Popular Reviews
Clara Sola
Capsule plot summaries can be misleading. The one for Clara Sola might say – a woman around 40 in a Costa Rica village has a sexual awakening. It’s more or less what the one on the IMDb says. And it’s not wrong, that is what happens. But the story, that’s a different thing altogether. And in fact the whole point of this debut by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén is in what isn’t being said rather than what is. The plot is straightforward but story lies scattered between the cracks, just slightly out of reach. It’s ambiguous, entirely, in almost every respect. Clara is a pretty woman and might, at her age, expect to be … Read more
Never Gonna Snow Again
Remember the days when you’d never get a popular film star to work on a TV series? The reverse happened when co-directors Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert were casting Never Gonna Snow Again. They wanted Alec Utgoff, of American TV series Stranger Things fame, to take pole position in their film but would they be able to persuade him to take a step down? They did and, beyond the profile he brings, you can see why they wanted him. The story is about a masseur from Ukraine who has a number of clients in a rich gated community in Poland. He massages, they open up to him. That’s it. Except for the fact … Read more
The Night Eats the World
The Night Eats the World is a detail-rich zombie procedural ingeniously set in one house, with one main guy as its focus, a couple of “names” doing the sort of walk-on you’d have thought they were above and a lot of extras stumbling about and moaning. Director Dominique Rocher’s feature debut spends a few minutes at the beginning just introducing us to its main character before it hits us. Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie) is at a party he doesn’t want to be at – he’s just there to pick up some belongings after having obviously split acrimoniously with his girlfriend – falls asleep while waiting for her to show him exactly where his bloody … Read more
True History of the Kelly Gang
You’d have thought that Ned Kelly would be an ideal fit with the movies – a glamorous outlaw, a rebel son of immigrants who fought the law (and the law won), a proto-superhero who had his own outfit, if you count a plate-steel suit as an outfit. And yet, of the modern versions (there are older, mostly lost-in-time versions going back as far as 1906), none quite hits the spot. The Mick Jagger one, from 1970, suffers from Mick Jagger being in it. The Heath Ledger one, from 2003, presented Kelly as a saint and so made him boring. And now True History of the Kelly Gang from 2019, a Justin Kurzel movie and … Read more
Tropa de Elite aka Elite Squad
Anyone who’s read a lot of film reviews will be familiar with the “redeeming features” style of reviewing. “Worth a look to see De Niro on fire”, “Ken Adam’s set designs lend it a style the script is struggling to equal”, and so on. Sometimes people pop round to my house to borrow a dvd and, as we whisk through a shimmering stack of them, I give it loads of “redeeming feature” bullshit – “you know the director of Consequences of Love, he made this one”, “Buster Keaton’s last film before he got booted out of his own production company” etc etc. When all the borrowing party wants to know is – is … Read more
L’Avventura
When L’Avventura debuted at the Cannes film festival in 1960 the reception was so unfavourable that the director, Michelangelo Antonioni, and his star, Monica Vitti, ended up beating a hasty retreat from the cinema where it was being shown. Up to the point where they decided it wasn’t worth it any more they’d endured boos, jeers, laughs and shouts of “Cut!” in scenes which, the audience felt, just ran on too long. Everyone’s a critic. By the next day sentiment had started to shift. The film went on to win the Jury Prize – among those on the jury were the writers Henry Miller and Georges Simenon, so a tough crowd – and … Read more
All Quiet on the Western Front
If Netflix’s 2022 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front has done anything it’s revived interest in this 1930 original, a film more people have heard about than seen but which has been influential on generations of film-makers. It’s obvious that Kubrick borrowed heavily from it for the trench sequences in Paths of Glory, and Steven Spielberg has acknowledged its influence on Saving Private Ryan. And what a beast it is, a marvel of technical brilliance, directed with almost insane virtuosity by Lewis Milestone, who’d already made a name for himself by 1930 and would go on to direct for decades to come – he directed the original Ocean’s Eleven in 1960, for … Read more
Made in Italy
Made in Italy feels like it’s based on one of the books by Peter Mayle, the British advertising executive who tired of the life and lit out for France, where he set about writing lighthearted sun-dredged reports on his new life. A Year in Provence was the first and it sold very well. That became a TV series of the same name, starring John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan as the expatriate couple making a new go of it, and another Mayle book, A Good Year, later became a Ridley Scott film starring Russell Crowe as a Brit in Provence learning to be a bit less of a bull at a gate about life. … Read more
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly
Having shot everything from 1960’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to David Lynch’s A Straight Story, it’s no surprise that Freddie Francis is best known as a cinematographer, one of the greats. But he also has more than 30 director credits to his name. Much of it was gun for hire work but in 1970, after eight years of doing others’ directorial bidding, he was finally given his head. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (aka Girly) is his picture, done his way, co-conceived with writer Brian Comport, and shot at Oakley Court, a location he’d worked at many times on various Hammer horror productions when it was mostly used for its imposing exterior. … Read more
The Yakuza
Robert Mitchum in a martial arts movie? That was Warner Bros’ crazy idea back in the early 1970s. Riding the massive success of their collaboration with Bruce Lee and the vogue for all things chop-socky, the next logical step was never to pack a paunchy and ageing Mitchum off to Japan but Warners went ahead and did it anyway. In 1974 came the verdict – The Yakuza was a massive commercial flop. Time hasn’t done much to restore its reputation, though there are great things in it, and any opportunity to watch Mitchum is usually worth taking. After 1973’s monster hit Enter the Dragon, the race was on to get more of the … Read more
Obsession
Luchino Visconti’s first film, 1943’s Ossessione (aka Obsession) ran into trouble from the moment it was made. Too raunchy for Catholic Italy, and an abomination in the eyes of the Fascists, it hit further obstacles once James M Cain found out that Visconti had adapted his The Postman Always Rings Twice without crediting him. And once MGM released their own adaptation of the novel in 1946, even more legal obstructions were put in its way. But it did get seen, was well received and launched Visconti on his way. Superficially it’s very close to the Cain original, and MGM’s movie. A vagrant blows into an out-of-the-way roadside eatery/bar/filling station, immediately catches the eye … Read more
Ikiru
Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru is now old enough – it was released in 1952 – for people to be able to consider it rationally. Almost from the moment it hit the screens it was treated as Kurosawa’s “triumph”, one of the best films ever made, regularly turning up on Sight and Sound magazine’s influential once-a-decade poll of the best movies ever made. Recently, though, it’s slipped a bit. In 1962 it was number 20 on S&S‘s list. By 2012 it’s “only” at number 136, well behind Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (17) and Rashomon (24). A 2016 article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph listing its top 10 most overrated films of all time placed Ikiru at … Read more
