Popular Reviews
The Spectacular Now
Feeling, looking, sounding like a very dark John Hughes film (Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller period), The Spectacular Now also has in Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley exactly the sort of actors Hughes might have cast – not the prettiest, but the most personable, the most “relatable” as we now say. It’s Teller’s first starring role, after standing out in a series of supporting roles, notably adding a gloss to the comedy 21 & Over that the sub-standard joke writing certainly wasn’t delivering. And at first sight he’s playing a similar kind of character, the bright funny jock. Except this isn’t the successful jock the movies encourage us to pity – because of their muscular … Read more
Night and the City
Night and the City is often described as the best film noir out of the UK. It was made by an American director with a French sounding name, Jules Dassin, which is poetically appropriate at least since the US is the home of noir and it was the French who coined the term. The title is surely the noirest of the noir – both night and the city are key elements of the genre. But this is London-based, and with a vengeance. Dassin, having fled the House UnAmerican Committee’s McCarthyite witch hunt after taking Twentieth Century-Fox’s Darryl F Zanuck’s advice to make himself scarce and head to London, took full advantage of a … Read more
14 July 2014-07-14
Out in the UK This Week Under the Skin (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Brian Glazer’s most attention-grabbing film since Sexy Beast is another experiment in genre – this time he’s playing with the idea that audiences know so much about alien invasions that he can tell a story with barely any spoken dialogue, characterisation or much in the way of sets or SFX and we’ll all still get it. So those who think Scarlett Johansson can’t act – she can – will be relieved with her portrayal of the nearly silent but deadly sexy alien who’s driving around Glasgow in a van and inveigling lonely single guys back to her lair, where she takes her … Read more
Our Man in Havana
A quick look at the list of ingredients and the people involved would probably be enough to convince most people that 1959’s Our Man in Havana was going to be a cracker – but it isn’t. It’s a cake full of good things that isn’t, in itself, a good cake. Pity. The promising components include Graham Greene’s screenplay, the presence of Carol Reed as director – these two had already given the world The Third Man and The Fallen Idol – Alec Guinness in a lead role, plus excellent support players including Noël Coward, Ralph Richardson, Burl Ives and Maureen O’Hara, with location shooting in Cuba just post the Castro revolution and cinematography … Read more
False Positive
Films, like False Positive, about a pregnant woman pressured by husband, doctor and peers into taking a particular course of action, are always going to be compared to Rosemary’s Baby. There are no satanists in director/co-writer John Lee’s slice of modern gothic horror but he’s largely happy for his film to face that ordeal. Brave man. We meet nice loving couple Adrian (Justin Theroux) and Lucy (Ilana Glazer). He’s a doctor, she’s in marketing. They can’t get pregnant so they head to a clinic run by an old mentor of Adrian, Doctor Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a kindly, authoritative fertility expert in charge of a modern, bright, smart facility. It’s staffed by Nurses Wendy … Read more
The Wall
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 February Alexander Selkirk rescued, 1709 On this day in 1709, a Scottish sailor named either Alexander Selkirk or Selcraig was rescued from an island in the South Pacific. But the model for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe wasn’t the victim of a shipwreck. In fact he’d asked the captain of the privateer (ie pirate) ship he was sailing on, the Cinque Ports, to leave him on the uninhabited island known as Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernández archipelago about 700km off the coast of Chile. Known since his youth as a quarrelsome sort, Selkirk had been loudly protesting … Read more
Á Nos Amours aka To Our Loves
A crazy mixed up film about a crazy mixed up girl, if it’s nothing else 1983’s Á Nos Amours (To Our Loves, sometimes To Our Romance) is a brilliant showcase for the astonishing Sandrine Bonnaire, sexy as young French stars tend to be, in her debut on screen, possessing it entirely and aged only 15 or so. She plays the effortlessly hot Suzanne, a precocious tease wielding the weapon of her good looks and fully functioning libido in a series of encounters with older men. These dark-haired, worldly and hairy guys are the opposite of Luc (Cyr Boitard), the fair-haired, sulky, smooth-skinned boyfriend of her own age she will dump repeatedly as Suzanne’s … 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
Mill of the Stone Women
1960’s Mill of the Stone Women was the first Italian horror film to be shot in colour – Technicolor, no less – and is a landmark film which opened the door to the lurid looks and titillating scenarios of the giallo genre. Also known as Drops of Blood (or Il mulino delle donne di pietra, in the original Italian), but not in the slightest bit frightening no matter what you call it, it’s soaked in atmosphere only enhanced by the dislocating effect of the foreign language dubbing. It’s dubbed no matter which language you watch it in – originally it came in German, French, Italian and two different English dubs (one more US, the … Read more
Breaking Fast
Can you be gay and a devout Muslim? Breaking Fast wrestles with that problem in, yes, an issue-driven drama tangling with concepts that rarely get an airing. The title stems from the practice of breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast required of committed Muslims during Ramadan. What fasting actually means seems to vary depending on many factors, but for Mo (Haaz Sleiman) it comes down to no food, no drink and no impure thoughts. Mo is gay and out and a Muslim, one who takes his religious observances seriously. As we’re introduced to him and his partner Hassan (Patrick Sabongui), they’re in the teeth of a crisis. Hassan is not out and is currently hyper-ventilating … Read more
Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga
If it does nothing else then Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga reminds us what a bolt from the blue Mad Max: Fury Road was. How, after a string of Mad Maxes offering diminishing thrills (I mean Beyond the Thunderdome), writer director George Miller turned to gentler pursuits – Babe, Happy Feet – before blistering back in 2015 with a sensational action movie that was almost operatic in ambition. Mad Max to the max. Now he’s back again, nine years on from Fury Road, having another go at the same thing, telling the origin story of Furiosa, the one-armed badass then played by Charlize Theron and now played by Alyla Browne (as a wee … Read more
Enter the Void
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 July Matthew Perry arrives in Edo Bay, 1853 On this day in 1853, Commodore Matthew C Perry’s four-ship squadron arrived in Edo Bay (Tokyo Bay today). Japan’s policy towards foreigners was one of total isolation, and had been since 1633 – the penalty for foreigners entering Japan, or Japanese leaving, was death. Perry was determined to open Japan up to US trade, and threatened the Japanese with bombardment to make his point. To demonstrate the superiority of US fire power, he fired on buildings in the harbour, then retreated. In the interim the Japanese fortified their garrison and quickly tried … Read more
