Popular Reviews
Co/Ma
In 2004 director Mike Figgis led a “master class”, a five day workshop in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for some of Europe’s hot, upcoming talent. Co/Ma is the result of the collaboration, a film made by the members of the course and shown to them, and a few paying members of the public, at the end of the week. Co/Ma stands for Cooperative Marxists/Collaborative Masterclass, a name that seems designed to aggravate as much as the finished product. Which is… a dog’s breakfast, if we’re being brutal. Or a deliberately tricksy film playing with postmodern tropes, if we’re not. In form it’s a documentary about a mockumentary about the making of a soap, and perhaps the … Read more
The Avengers: Series 4, Episode 7 – The Murder Market
The Murder Market is one of the episodes first shot with Elizabeth Shepherd playing Mrs Peel, then reshot with Diana Rigg in the role after it was decided that Shepherd didn’t fit the bill. Hence the two directors on the imdb credits – Wolf Rilla shot the original, Peter Graham Scott this version, which eventually was broadcast on 12 November 1965, a Friday night, rather than the usual Saturday (in the London region at least). Order was restored the following Saturday. The title is a weak pun on “meat market” since the plot revolves around a dating agency with a natty sideline in murdering people – as established in the opening scene in … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 2 – Game
After new opening titles – a mix of the medieval (Steed’s swordplay with his brolly) and the modern (Tara King in sophisticated black evening dress and then action-girl attire) – we’re off into Game, the first proper Tara King era episode of The Avengers. The excellent Robert Fuest (director of The Abominable Dr Phibes) is at the helm, directing a screenplay by Richard Harris which re-uses elements of his Winged Avenger episode in series 5. That was a revenge plot built around a character getting payback for something that happened long ago. This is the same idea, though the way in which payback is given is more elaborate – here the men involved … Read more
Four Nights of a Dreamer
Often pitched as Robert Bresson’s most accessible film, Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d’un rêveur) is, for him, a wild ride. Not exactly pulsing with vivid event, perhaps, but by Bressonian standards highly unusual. The people in it, for example, actually act, rather than read out the words with as little emotion as possible. There is music, it’s in colour. There’s nudity… sex… heartbreak. Wind the expectations in a touch for the actual film, which follows two young people over four nights. Jacques is a whimsical poetic type who falls in love with women – women on the street – too easily. As we meet him he’s gazing longingly at one … Read more
23 November 2015-11-23
Out This Week Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (Paramount, cert 12) Tom Cruise’s desire to be James Bond really gets the better of him in M:I5, a flabby action spectacular which has visited Vienna, London, Langley, Paris and Havana within its first 20 minutes or so, right after the pre-credits sequence which sees Jason Bourne, hang on, Ethan Hunt clambering onto the outside of a cargo plane as it’s taking off. A stunt done for real, we’re told, and impressive whether it was or wasn’t. Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed, so there’s plenty of that “who is the real bad guy?” attitude that was the making of The Usual Suspects, but here is … Read more
Love Lies Bleeding
The spirit of Jim Thompson takes Thelma and Louise for a ride in Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’s follow-up to her feature debut, Saint Maud. That was a tortured, angst-ridden tale about the overlap between mental illness and religious belief – with a helluva twist. This is a dark and gruesome story tale about sex, death and bodybuilding with such a small sprinkling of comedy that you might not notice it. But also a twist you won’t see coming. The above-the-line star is Kristen Stewart, in another of her Joan Jett-style feather-cut-n-jeans roles as the bozo black sheep of a crime family who we meet literally arm deep in turds as she unblocks … Read more
Souleymane’s Story
Souleymane’s Story got lots of love on the festival circuit and made it onto quite a number of the Best Of 2025 lists. And yet it’s about the immigrant experience. I say “And yet” because, face it, your heart sinks a bit at the prospect of watching some poor sap having a relentlessly terrible time at the hands of the authorities. Director Boris Lojkine clearly understands that too, and has decided that the way to persuade audiences to watch his film is to give them energy and thriller vibes. An Uncut Gems of the French sans papiers is the result. It’s a familiar story, following Souleymane (Abou Sangaré), who works as a food-delivery … Read more
The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism
There was a vogue for films like The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism in the 1960s. Lurid shockers that were little more than a vivid title in search of a good idea – Torture Chamber was often shown in a double bill with Mad Doctor of Blood Island, another prime example. Put another way, what you paid for wasn’t necessarily what you got. There’s not much in the way of a torture chamber in this German horror movie, and absolutely no one in it called Dr Sadism. Instead, at the beginning and end, we meet Christopher Lee playing someone called Count Regula (that’s Regula, not Dracula, you understand), a blood-sucking creature who is … Read more
S-a Furat o Bombă aka A Bomb Was Stolen
The Romanian animator Ion Popescu-Gopo’s live-action film S-a Furat o Bombă (translated as A Bomb Was Stolen or They Stole the Bomb) was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1962. It had very little chance of winning, since it was up against Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc, Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Eclisse and Satyajit Ray’s Devi. But it was there, an achievement in itself for someone who’d never made a live-action film before. Popescu-Gopo’s animated short, Scurtă Historie (A Brief History) had won the Short Film Palme d’Or in 1957. It’s also a film without dialogue, another potential handicap, though … Read more
Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm
Sacha Baron Cohen retired his anti-semitic fake Kazakh TV journalist after the first Borat movie, 14 years ago, reasoning that when someone is that well known the joke – unsuspecting members of the public gulled into compromising situations – won’t work any more. So he either felt the time was right or he needed the money his most famous creation can raise – make benefit the Baron Cohen bank account – and out Borat is wheeled for what is essentially a re-run of the first film. That had a quest structure – Borat searching for Pamela Anderson – and so has this, except this time Borat is crossing the USA to meet Vice … Read more
Killers of the Flower Moon
It turns out that one of the many uses of Killers of the Flower Moon is as a film for baby-friendly screenings. My daughter-in-law takes her new son to these on Tuesday mornings and recently reported back that the great thing about Martin Scorsese’s latest is that she could take the baby out of the auditorium to be changed or fed and then go back into the screening some time later and not really have missed much. There’s quite a lot of redundancy, in other words. It may be stylish redundancy delivered by a director fully confident of what he’s doing but you could easily cut half an hour from this film and … Read more
Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire
So this is how it ended. The 2005 TV movie Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire was meant to be a reboot for Chuck Norris and co. Instead poor ratings turned it into a swansong for Norris’s most famous character, the taciturn tough-but-fair cop who over an eight-year run on TV (1993-2001) had always had a martial-arts roundhouse kick at the ready for anyone who wouldn’t come quietly. Norris borrowed most of his shtick from Clint Eastwood in his Man with No Name days. Just stand there and look enigmatic is a sound choice if you can’t really act, which Norris can’t. That lack of basic chops – he’s a beat behind even … Read more
