Reviews
Swan Song is a gay movie set in a post-gay world, a lament for the loss of the sense of community that the transition from “in” to “out” has brought with it, but also a celebration of “how far we’ve come”. Somehow, successfully, magically, it keeps these two elements in play. How gay? There’s Judy … Read more
OK, deep breath for the title alone. Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (or Zítra vstanu a oparím se cajem in the original Czech) is also conceptually the sort of film that requires a super-oxygenation session before diving in. It’s made in the 1970s but set in the 1990s, where time travel … Read more
Old Guy should be a good film but isn’t. Thanks to someone somewhere along the line deciding to funny things up. Not that the funny doesn’t have its moments. Take the opening scene, of an old guy with a big floppy grey moustache at a rave full of young people. Smiling ecstatically and throwing shapes, … Read more
Here’s the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, the thriller Alfred Hitchcock would remake in 1956 with James Stewart and Doris Day in the lead roles. He later said this first version was “the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional.” However, ever a master … Read more
Rutger Hauer was 69 when he turned up in Il Futuro in 2013. He’d die six years later, in 2019, having clocked up another 35 or so screen credits in the interim. Always working, not always in quality product, Hauer was good even in the most disappointing films. But Il Futuro isn’t one of those. … Read more
Radical is a good thing but there is a lot of it. An inspirational-teacher drama, it’s a dramatisation of events that took place in 2012. Those events became the basis of a 2013 Wired article written by Joshua Davis, this film’s producer. And from there ten years ago to this film in 2023. Meanwhile, the … Read more
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 French-Canadian film-maker Philippe Grégoire’s debut feature The Noise of Engines (Le bruit des moteurs) starts off with various shots of cars donutting away in rubber-burning circles, going nowhere, but fast. It’s a metaphor, of sorts, for a story about a young man who seems … Read more
Midway between Philip Marlowe and John Wick, Walker, the hero of 1967’s Point Blank is a stylish hero in a film so stylish and influential that its original impact can now only be guessed at, so relentlessly has it been plundered in the ensuing decades. Soderbergh is a fan, as is Tarantino, and so, of … Read more
Cold Storage is lo-fi sci-fi done on a decent budget, it’s written by David Koepp, who did the original Jurassic Park the first Mission: Impossible. And it is stacked with actors of the calibre of Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave and Liam Neeson, though none of them is the star. Smartly made, well acted, it’s entirely … Read more
Where’s Bugs Bunny? There are many ways this film’s makers could have made a bold statement. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie has decided to do it by presenting an animated whackadoodle comic adventure featuring Looney Tunes characters but minus the most famous one. There’s not even the tip of a … 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
Matteo (Diego Luna) and Adrienne (Sienna Miller) are a broke couple with a new baby and a relationship on the skids. Arguing on the way home from a date night, mostly about Adrienne giving someone the glad-eye, they are involved in a massive car crash. This is no spoiler, we’re only a handful of minutes … Read more