Popular Reviews
Dog Day Afternoon
Look at all those 1960s heist movies – gents with David Niven accents in cat-burglar outfits effortlessly walking out of Monte Carlo with a heist of diamonds. How different the 1970s heist movie. In the decade when it became apparent that, economically, everything was falling apart, director Sidney Lumet caught the mood perfectly in a bank job movie set in a city crumbling faster than most others, New York. And there’s Al Pacino as our hero. Not a normal bank robber, but a slightly rubbish one, married but gay, cackhandedly stealing money so his boyfriend can have a gender reassignment operation – sexual orientation being another one of those little things that seemed … Read more
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
The Storms of Jeremy Thomas is a documentary for people who enjoy the sort of films that Jeremy Thomas gets involved with. The likes of The Sheltering Sky, Sexy Beast, Crash, High-Rise, 13 Assassins or The Dreamers. Smart, good-looking, slightly offbeat stuff, not arthouse exactly – his films are too starry for that. But not your Pixars, or Disneys, or Marvels or Foxes. Thomas is the producer or executive producer behind all of those movies, plus a long run of critical and box office successes going back to the 1970s. A “searingly bright” man of “great taste”, “totally playful” who can be “very serious”, says Debra Winger. “The dream producer… the enabler… so rock’n’roll,” … Read more
Criss Cross
If film noir is about men in the thrall of women being tossed about by cruel fate, Criss Cross is prime noir. Made in 1949, in black and white, and starring Burt Lancaster in his first, noirish iteration, it’s directed by Robert Siodmak, a dab hand at punchy, pitiless drama. The story is told in a strange semi-flashback style. Half of it in the present, where Steve (Lancaster) is a driver of an armoured car working as an inside man for a weaselly criminal about to pull a big heist. The other half back in the past, where we discover why the suburban, mother-loving Steve ended up on the wrong side of the … Read more
Becoming Led Zeppelin
When Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty were setting out to make Becoming Led Zeppelin they didn’t realise that surviving band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones had all seen their TV series American Epic, about roots music in the US, and were big fans. So it came as more than a surprise to them when Page, Plant and Jones readily agreed to take part in a documentary about the crucial early days of one of the most famous rock bands of all time. They’d expected the sort of blank refusal this notoriously publicity shy band generally dished out to would-be suitors. The result is in many ways a traditional documentary, … Read more
Kids in America
How many America high school comedies have you seen? How many more do you want to see? Exactly my thoughts as I slid the DVD of Kids in America into the slot. But I was wrong and happy about it, because this is a smart and funny film, about smart and funny and intensely likeable teenagers who are shown giving nearly everything their best shot because it’s the first time they’ve done any of it. The action revolves around a gang of seven students, more ethnically mixed than your average movie high school clique, who decide that something in their “everything verboten” school has got to change. And it’s not going to be them. … 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
Yes Day
Yes Day not only stars Jennifer Garner but it’s produced by her. It’s her film. It’s another of those goofy family comedies that seem to be her default, the sort of film she returns to when she fancies some more of the 13 Going On 30 action – pop culture-y, adults doing kid stuff, silly, sentimental, a touch magical. It wastes no time getting its offer onto the screen. By 15 minutes in we’ve met Allison (Garner) and Carlos (Edgar Ramirez), two life-affirming novelty-accepting “Yes” people who have got married and discovered that parenting is more about saying “No” – don’t stick your fingers in that socket etc – to the point that their three … Read more
A Place in the Sun
Based on the appropriately named novel An American Tragedy, A Place in the Sun is a noirish and properly tragic melodrama hailed as a nigh-on perfect movie when it came out in 1951. Since then its stock has fallen somewhat, though the first two thirds still work beautifully, thanks in no small part to the performance of Shelley Winters, though Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor’s scenes together also exert a mesmeric pull. Its tragic hero is George (Clift), the poor relation of the wealthy manufacturing family the Eastmans, who, having tapped his uncle for a job, catches the eye of Alice (Winters), a demure sweetie who works alongside him on his uncle’s production … Read more
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Jasmila Zbanic’s powerful drama Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, starts with a sad irony. As the production company idents come up, and various “with the support of” and “in collaboration with” credits list all the European and international organisations involved, remember that when the events in this flm were playing out in real life actual international collaboration seemed to consist of a collective looking the other way. Ask most people, most Europeans even, what the last war in Europe was and they’ll likely refer you to Adolf Hitler. That’s to forget the Bosnian war in the aftermath of the fragmentation of Yugoslavia – familiar as a holiday destination to so … Read more
Jumbo
The opening shot of the skewed romantic drama Jumbo is of a naked Noémie Merlant putting on her clothes in her bedroom. She’s an attractive young woman with a fine body, as the camera makes clear. An edit later and we’re with Jeanne (Merlant) as she bowls out the door and heads off to work. There’s a noticeable difference in her that goes beyond the clothes. Her indoor, naked, persona was bright and bubbly; outdoors Jeanne is mousy, lacking in self-confidence, withdrawn and nowhere near as attractive. But all this is about to change, when Jeanne falls in love with a ride called Jumbo at her local amusement park. A carousel, to be … Read more
12:08 East of Bucharest
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 December Nicholae Ceauşescu executed, 1989 On this day in 1989, Nicolae Ceauşescu, general secretary of the Romanian Communist party since 1965, president of the country since 1967, was tried and convicted by a military tribunal, then taken out and shot by a firing squad, along with his wife Elena. Only the previous month, in November 1989, he had been re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party. Ceauşescu had taken the opportunity to denounce the spread of anti-Communist rebellion throughout Eastern Europe. On 16 December in the city of Timişoara an impromptu demonstration against the eviction … Read more
King Richard
Not taking many chances, but not making any mistakes either, King Richard is a grown-up Hollywood movie made in the classic style – no tricks, no experiments – with a solid Will Smith at its centre, as Richard Williams, the driven father of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams. The Williams sisters have exec-producer credits on the film, so don’t come expecting dirt. Don’t expect this to be a biopic about the tennis phenomenons either. It is what it claims to be: the story of their father as he hustled his daughters to the top. And it shows us what it takes to get poor kids from Compton, LA, to pole position on … Read more
