Reviews
Two spooked brothers head out into the night with guns. In the woods they find a corpse. Half a corpse, in fact. They examine it closely and discuss in practical tones what might have cut a man in two. A jaguar, one of them suggests, possibly wishfully. Too clean, says the other. And on they … Read more
The rom-com has traditionally featured an alpha couple and a beta couple. This allowed the alpha couple do the serious mooning about, while the beta couple handled the comedy and dispensed sound, often snarky, advice. However, since Richard Curtis’s successful if frequently painful Love, Actually, there’s been an attempt to get more people in on … Read more
It’s pronounced “maa.lay.gao”, a screen note informs us, before Superboys of Malegaon gets properly underway. And that’s the tone of the entire film – nothing left to chance, a narrative that is laid out with one logical piece following another, nothing fancy, nothing tricksy, just the age-old “let’s do the show right here” tale, of … Read more
Though tricked out in an almost offhand way like a film noir, Force of Evil is actually something else entirely, an old school Greek tragedy, featuring a noble hero cursed by a fatal flaw in his character, one which will first be exposed and then cause his downfall. John Garfield plays Joe Morse, a lawyer … Read more
A guy turns up at a young woman’s house unannounced. He’s a photographer who’s been travelling the world. She’s an agoraphobic shut-in cut off from everything. But they have something in common. Two things, in fact. A dead person who they both once knew, in different ways. And feelings for each other, which Evan (Alan … Read more
So how about a horror movie featuring sexy mermaids who become disco singers in 1980s Poland? The Lure (Córki dancingu) is the film you’re after, so grabby as a concept that it went straight into the Criterion Collection after its release in 2015, which isn’t bad considering that’s where Kurosawa, Truffaut, Bergman and Claire Denis … Read more
The Lightship should be a great film but isn’t. It goes wrong somewhere, particularly towards the end, when there’s a mad rush for the exit (or, the filmic equivalent, a mad rush to get everything said that needs saying before the big finish). It was released in 1985 and stars Robert Duvall and Klaus Maria … Read more
Though Erich Kästner’s 1929 novel has never been out of print, this first of many adaptations of Emil and the Detectives is chiefly remembered these days as a vehicle for Billy (here billed as Billie) Wilder. He’s the only writer listed on screen, though the IMDb includes Kästner himself as well as Emerich Pressburger as … Read more
A cop falls disastrously for the woman he is certain killed her own husband in Park Chan-wook’s first film since 2016’s The Handmaiden. Decision to Leave is an erotic noir mixing elements of the “useless cops” comedy of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder with the romantic obsession of Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express and adding byzantine, … Read more
Following on from the brilliant Sybil, Justine Triet double-taps it with Anatomy of a Fall, another rangy drama with rare psychological depth. Written expressly for Sandra Hüller by Triet and her partner Arthur Harari – and you only hope that it doesn’t reflect their own relationship – it’s the old “did he fall or was … Read more
1953’s Tokyo Story is based on a film its director, Yasujirô Ozu, hadn’t actually seen. But his writer, Kôgo Noda, had. And so the 1937 movie Make Way for Tomorrow was adapted into what is regularly described as one of the best movies ever made – 2012’s Directors Poll by Sight and Sound magazine put … Read more
Writer/director Tatiana Huezo drops us straight in to Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de Fuego). As a dark screen accompanied by rapid breathing yields to a daytime scene of two females digging what looks like a shallow grave, the internal interrogation starts – Who are these people? Where are they? Is it a grave? Why … Read more
