Popular Reviews
Brian and Charles
Feelgood British low-budget whimsy, Brian and Charles‘s only real fault is that it’s taken the maddening decision to tell its story as a mock-doc. “Twee” – a regular criticism – could be lined up as another possible criticism, though I suspect that “fanciful” is what the naysayers really mean. In which case discard the bulk of Hollywood’s output. It started life as a short costing £500 in 2017, which British TV station Channel 4 liked and wanted to convert into a series. That never happened but C4 did put up some of the money for this film, the feature debut of director Jim Archer. Though really the film belongs to its two stars, David … Read more
Merry-Go-Round
“The pinnacle of Hungarian cinema,” is how István Szabó described Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta), and since he directed Mephisto and Colonel Redl, he’s worth listening to. But what of Zoltán Fábri, director of Merry-Go-Round, two of whose later films were Oscar nominated, which is quite a feat considering the deterrent effect of the Iron Curtain when he was at his creative peak. Not having seen any of his other films, I can only speak for this outing from 1956, which tells a familiar love story, adds just enough politics to keep the commissars happy (and allows for all manner of readings) and overlays everything with a heady wash of poetic realism, just like the French … Read more
Die My Love
I’m amazed at how many of “the best films of 2025” have left me pretty cold. Die My Love joins the list alongside the likes of Sinners, The Mastermind and Bugonia – everyone loves them, but I thought they were just OK. I did like Die My Love, though, particularly the florid performance by Jennifer Lawrence as a woman losing her mind in a severe case of post-partum depression. Possibly. It’s never entirely spelled out, but then that’s often the case with diagnosing the baby blues too. It’s a one-woman show offering co-star billing but not oodles to do to Robert Pattinson, who plays Jackson, the partner of Grace (Lawrence), who has brought … Read more
The Devil’s Bath
Powerful to the point of punishment, The Devil’s Bath (Des Teufels Bad) is Austria’s contender for the Best International Feature Oscar in 2025. It won’t win. It probably won’t even make the shortlist. Too bleak. Too uncompromising. Seen one way, it’s a group portrait of the extremely grim existence hacked out by peasants in a remote part of 18th-century Austria. Seen another, it’s the progress of one female from fragile, dreamy single girl to married woman in psychological extremis. Anja Plaschg plays Agnes, a sweet, unworldly creature who in early scenes is married off to Wolf (David Scheid), a bear of a man who seems delighted to be married to her. Or maybe … Read more
Simon of the Desert
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 January Feast of Simeon Stylites Today is the feast day of the Christian ascetic saint Simeon Stylites. Unless you are an adherent of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in which case his feast day is on 1 September. This son of a shepherd born in what is now Turkey became a zealous believer in the denial of the fleshly world as a teenager. In this he was not unusual – the Church had increasingly come to see the world not as a stage on the way to Paradise, but as a contradiction of it. The world was bad; heaven good (hence … Read more
Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt)
Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt) is a breezy high-school comedy about the will they/won’t they romance between two gay schoolkids. Set in the here and now but also in the there and then, it tries to square a circle and gets most of the way there. Gay kids? Once upon a not so long ago that would have set the attack dogs of the media off on one of their jags but, though Australian writer/director Monica Zanetti struggled to raise the cash to get this adaptation of her successful play made, here it is, eventually, a testament to what the film is actually all about. Things have changed. Though battles are … Read more
10 June 2013-06-10
Out in the UK this week Zero Dark Thirty (Universal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) “A lot of my friends have died trying to do this; I believe I was spared so I could finish the job.” The key line of dialogue, as uttered by Jessica Chastain in the drama about the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden. “Spared” – there’s a faintly biblical colour to that word and it’s deliberate. Mark Boal’s script is not only mechanically extremely good – so many characters are introduced so well in such a short time – but it also deals, with varying degrees of depth, with matters arising from the aftermath of 9/11. The use of torture as … Read more
The Epic of Everest
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 April Birkenhead Park opened, 1847 On this day in 1847, Birkenhead Park was opened in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, UK. It is the country’s first publicly funded civic park and was designed by Joseph Paxton, best known for designing the Crystal Palace exhibition space. A feat of engineering which required that the marshy site first be drained, before vistas could be built, avenues created, terraces and lakes built, it covers 226 acres and was financed by the selling of adjoining plots to local merchants, many of them from Liverpool. It was visited by American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted … Read more
The Beach Girls and the Monster
The beach party movie, surfer and monster movies all hang out together in The Beach Girls and the Monster, an oddity from 1965 that often makes it into the “so bad it’s good” category, largely, I suspect, because people just don’t really know what to make of it. It’s Scooby-Doo in plot – fun-loving kids, a string of strange murders carried out by an unconvincing monster, who looks like a human in a bad costume because… well why spoil it. It’s the only film directed by Jon Hall, who also has top billing. Hall had swung from one terrible movie to another in a long Hollywood career and is now most often remembered, if … Read more
I Vitelloni
Federico Fellini’s 1953 breakthrough I Vitelloni is often translated as The Bullocks. The Young Bucks would be better, since it’s the story of a group of young Italian guys – all of them pretty good looking, all of them with a high opinion of themselves – who do very little with their time apart from drink, smoke, play billiards, bet on the horses, chase women and, coming way down the list, occasionally wonder what the future might bring. Scratch that. It’s actually really the story of one of the group, Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), a handsome devil in the Richard Burton mould who, as the film starts, is trying to skip town, having impregnated … Read more
The Tao of Steve
“Men and women both want to have sex, but women want to have sex 15 minutes after us, so if you hold out for 20, she’ll be chasing you for five.” Everyone knows a shlubby, none-too-handsome guy in a low-status job who seems to do OK with the ladies. The Tao of Steve analyses that phenomenon, and casts the incredibly likeable Donal Logue as Dex, its hero. His quest – to get laid as often as possible. This he does with ease since he follows “The Tao of Steve” a babe-magnet philosophy borrowed from all the chilled Steves of the world (McQueen, McGarrett, Austin – his list, not mine). Dex may be overweight, he may … Read more
Sleuth
Doubles and doubling feature a lot in Sleuth, the cockeyed comedy thriller from 1972 written by Anthony Shaffer, the identical twin of brother and fellow writer Peter Shaffer. Anthony also wrote Frenzy, for Alfred Hitchcock, and The Wicker Man. Peter wrote Amadeus, Equus and Royal Hunt of the Sun, so no slouch either. They also for a while wrote detective novels together – as Peter Antony. Journalists would often ask the Shaffers whether there was rivalry between them. There was. It featured in Peter’s work (Amadeus is powered by it) and even more obviously in Anthony’s Sleuth, the story of an older man inviting his wife’s younger lover to his home to humiliate … Read more
