Popular Reviews
The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 17 – Box of Tricks
A thin, confusingly plotted and frankly rather dull episode is only emphasised by the terrible picture and sound quality (on the old box set I’m watching this series on, anyway). And it’s a Venus Smith episode, which means a song from the chanteuse, but not until after the opening credits. Before they roll, we watch as a magician in the night club does the disappearing lady trick. Glamorous assistant enters magic box covered in spangles. Magician utters the magic words. Glamorous assistant exits magic box covered in spangles and blood – dead. We cut to a seemingly unrelated story, set in the house of a senior military gent (Maurice Hedley) in a wheelchair, overseen … Read more
The Hit
A US remake has long been mooted but has never happened, but would it be any better than the original 1984 The Hit, Stephen Frears’s second non-TV movie? I doubt the casting could be any better – Terence Stamp as Willie Parker, a lag who squealed years before who’s now been tracked down to Spain by guys paid to bring him in for payback. John Hurt as Braddock, the taciturn leader of the abduction op. Tim Roth as Myron, Braddock’s hotheaded young assistant. And Laura del Sol as Maggie, a sexy young woman caught up in the midst of things. First the background – Willie ten years before singing like a bird in court. Then … Read more
Hannibal
This may not be the best film out this week, but it is the one that is shouting loudest. Who doesn’t want to see Anthony Hopkins return to the role of Hannibal the Cannibal after several years of haggling over his fee, which includes an agreement to make one more film featuring everyone’s favourite cultured cannibal? Hannibal’s plot sees Hopkins’s Dr Lecter returning to the USA, having been lured back from Italy by an elaborate hoax cooked up by Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a former victim of Lecter’s, who has survived a fiendish munching and is now using Agent Clarice Starling as bait to get payback. The plot is familiar cat v mouse … Read more
In Her Hands
Two Brits starring in a French film. In Her Hands (Au bout des doigts in French) didn’t get a theatrical release in the UK or the US, so if the strategy was to guarantee anglosphere box-office action by casting Lambert Wilson and Kristin Scott Thomas (both of whom speak fluent French), it clearly hasn’t worked. The film did get some exposure in Canada (plenty of French speakers) and Australia, where it was called In Your Hands. Perhaps that’s all a bit of red herring, because, though Wilson and Scott Thomas’s names come up first in the screen credits, it’s actually Jules Benchetrit who’s the star here. In his first major role, Benchetrit plays … Read more
Repulsion
1965’s Repulsion is one of the greatest hits of the “apartment horror” genre. Expressionistic, claustrophobic and intense, it’s part try-out for Rosemary’s Baby, part grab for commercial success, so Roman Polanski could make enough money to finance Cul-de-Sac, his next film. He succeeded. Repulsion was a box office and critical hit, and is now considered one of Polanski’s finest. Polanski himself doesn’t seem quite so enamoured. On the commentary track he describes some of his more florid moments as “artsy fartsy”. A touch too overwrought, maybe. But then it was the mid 1960s. Psycho and Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath had teed audiences up for a certain kind of theatricality, which Polanski gives them … Read more
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
A film of two halves, two time periods and, in fact, two films, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World also tells two stories. In one the everyday travails of a production assistant driving around Bucharest auditioning injured people to appear in a public information film about workplace safety. In the other, snatches of a 1981 movie, Angela Moves On, the adventures of a female taxi driver in the same city 40 years earlier. In the here and now we have Angela Raducanu (Ilinca Manolache), an earthy, forthright woman with a love of a dirty joke. When not charging about the city filming potential (injured) candidates for the film, … Read more
A Boy Called Christmas
A superhero origin story of sorts, A Boy Called Christmas is vague about the costumed crusader it has in mind. Is it Saint Nicholas, aka Santa Claus? Or his pagan predecessor, Father Christmas, the white-bearded giftbringer who “flew” through the winter night on his fleet-footed steed possibly with aerial assist from hallucinogenic mushrooms? Slight quibble to one side, this is a sweet, middle-of-the-road story about a boy’s Christmas-y fairytale quest to find Elfhelm, home of the elves, and it builds gently and unexceptionally towards an emotional climax that might catch you off guard. The Princess Bride is the quasi-template, with Maggie Smith in the Peter Falk role as the storytelling aunt babysitting her … Read more
The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux’s famous story of the Phantom – who lives in the bowels of the Paris opera house, falls for a pretty singer and wreaks terrible revenge when she won’t play footsie – seems to have a strange effect on artists. Leroux went super-gothic – very pretty girl, monstrous beast, subterranean caverns, stygian doom, death by fire and water and so on. And everyone since has more or less kept up the melodramatic pace, right down to Andrew Lloyd Webber – ‘the phantom of the opera is there/Inside your mind’ cackle, twirl. This 1925 silent film is actually the best of the lot – it’s got Lon ‘Man Of A Thousand Faces’ Chaney … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 7 – False Witness
An episode of The Avengers with the name of director Charles Crichton on it is usually a good sign. A claim borne out by False Witness, a permutation on a favourite of showrunner Brian Clemens – mind control – scripted by Jeremy Burnham in such a way as to keep us guessing what’s going on for a quite a while. But back to Crichton, whose Ealing films like The Lavender Hill Mob show a fondness for getting out of the studio when possible. He satisfies his urge here, adding a layer of fascination for anyone keen to have a look at London’s streets in the 1960s. So much of The Avengers was shot … Read more
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Having paused for 38 years to catch its breath, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reminds us what we loved about the original 1988 movie… and what we found slightly less than satisfying. 1988 was when some of today’s biggest actors were born – Emma Stone and Glenn Powell for instance. It was the year of Seoul Olympics. And it was around then that Tim Berners-Lee started messing about with a concept that would become the World Wide Web. So, yes, a while ago. Clicking right through back to the present, there’s no sign of Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis in this sequel but a lot of the cast and crew are back – most crucially Michael Keaton … Read more
Decoy
Decoy is a tightly wound, plot-driven noir from producer/director Jack Bernhard, who made it in an attempt to turn his British wife, “Miss Jean Gillie” as she’s billed, into a Hollywood star. It didn’t work, though Gillie is actually very good as Bernhard’s female lead. Anticipating the femme fatale character of Gloria Grahame to some extent, complete with overpainted top lipline, Gillie plays Margot Shelby, the girlfriend of condemned murderer Frankie Olins (Robert Armstrong), who comes up with a plan to spring him from death row – by injecting an antidote to the lethal toxin administered in the gas chamber, thus bringing Frankie back to life after his execution. Do not try this … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 10 – Noon-Doomsday
High Noon, the 1952 movie starring Gary Cooper, is the inspiration behind this Terry Nation-scripted episode of The Avengers. Nation had done something similarly pastiche-y the previous week with Legacy of Death, an episode that leaned on 1940s noir. Quick thumbnail of High Noon – Gary Cooper is the good guy finding everyone in the town has a pressing previous engagement, leaving him to fend alone when a bad guy comes calling. An injured Steed takes his place here, his broken leg forcing him to convalesce in a very exclusive sanatorium (Brian Clemens’s farm, in fact) and finding himself increasingly isolated and vulnerable as a sworn enemy comes ever closer. The episode has … Read more
