Popular Reviews
House
In 1977, inspired by the success of Jaws, Japan’s Toho film corporation decided that it too wanted a slice of that action and so cast about for something similar. House is what they got. A film about a big marauding thing which consumes people indiscriminately, it ticks that one box at least. Commercials director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi wrote the original treatment, and hoped Toho would pick it up. Instead Toho sat on it for two years while its in-house directors all made polite excuses and backed away. Which is how Ôbayashi himself ended up directing it, in his debut feature. Instead of a shark it’s a house that does the consuming, and instead of … Read more
Bill & Ted Face the Music
Quick show of hands, did anyone actually ask for Bill & Ted Face the Music? Thought not, though here it is, around 30 years on from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and their Bogus Journey, back with its original stars, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, a good comedy director at the helm (Dean Parisot of Galaxy Quest fame), and with two talented draftees in there to provide new blood. In fact Reeves expressed an interest in a new instalment as long ago as 2005. Original writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon climbed back on board soon after, and the project was ready to go for about ten years – the studio wasn’t convinced a … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 7 – The Living Dead
The zombie movie was sleeping fitfully in its crypt – George Romero would wake it in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead – when The Avengers episode The Living Dead first aired in February 1967. Steed and Peel, it seems, are now ghosthunters as well as murder investigators, industrial-decline consultants and everyday spies, and are called in after stage drunk Kermit (Jack Woolgar), stumbling home one night espies the lid of a tomb opening and a man in white ascending from it. “The Duke!” Kermit exclaims. Was it the first duke, of 17th century vintage? Or one only recently deceased – “a real man”, according to one local – who died in … Read more
All Sorts
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 You’re either a fan of the wacky, the quirky and the whimsical or you’re not. All Sorts is all three and yet manages to avoid the trap of believing that zaniness trumps everything else, and that it’s a licence to ignore the other considerations of film-making – like crafting a decent a plot. Not everyone is Wes Anderson. In fact, sometimes even Wes Anderson isn’t Wes Anderson. The director and writer here is J Rick Castaneda, of the production outfit Psychic Bunny – their 2009 bite-size web series Coma, Period. (still on YouTube) gave Rob Delaney an early starring role, after which Psychic … 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
The Flash
The Flash is a superhero movie that knows exactly where it is in the scheme of these things – the end of days for costumed heroes – and uses that as a superpower. This film cuts quickly to the chase, doesn’t overdo the lore and knows that laughter is roughage in a superhero diet. It even understands that the obligatory “guys beating the shit out of each other” big finish needs freshening up a touch. We need to talk about Ezra Miller. The onetime star of a film about a teenager with serious issues grew into an adult with problems of his own, problems (multiple lawsuits and accusations flying) that threatened to pull this … Read more
Miroirs No. 3
Because it’s a Christian Petzold film, Miroirs No. 3 is an exercise in watching with the head tilted to one side. How’s he going to do it this time? “It” being either a remake of a familiar film, done with plausible deniability (the classic being Jerichow, an oblique take on The Postman Always Rings Twice). Or a fairy tale/myth reworked in modern dress, Petzold’s other obsession (see Undine or Afire). Is it either here? Or neither? The set-up is downright strange. A piano student is involved in a terrible car accident in which her boyfriend is killed. Instead of heading off to hospital, she moves in with the woman outside whose house the … Read more
John Wick: Chapter 4
Since the last appearance of John Wick, in 2019, Keanu Reeves has been in a Toy Story movie, a Spongebob movie, a Matrix movie and has voiced Batman in the animation Super Pets. Not bad for someone whose career at first glance alternates insane bursts of activity with lengthy snoozes. And so to the insanely grandiose John Wick: Chapter 4, another case of not much seeming to happen punctuated with frenzies of excitement. It’s the first film in the sequence not written by Derek Kolstad, who first pitched the idea of a supercool and unstoppable assassin re-entering the fray after his dog is killed in a screenplay originally titled Scorn. Keanu Reeves liked … Read more
Soft & Quiet
How to discuss Soft & Quiet without saying too much about Soft & Quiet? There is one left-field blindsiding moment early on that changes the entire complexion of the film and which goes on to drive everything that happens in the increasingly fraught and, dare I say it, hysterical second half. Much screaming, much very bad behaviour. And it all starts so nicely. With Emily (Stefanie Estes), a kindergarten teacher of butter-wouldn’t-melt blandness who has organised a meeting of fellow concerned women in the white-picket US town where she lives. At this inaugural meeting, Emily writes the club name, the Daughters for Aryan Unity, up on the whiteboard, before adding underneath, “Feminine not … Read more
Lumumba
Lumumba tells in grimly appropriate bullet points the story of the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister of Congo-Léopoldville from its moment of independence in 1960 to Lumumba’s ousting and killing in a coup less than three months later. If you don’t know anything about Lumumba, Raoul Peck’s film will tell you just enough of what you need to know. How a charismatic and politically engaged young man went from being a successful beer salesman to the country’s first prime minister by espousing national and pan-African ideals. How this stirred resentment from rivals more wedded to a tribal and regional politics. And how they caballed with the ousted rulers of … Read more
The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady
The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady, for those who didn’t get enough musketeering with director Martin Bourboulon’s first trip out in a plumed hat, Part I: D’Artagnan. Shot back to back with the first movie, the sequel has all the strengths of the original, and all the flaws, but more so. It is static and lacking in drama but it does look fantastic, and the cast – who struggle to deliver because there is not a lot to work with – are exactly as you would want them to be. We pick up the story exactly where we left off, with D’Artagnan knocked unconscious while trying to prevent the abduction of his sweetheart, … Read more
This Is My Desire
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” – to borrow a phrase often credited to John Lennon – is the movie This Is My Desire (aka Eyimofe) distilled down to an essence. Told in distinct chapters subtitled Spain and Italy, it follows two denizens of Lagos, Nigeria, and dives into their lives while they wait for the passports and paperwork that will allow them to seek a better life elsewhere. First up, Mofe, and in the film’s opening shot – a tangle of wires bursting like mattress stuffing from an ancient electrical junction box – a metaphor for the whole film. Messy, potentially dangerous, lives lived hugger-mugger in a … Read more
