Popular Reviews
Bodies Bodies Bodies
The thing about those murder mysteries full of celebrity names, where Faye Dunaway or Lauren Bacall swan about among fellow stars until they either wind up dead or are revealed as the killer, is that everyone on the train or in the country house deserves what’s coming to them. There’s an uber-entitlement payback thing going on. Bodies Bodies Bodies understands that dynamic and mints it anew, with a privilege-unchecked gang of nicely rich bright young things, who convene at the big old house owned by the absent dad of one of their number, take drugs, drink, cavort and finally decide to play a game. What I’d call Murder in the Dark they call … Read more
Godzilla vs. Kong
It’s Godzilla vs. Kong but in all honesty it could almost be any Godzilla movie. There’s just something so interchangeable about them all. Grasping for a differentiator you might seize on “cult indie director” as a search filter – but that could be this one (director: Adam Wingard) or 2014’s Godzilla (director: Gareth Edwards). Or how about “the one with Kyle Chandler and Millie Bobby Brown”? Well that could be either this one or 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters (they played the same characters). Or how about “the one with Michael Dougherty’s name on the writing credits?”. That could also be this one or Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, since they … Read more
As Far As I Know
At the Raindance film festival, London, UK, 27 October–6 November 2021 As Far As I Know (Legjobb tudomásom szerint in the original Hungarian) is the smart and subtle feature debut of Nándor Lörincz and Bálint Nagy, a writing/directing duo who have been working together for ten years, with a run of shorts and a couple of TV comedy series under their belt. Lörincz and Nagy are in their mid-30s and their movie is about two people they might hang out with – a smart, cosmopolitan, hipsterish couple from Budapest whose lives are about to be changed for ever by the arrival of a baby. They’re adopting, for reasons which are not initially spelled … Read more
November Criminals
In reverse chronological order November Criminals can refer to this movie from 2017, the book by Sam Munson on which it’s based or the German government in 1918, the one that signed the armistice that ended the First World War – the “November criminals” is what purveyors of the “stab in the back” myth called them at any rate (according to which the elites of Germany “stabbed” their own people by surrendering). Does the last have anything to do with the first two? I have no idea, and having watched the film but not read the book cannot see any connection. But then there is a general sense watching the film that something is … Read more
Cornered
“This is the new Dick Powell,” the trailer insists. “Rougher. Tougher than in Murder, My Sweet.” Cornered is indeed the “new Dick Powell”. Audiences in the late 1930s and early 1940s knew him best as a crooner. But 1944’s Murder, My Sweet changed all that, when Powell became the first screen iteration of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s dog-eared, quippy detective. In an adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely, Powell delivered Chandler’s dialogue with great style – “She was a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who’d take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.” … Read more
Jack Strong
Jack Strong – the name is only heard once in this movie of the same name. It’s the code name of Ryszard Kukliński, a real-life colonel in the Polish army who worked as a spy for the CIA in the period running up to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communism. Much of the advertising for this film, which came out in 2014, centres on Patrick Wilson, who is barely in it, and also Dagmara Domińczyck (now a lot more famous on account of Succession). The two of them are married and so presumably came as a package, Polish-born Polish-speaking Domińczyck having suggested Wilson, I’m guessing. Fine though they … Read more
Talk to Me
Talk to Me announces Danny and Michael Philippou as gifted new arrivals on the Australian indie scene. With a feature debut this strong, how long the twins remain indie and in Australia is anyone’s guess. Apparently they turned down a directing gig on one of the DC Extended Universe movies to do this, so they clearly felt they had something special to offer. And it’s horror, too. With the horror market particularly crowded right now, this makes their determination to go it alone (if two people can be said to go it alone) all the more admirable. So what’s it about? A séance that goes wrong, in short, leading to demonic possession and … Read more
Friendship
It’s hard to discuss a film you viscerally hate, as I did Friendship. Call me a sensitive snowflake but I’m just not into protracted depictions of inadequacy leading to humiliation. This has been Tim Robinson’s shtick in the various TV shows he’s been involved with. Now he’s brought the same cringe persona to a film, all 100 minutes of it. Or writer/director Andrew DeYoung has, in his feature debut, which he wrote expressly for Robinson. And yet I’m giving it three stars. To explain: it’s the difference between liking and admiring, when it comes down to it. I didn’t like Friendship for one minute but it undoubtedly does do what it set out … Read more
Chronopolis
Avant-garde sci-fi stop-motion animation, anyone? French, as well, or made in France, at least, the only full-length feature made by Polish-born Piotr Kamler. “Full-length” is actually a bit of a stretch as a description. Chronopolis is only 52 minutes long, and the original version was 66 minutes, so hardly The Irishman. The shorter one is Kamler’s preferred cut. It removed a chunk of late action and completely obliterated the narration by Michael Lonsdale, the French-born actor of British ancestry who’d turn up now and again in English-speaking movies, often in villain roles (he was Hugo Drax in Moonraker, for instance). But, as said, no sign nor sound of him in the only version … Read more
A Perfect Murder
Andrew Davis has made something of a specialty of directing thrillers. He made Steven Seagal’s best film, Under Siege, and Chuck Norris’s best film too, Code of Silence. He’s also responsible for the breathless chase of The Fugitive and for this remake of Frederick Knott’s play Dial M for Murder, on which Hitchcock based his 1954 movie. The “perfect murder”, beloved of films of a certain vintage, now seems almost as dated a concept as that of the criminal mind. However Davis and adapter Patrick Smith Kelly squeeze a little more mileage out of it by playing up what you might call the Gordon Gecko aspects – cash and deceit. Which brings us … Read more
The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 18 – Mandrake
The United States launched the Echo 2 satellite on 25 January 1964, the day that the Mandrake episode of The Avengers aired. And though the week before’s outing, The Wringer, had been a very up-to-date affair, set in the world of international espionage and modern brainwashing techniques, Mandrake harks back to earlier episodes of the series in its dourness and its down-to-earth setting. Under-the-earth setting, in fact, because the plot concerns itself with a mystery about a string of dead businessmen, all of whom have been buried in the same remote Cornish town, Tinby, for no good reason. They don’t come from there and have no connection to the place. Battle is joined … Read more
Roxie Hart
An A team of acting and technical talent bring their A game to Roxie Hart, the tale of an innocent woman who pleads guilty to a murder in the hope that it’ll further her stage career. The law as an extension of showbusiness, the corrupting effect of the media, never mind the 21st century, this was made in 1942, and retells the true story of murderous Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, who were renamed Roxie and Velma by journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins when she decided to turn some wildly successful newspaper reporting into a 1926 stage play called Chicago. And that’s the way Roxie and Velma remained, as the play became first a … Read more
