Popular Reviews
Blink Twice
Men are scumbags and tech bro’s the scumbaggiest of them all. Blink Twice isn’t exactly making the most out-there statement for 2024, but in her directorial debut (she also co-wrote) Zoë Kravitz shows she knows her way around a horror movie, can build mood and tension and get performances out of her stars which are genre-familiar and yet fresh. Kravitz’s current partner, Channing Tatum, is particularly excellent as Slater King, a performative billionaire – think Musk rather than Bezos – who, as the film opens, is apologising with all his heart in an address to the world. He’s sorry for something. Penitent, pleading, he insists he’s learned from whatever he’s done, is now … Read more
The Night Eats the World
The Night Eats the World is a detail-rich zombie procedural ingeniously set in one house, with one main guy as its focus, a couple of “names” doing the sort of walk-on you’d have thought they were above and a lot of extras stumbling about and moaning. Director Dominique Rocher’s feature debut spends a few minutes at the beginning just introducing us to its main character before it hits us. Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie) is at a party he doesn’t want to be at – he’s just there to pick up some belongings after having obviously split acrimoniously with his girlfriend – falls asleep while waiting for her to show him exactly where his bloody … Read more
Shuttlecock aka Sins of a Father
Shuttlecock, it says on the IMDB, with the year 2020 in a bracket. Strange, that guy looks like Alan Bates, I thought to myself as the grainy face of a middle-aged man appeared on the screen. Since Bates died in 2003 this seemed unlikely. Up come the opening credits and there is the name Alan Bates at the top of the list. What am I watching? A bit more digging and I see there’s another film called Shuttlecock on the IMDB, from 1991, also directed by Andrew Piddington and starring… Alan Bates. A bit more digging still and (thank you Wikipedia, and, yes, I have sent some money) a picture starts to emerge, … Read more
Import/Export
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 February Maastricht Treaty signed, 1992 On this day in 1992, the Treaty on European Union, aka the Maastricht Treaty, was signed by members of the European Community, in Maastricht, Netherlands. Its purpose, as its name suggests, was to create a union of Europe. It proposed and established three pillars of the Treaty –the European Community, a common foreign and security policy and a similar arrangement for justice and home affairs. In effect it formalised arrangements that had already existed, but it also extended them – the European Community was the continuation of the European Economic Community, with the “Economic” being … Read more
Dune
“Dreams are messages from the deep,” it says right up at the front of Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation of Dune, possibly a nod to David Lynch, whose hazy 1984 version crashed and burned in spectacular, almost sci-fi fashion. Other nods – the design of the stillsuits and the sandworms for instance – also hark back to Lynch, a magnanimous gesture on the part of Villeneuve who, after Arrival and Bladerunner 2049, has nothing to prove in the realm of sci-fi. Lynch was being pulled in two directions when he was making his version of Frank Herbert’s novel. He wanted to make a David Lynch film, all dreamy and out there. But there was … Read more
Flora and Ulysses
Flora and Ulysses is a bright Disney family movie with a “turn that frown upside down” message, lively performances, funny bits that are funny, a cute kid in the lead, fantastic supporting turns. If it sounds like there’s a “but” coming, not a bit of it. The film provides its own corrective in the shape of Flora herself. “I’m a cynic,” says the ten-year-old (played by Matilda Lawler) who’s wise beyond her years and actually not cynical at all. She’s hurt – because her father (Parks and Recreation’s Ben Schwartz) has left the family home and her mother Phyllis (Alyson Hannigan) is struggling to write her latest romantic novel. Struggling because husband George, … Read more
Tangos, the Exile of Gardel
You don’t have to know who Carlos Gardel is for El Exilio de Gardel: Tangos (aka Tangos, the Exile of Gardel) to work its magic. Nor do you need to know much about the political situation in Argentina in the 1980s to be affected by the film. You can just watch it for its fabulous tango dancing – to the music of Astor Piazzolla – and come away feeling like you’ve been served up something sumptuous and meditative. There is a sadness to tango music and it suits what’s going on here, an experimental melding of backstage musical with political agitprop, centred on a group of Argentinian exiles – intellectuals, dancers, musicians, academics – putting … Read more
Old Men in New Cars
Two things impelled me towards 2002’s Old Men in New Cars (Gamle Mænd i Nye Biler in the original Danish). The first was the quirky title, which has no real connection with anything that happens in the film. The second was the name Kim Bodnia at the top of the credits. You might know him as the Danish half of the Danish/Swedish investigative duo in the original The Bridge. Or, maybe, as the Russian control of assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve. In both he brought a dry, subtle wit to characters it would be easy to overplay and he does something similar here, though hold the “subtle”. There is nothing at all understated … Read more
Dead Man’s Wire
In 1977 Tony Kiritsis walked into a loan company in Indianapolis and took mortgage broker Richard Hall hostage. With a gun to his hostage’s head, and a wire connecting Hall’s neck to the trigger, Kiritsis had the broker where he wanted: any interference and Kiritsis would pull the trigger; should Hall make a sudden movement, then the “dead man’s wire” would activate the trigger. The police, who were soon on the scene, were helpless. Kiritsis had a beef with the company, which he claimed had lent him a lot of money to develop a shopping mall and then engineered things so the project would fail. In the process Kiritsis had gone bust and, … Read more
Man on Wire
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 March Karl Wallenda dies, 1978 On this day in 1978, Karl Wallenda, founder of The Flying Wallendas, a daredevil circus act, died aged 73. Born into a family of circus people in Germany, Karl had begun performing aged six. By 17 he had his own act, with his brother and girlfriend. By the age of 23 he was performing in the USA. Karl developed the seven-person chair pyramid (on a wire), which was a showstopping part of the Wallendas’ routine, and performed it regularly until it went wrong, killing two members of the troupe (Wallenda’s son-in-law and nephew), paralysing another … Read more
The Magician
It’s only while watching The Magician, a cult Australian movie from 2005, that it really hits home how prissy other mockumentaries are. Scott Ryan’s film goes in with both feet and by getting it wrong – wrong lens, bad lighting, framing all over the place – he gets that on-the-fly feeling just right. It’s the pretend-real story of a hitman called Ray, played by Ryan himself, a wiry and wired gun for hire with a bullet head and a bullet ready for a victim in the film’s opening moments, all very indistinct, though we do manage to glean that the hit has been accomplished and Ray will be paid. The rest of the film … Read more
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
Young couple PJ and Brianne check in to a holiday cabin. They’re in love. He’s intending to propose later that evening. But before that, they go out to dinner, PJ gets on the wrong side of some local rednecks and things almost get physical. Back at the cabin, while PJ showers, Brianne is attacked and dismembered by a person or thing unknown. When the cops show up, there are body parts everywhere and Brianne’s vagina is missing. That gruesome detail is emblematic of a film otherwise made strictly to a formula, the twist added by writer/director/star Jim Cummings lifting everything onto another plane. This sort of thing used to happen from time to … Read more
