Reviews
If you’ve ever wanted to see a Western out of Bulgaria, Hombre is your chance. It’s a fascinating film, attempting to use the familiar narratives from the West as an allegory for pan-Balkan co-operation. If we don’t all get on, the idea runs, there’ll be a lot worse to deal with than a gunfight at … Read more
One of the most cultish of Hollywood directors, Nicholas Ray, made his directorial debut in 1949. 1951’s On Dangerous Ground was his seventh film in two years (eighth, if you count Roseanna McCoy, where he replaced director Irving Reiss). If this maverick made films in a hurry, he also made films that moved at speed. … Read more
A man on the Tokyo subway struggles to find the exit. That’s the entire plot of Exit 8, proof that it’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it. This is a tense and atmospheric chunk of quasi-scifi, owing something if not everything to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos, with a bit of … Read more
She can’t. Run, that is, one of the little jokes that director/co-writer Aneesh Chaganty has with the audience in this two-hander about a mother, her wheelchair-using daughter and the young woman’s impending flight from the family home to university. Another joke is what a great mother Diane (Sarah Paulson) is. She’s home-schooled her daughter Chloe … Read more
More tales of emotional desperation from Anthony Chen, Wet Season follows 2013’s Ilo Ilo, using a couple of the same actors from his brilliant debut to squeeze a single drop of comfort from a scenario that would have been a full-bore histrionic melodrama in other hands. The returning actors are Koh Jia Ler, only 12 … Read more
Maika Monroe’s lean athleticism – she used to be a professional kiteboarder – suits her to In Cold Light, a grungey thriller in which she plays a drug dealer who goes on the run when things take a “shit got real” turn. It’s a subjective chase movie, very tightly focused on Monroe’s Ava, who we meet … Read more
A decent sci-fi movie almost drowns in police procedural cliché in Restore Point (Bod Obnovy), a Czech movie owing something to Blade Runner – but then so much sci-fi does. The year is 2041 and in a world of driverless cars, dizzy buildings and swooshy screen tech, cop Emma Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) is assigned to … Read more
Improbable and fluffy, They Keep Killing Steed is a prime screenplay by showrunner and writer Brian Clemens, and a clear sign that the series is entirely back on track with a plot pivoting on the ideas of doubles – a classic Clemens trope. The fluidly cinematic Robert Fuest does directorial duty in a plot that … Read more
Allusional rather than visceral, Cuckoo is a stew of horror sub-genres served with a big side order of Grimm, and is pretty fabulous if you are used to drinking deeply at the well of the macabre. If you are not a horror nut, it’s probably a bit less necessary though fascinating all the same. It’s … Read more
It’s something of a minor industry to make fun of Andrew Lloyd Webber. But with this film version of his stage phenomenon (billions of dollars at box offices worldwide, and counting) it looks like the musical lord is once more going to be having the last laugh. It’s a story we all know – a … Read more
Brian Cox apparently gets a bit sick of being asked in interviews about Succession and playing Logan Roy, which might explain his presence in The Parenting, a film unafraid to do jokes about projectile vomiting alongside a whole slew (spew?) of gags revived from the era of gross-out comedy. Look, this says, I’m an actor, … Read more
When is a prison drama not a prison drama? When it’s Night of the Kings (La nuit des rois), a French-language drama from the Ivory Coast that starts and ends in a brutal jail and soars off in every direction in between. Philippe Lacôte’s film opens with a shot of the jungle. The camera pans … Read more