview turns up at the Airbnb she booked online only to find that there’s a man already in there. A double booking. It’s dark, it’s late and it’s raining and there’s a convention in town, so finding another place to stay is going to be a stretch. … Read more
Unfashionable and not particularly worried about it, Midwinter Break is a showcase for the acting talents of Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds, who play a long-married couple taking a city break in Amsterdam. She bought them both the trip for Christmas and if he’s being honest he probably didn’t want to go but is not … Read more
Talk about the love that dare not speak its name (to quote Oscar Wilde), Great Freedom (Große Freiheit in the original German) has a monumental love story at its centre but isn’t quite sure about expressing it. The whole film operates like this, sideways, backwards, though it starts straightforwardly enough with some footage from a … Read more
I.S.S. is a thriller set on the International Space Station where Russians and Americans are co-operating happily until a nuclear war breaks out down below. First up, why haven’t more films been set on the ISS? What a golden opportunity. Second up, did you realise (as I didn’t) that missions continue to be flown to … Read more
James Coburn’s time as an A list star lasted only… how long? A year? Three? 1966’s Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round is emblematic of the series of films that took Coburn to the top rung and then pulled him off it again. Key exhibit here is Our Man Flint, also from 1966 – a bona-fide hit … 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
Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets starts off in voiceover. “My father, The Brute, said reading Walt Whitman is a waste of time, despite sharing the same name,” says James Whitman (our teenage sad poet, played by Lucas Jade Zumann) lying on his back in a sulk on his lonely bed. He glances over at … Read more
With Elon Musk currently trailing his Neuralink “brain machine interface” idea as the future of inter-personal communications, how about The President’s Analyst, a 1967 movie that got there first? It’s called the Cerebrum Communicator – a brain implant that will render phone calls unnecessary – and comes at the familiar point in this spytastic spoof when … Read more