Popular Reviews
Mr & Mrs Smith
Here’s a strange thing – a screwball comedy by master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Mr and Mrs Smith is the only one he made and, sad to report, it’s not very good. A “comedy of remarriage”, its plot isn’t a thousand miles away from the one that floated The Philadelphia Story to glory, about a husband and wife discovering that a legal technicality means their three-year marriage is void. If they want to be husband and wife for real, they’ll have to “remarry”. But, now that they have the chance to reconsider, will they (re)take the plunge? As a bit of a preamble to all this, some vital character furniture is put in place … Read more
Waxworks
In probably the best condition it’s ever going to be seen, the Eureka Masters of Cinema 2019 restoration of Waxworks is a good 25 minutes shorter than the German original, all trace of which has disappeared. Instead, the Deutsche Kinemathek and Cineteca di Bologna took a surviving print from the British Film Institute and, using elements scavenged from around the world, put together this assemblage for a 2K restoration reinstating the original colour tinting. It’s a historically important film but also a vastly entertaining one, and if you’re a fan of German expressionism, it’s probably required viewing. The original German title, Das Wachsfigurenkabinett, is a clear nod to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, … Read more
Supergirl
Green kryptonite at the box office, Supergirl is standard superhero fare juiced with Deadpool-style wit and smarts. Well, that’s the intention. In fact, the wit is a bit strained and the smarts are a touch familiar. Everyone is trying just a bit too hard. Put it down to nerves. DC realised their DC Extended Universe (2013’s Man of Steel to 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) had lost whatever mojo it had ever had and so decided to reboot it as the more streamlined DC Universe – “Extended” was possibly a hostage to fortune. As part of all that, out went Sasha Calle, a perfectly fine Supergirl in The Flash, and in came … Read more
Love Crazy
Number ten of the 14 features Myrna Loy and William Powell made together, Love Crazy never quite achieves classic status, though all the elements are here – smart writing, brilliant playing, fantastic support players. All that’s needed is a plot that makes some sense. It’s a “remarriage comedy”, the genre that emerged once Hollywood’s production code took hold in the early 1930s and consigned straight-up sex comedies between non-marrieds to purgatory. Here, Powell and Loy play a married couple whose rock-solid marriage is shaken to the core by events which if anyone on screen had stopped for a minute to explain themselves would have elicited an “Oh, I see,” and brought the film … Read more
Archive
Here’s Archive, the debut by writer/director Gavin Rothery, who deserved better than for his film to slip between the cracks, which it did a bit thanks to the Covid restrictions. Instead of getting the big-screen release that was on the cards, it slunk out onto streaming months after it was due to be seen. Rothery’s CV is full of art department gigs. He worked with Duncan Jones on Moon and Archive at first looks like it might be operating in the same territory. Lone guy marooned somewhere, taking orders from a stern voice back at HQ, possibly going mad in the process. Except George (Theo James) isn’t in an off-world location, he’s in … Read more
Stage Fright
When conversation turns to Alfred Hitchcock, Stage Fright doesn’t often come up. Notorious, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, Vertigo and even The Birds all regularly make an appearance. Stage Fright not so much. And yet it’s a fascinating film, not least because Hitchcock tries to do something different with his formula in it. All the usual elements are here – the innocent man, mistaken identity, flat-footed cops, the mystery blonde – but he’s given everything a distorting twist, inside a movie which itself is set in a world with a distorted relationship to reality, as if all the characters in it have somehow become aware they are … Read more
Beyond the Forest
“Nobody’s as good as Bette when she’s bad!” screamed the posters for this 1949 melodrama starring, of course, Bette Davis. But bad how? The latest of a run of flops for Davis when it was released, Beyond the Forest allowed Jack Warner to offload the star who’d made him fistfuls of money for 18 years. Good riddance to you too, said Bette, who’d wanted out anyway. Or so she said. It’s a madly overcooked affair from the outset, with a rolling written introduction after the opening credits insisting that this is a grim but necessary portrait of evil and its rewards and ending with a metaphor about a “scorpion in a mad fury” … Read more
Two of Us
I was intending to watch Two of Us (aka Deux) a few weeks ago and in fact did watch a film called Two of Us, just not this one. That one was a zombie movie set in Thailand. This one is a tense human drama set in Paris. Do not confuse. Although both feature a pair of women in the central roles, the females in the Thai movie were young women. The women in question here are both pensioners, a pair of secretive lesbians who have lived next door to each other for decades. To be more precise they have both lived in the apartment of Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), while Nina (Barbara Sukowa) … Read more
Vermiglio
Done a bit faster and with less attention to detail, Vermiglio would be a soap opera. Its story is pure soap – secret assignation, love, betrayal, jealousy, closely guarded secrets and the warm embrace/stultifying smother of the family environment. Maura Delpero’s film is set in northern Italy in 1944 where a deserter from the army – sensing war is over – is hiding out with a large family up in their barn on the hill. He falls for one of the daughters, and she for him, and in the natural scheme of things they get close. Then… disaster. And spoilers. Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico), a dark and handsome Sicilian, woos Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), though he … Read more
17 August 2015-08-17
Out This Week Dear White People (Signature, cert 15) A sharp, smart and almost breathless satire on race, racism, post-racism and the whole damn thing, set in an American university where an all-black college asks the question that all black people are asked in some way… integrate or segregate? This basic question – hard enough – is further complicated by the people it’s being asked of: the entitled, preppy student president (Brandon P Bell), the chippy mixed race DJ (Tessa Thompson) whose Dear White People radio show offers snarky advice on the state of current racial politics (“Dear white people, the minimum number of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been … Read more
Gran Torino
Old grizzled Clint Eastwood plays Shirty Harry in a film about redemption, ageing, learning to live with others, sacrifice but most of all about the myth of Clint himself. The skimpy plot concerns a grumpy Korean war veteran whose neighbourhood has gone to the dogs, evidence of which he sees in his immigrant neighbours, who are Hmong people. A view reinforced when the young son tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino and underlined later on when he sets about “teaching the youngster a lesson”, which of course teaches him a few things he didn’t know. Like Unforgiven the tensions comes from the question “when is Clint going to strap the guns back … Read more
The Avengers: Series 4, Episode 17 – The Girl from Auntie
The Girl from Auntie this episode is called, a nod to The Man from Uncle, which had debuted about six months earlier on US TV and become an instant hit with its sexy spies, gadgets, 007 goofery and strong sense of the ridiculous, having clearly drunk from the same well as The Avengers. All that said, sadly this is not a great episode, though it is stuffed with good things. It’s also not particularly heavy on Emma Peel, who was perhaps off talking to the Bond people – Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore having made waves – or just enjoying a bit of a break when the episode was in production. She turns up in … Read more
