Popular Reviews
I’m Your Man
Imagine that, a film called I’m Your Man and no sign of Leonard Cohen on the soundtrack. Or Wham! Partly that’s because this is a German film (originally called Ich bin dein Mensch) but mostly it’s because this funny and clever movie wants to do things its own way. How about a romcom plot involving C-3PO, for instance, to put it in elevator-pitch terms. Of course that’s not who Dan Stevens is playing but there’s more than a hint of the prissy Star Wars robot in Stevens’s portrayal of an AI-juiced man-machine designed expressly to be everything Alma, a university researcher, could want in a partner. As for Alma (Maren Eggert), she’s signed … Read more
Computer Chess
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 March Bobby Fischer born, 1943 On this day in 1943, the future chess grandmaster Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The son of a communist teacher and of either the physicist Paul Nemenyi or the biophysicist Gerhardt Fischer (the FBI believed it was the former), Bobby learnt to play chess aged six and became immediately fascinated with the game. He played against his first master, Max Pavey, aged eight and though he lost it led to an introduction to the Manhattan Chess Club, where he was tutored by William Lombardy, and then the Hawthorne Chess Club, where … Read more
The Equalizer 3
At the beginning of The Equalizer 3 we appear to be in familiar “action hero in retirement” territory. A sunny place. Beautiful scenery. The camera drinking it all in. Surely, any minute we’ll be meeting Denzel Washington in a Hawaiian shirt, a cocktail in one hand, a pretty young woman on his arm, in much the same way Matt Damon or Jason Statham were introduced in follow-ups The Bourne Supremacy and Mechanic: Resurrection. Instead director Antoine Fuqua gives us mayhem, horror, lakes of blood, a man with a machete buried in his face, and, sitting coolly in the middle of it all, one-man vigilante machine Robert McCall (Washington). He’s clearly laid waste to … Read more
Blue Beetle
The DC Extended Universe’s lowest-grossing movie of all time, as I write, is Blue Beetle, which is a slightly unfair way to look at it, since it was originally intended as an HBO or HBO Max or Max (or whatever it’s currently called) release, but got bumped up to theatrical as a result of musical chairs at DC HQ. It’s clearly not had movie money spent on it and you can see that in the special effects, which are used more sparingly than is normal in a superhero movie. Whose plot, you’re wondering, is what? Jaime, a Mexican kid just back from college and hanging out with his struggling family, is physically invaded, … Read more
Survive Style 5+
Five loosely interlinked dollops of gonzo storytelling is the offer in Survive Style 5+. They are all, to an extent, stories of surviving, and there are five of them, so that more or less explains the title. The + could be a reference to the second half of the movie, when things take a turn tonally. It might not. It’s that kind of film. After opening credits that are a frantic display of prime colours and might be described as titles genius Saul Bass seeing God on a mescaline binge, director Gen Sekiguchi gets down to business with his five stories, told in the order 1, 2, 4, 5, 3. Number one is … Read more
Highest 2 Lowest
The least satisfying Spike Lee film I’ve ever seen, Highest 2 Lowest at least has the excuse that it’s Spike Lee in gun for hire mode. Walter Salles, Mike Nicholls and Martin Scorsese were all lined up to direct at various points. It’s mystifying, though, because Lee’s journeyman work is usually better than this. It’s a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, or so the blurbs say. In fact Lee and adapter Alan Fox seem in a hurry to work through Kurosawa’s scenarios, as if they had a more urgent appointment elsewhere. If they did, they’re not telling us what it is. In other words, if you want to see a really … Read more
Happy End
If you’ve never heard of Oldrich Lipský before, here’s your chance to get to know him. Second Run, purveyors of overlooked European movies, are re-releasing Happy End, Lipský’s 1967 comedy. Compared to the titles of other Lipský films – The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen and Adele Has Not Had Her Supper Yet – Happy End sounds almost commonplace. Do not be taken in. Lipský lived from 1924 to 1986 in Czechoslovakia (now Czechia or the Czech Republic) and made comedies suffused with Dada, surrealism and magical realism, the sort of weird stuff that’s often the refuge of the scoundrel. But like fellow Czech (though ten years younger) Jan Švankmajer, … Read more
Stations of the Cross aka Kreuzweg
A powerful and formally austere German drama that does exactly what it says on the label, Stations of the Cross charts the sad journey of one vivacious Catholic girl to an early grave in 14 grim instalments which echo those of Jesus Christ on the way to Calvary. The Catholics also knew the Stations as the Via Dolorosa, or the Way of Sorrows, the Latin name doubly appropriate here since devout, cusping-on-puberty Maria (a remarkable Lea Van Acken) is being prepared for her confirmation by the charismatic Father Weber (Florian Stetter), a priest in a breakaway part of the Catholic Church that still uses Latin. This branch of the Church is also positively … Read more
An Actor’s Revenge
“Stagey” is not usually a compliment when it comes to screen works. But it is in the case of 1963’s An Actor’s Revenge, a Japanese film combining the the dynamism of cinema with the intensity of the theatre experience. Before the action kicks off, a little on-screen note tells us that this was the 300th film performance of its star, Kazuo Hasegawa. Remarkably Hasegawa played exactly the same role when this film was first made in 1935. Housekeeping out of the way, enter the plot, which immerses us straight away in the film’s opening shot. Hasegawa plays an onnagato – a male kabuki actor who specialises in female roles – who is mid-performance … Read more
One False Move
One False Move is the result of Carl Franklin’s realisation, aged 37, that acting wasn’t enough for him and that what he really wanted to be was a director. In 1986 he went back to college to study directing, then worked for two years knocking out pile-em-high product for Roger Corman. He got given his head with this 1991 movie. In terms of plot it’s something like a road movie. Three drugs desperadoes steal a load of money and cocaine in LA, then head to Arkansas, where at least two of them grew up. En route they kill more people, dodge cops and swap one hot car for another. On they press towards … Read more
Stay the Night
Boy meets girl in Stay the Night, a story of an antsy girl and an angry boy who meet by accident in downtown Toronto and dance around each other hesitantly while writer/director Renuka Jeyapalan teases the audience with the old will they/won’t they. Grace (Andrea Bang) works in HR but has just got passed over for promotion. Too standoffish for a people-facing position, her boss says. Too picky generally, her sexually adventurous room-mate tells her. Carter (Joe Scarpellino), meanwhile, is an ice hockey player who’s just been canned from his team. Having taken his position for granted, he’s been coasting – till now. Overnight, if he’s very lucky, his agent might find something for … Read more
The Fallen Sparrow
“In a world at war many sparrows must fall.” A poignant line slightly out of keeping with the hard-boiled characters populating this atypical noir. Unusually on the money politically and psychologically, The Fallen Sparrow is a story about a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War who returns to New York only to find it full of Nazi sympathisers. John Garfield’s decent American John “Kit” McKittrick has been fighting the good fight abroad and is now ready to fight it at home too, even though he’s weighed down with a hefty amount of PTSD after being tortured in Spain. Kit never saw the Nazi who directed Franco’s torturers, he explains early on, but … Read more
