Reviews
As far as the work of director Alan Clarke goes, Penda’s Fen is an outlier. A strange take on folk horror, it’s become something of a cult in the decades since it was first broadcast in 1974 in the BBC’s long-running Play for Today strand. Pre HBO and streaming, TV was predominantly a writer’s medium … Read more
As I write James Bond’s producers have a “we’re hiring” sign over Daniel Craig’s vacant seat. Is Rogue Agent James Norton’s audition? If it is, it’s a funny sort of one, though Norton is fairly remarkable as a man on a mission – to deceive almost everyone he comes into contact with. The thing to … Read more
In some quarters the director Paul Verhoeven is now eternally infamous for Sharon Stone’s is she/isn’t she leg-crossing moment in Basic Instinct. But he came to prominence with a Second World War movie, Soldier Of Orange, in 1977. Black Book sees Verhoeven return to his native land, his native Dutch tongue and the 1939-45 war … Read more
Tricks are what Two’s a Crowd is about, and the 12th episode of series four starts with two quite good ones. First up, a shot of a plane. It’s not a real plane, but a model, and the trick is that the model plane is meant to be a model, not – as was so … Read more
Whoosh, Patrick Dickinson’s film Cottontail rushes into the territory generally occupied by Hirokazu Kore-eda. That is, the deceptively simple, beautifully crafted, sensitively acted, tender human drama. He’s even given it a Japanese top coat, since it’s the story of an emotionally inert Tokyo dad whose wife has just died heading to Lake Windermere in the … Read more
Thriller: A Cruel Picture goes by the name Thriller: En grym film in its original Swedish. And “grym” it is, an archetypal grindhouse thriller whose main character provided the inspiration for Daryl Hannah’s one-eyed Elle Driver in Tarantino’s Kill Bill, a light comedy by comparison. Director Bo Arne Vibenius has stated that he set out … Read more
This may not be the best film out this week, but it is the one that is shouting loudest. Who doesn’t want to see Anthony Hopkins return to the role of Hannibal the Cannibal after several years of haggling over his fee, which includes an agreement to make one more film featuring everyone’s favourite cultured … Read more
French writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve genuflects before the master, Ingmar Bergman, in her playful and reverential drama set on Fårö (pronounced foe-rer, more or less), the island where Bergman wrote and shot some of his films, and which is now dedicated to promoting his legacy. In meta fashion, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony are a pair … Read more
Martin Scorsese must be asked to lend his name to films by unknowns all the time. Murina obviously impressed him – he’s on board as an executive producer. It also won the Caméra d’Or, the gong handed out at Cannes to the best film by a debut director. Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic is that director and … Read more
La Chienne. It translates as The Bitch, literally. But if it ever goes by an English title it’s usually Isn’t Life a Bitch?, which kind of misses the point. It was made by Jean Renoir in 1931 in France and then remade by Fritz Lang in Hollywood in 1945 as Scarlet Street, with Edward G … Read more
Pausing momentarily from a binge-watch of the TV show Succession to watch something else with Brian Cox in it – Red, a 2008 movie which went largely unnoticed. For good reason, it turns out, though there is a good film lurking in here somewhere. It was beset by problems – original director fired, Cox’s original co-star … Read more
James Whale would probably approve of Birth/Rebirth, a new take on the Frankenstein story which, like Whale’s 1931 movie, is creepy, dark and yet shot through with a touching humanity. Until it isn’t. It’s a female take, with the focus largely on women, plus a female director, who also co-wrote, and the cinematographer, composer, editors, … Read more