Popular Reviews
Au Pair Girls
Known in the US as The Young Playmates, Au Pair Girls is a ripe chunk of British cheese from 1972 and a prime example of the sort of film the UK was making at the time. A simple story of four girls arriving in the UK and then having various adventures, most of which involve them losing their clothes, Au Pair Girls really benefits from its feisty female leads, Astrid Frank, Gabrielle Drake, Me Me Lai and Nancie Wait. They’re an interesting bunch. Astrid Frank appeared in French, German and English language movies, switching from a French movie with Jean Gabin (1970’s Horse) to sexploitationers such as Swinging Wives or Swedish Love Games. … Read more
Cuties aka Mignonnes
The day I watched Cuties, 24 September 2020, it had 21,348 votes on the IMBD user ratings. 16,355 of those were one star reviews. And then I remembered that the film been caught up in one of those social media shitstorms, with its distributor the focus of a #CancelNetflix campaign. The overall 2.7/10 rating looked like the result of an orchestrated hit. The campaign against the film drew support from across the political spectrum, though a trawl of Twitter suggests a lot of its supporters were outraged social conservatives. So much for Cancel Culture (a series of unrelated memes bundled together and then mis-sold as an actual culture) being an unsavoury aspect of … Read more
Bridge to Terabithia
Walden Media are the Christian folk who believe in films with tone, uplift and a bright message. They brought us the dreary Narnia film, you might remember, and are at it again with this resolutely nice adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s book about a picked-on schoolboy Jesse (Josh Hutcherson) who discovers the key to beating his fears after new girl in town Leslie (AnnaSophia Robb) introduces him to the power of imagination. And as in Narnia, there’s a definite class component in Terabithia. Jesse is a blue-collar boy and Leslie’s parents are writers, which reinforces one of the tacit assumptions of nearly all imaginative literature and drama – the life of the mind is … Read more
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Political hotheads start revolutions but it’s the apolitical masses who win them when they abandon the old regime. The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shot in secret in Iran by Mohammad Rasoulof and it’s set against the backdrop of the Masa Amini protests of 2022. This was the moment when, after the Iranian morality police killed a young woman for not wearing a hijab, nationwide civil unrest broke out and for a moment it looked like the regime was going to topple. It survived to fight another day, which lends Rasoulof’s film an extra piquancy. His film is history as written by the losers not the winners, an examination of something very … Read more
Nobody’s Hero
A middle aged Frenchman in running lycra approaches a prostitute. I really fancy you, he says, or words to that effect, but on principle I don’t believe in prostitution. I wonder if you’d consider a job off the clock. Oh no, sir, she replies, faintly amused by the directness of the man’s approach, I’m married and my husband is really not OK with me seeing other men when I’m not working. And so starts Viens, Je t’emmène (Nobody’s Hero), the latest farce of everyday sexual goings-on from Alain Guiraudie, whose Stranger by the Lake (2013) remains one of the most memorable films I’ve seen in the last ten years, if only because of … Read more
The Virginian
The Virginian’s ambitions aren’t that great. It wants to be a normal, everyday western like they used to make, in which man’s-gotta-do men negotiate morality in a lawless world, a baddie wore a black hat and a fair lady was open to a bit of courting as long as it was respectful. Can such a western be made? Is there an audience for it? The TV show The Virginian, which this isn’t, was one of several long-running series with high production values and fine actors. It ran for 249 shows over nine years, a way behind Bonanza (430 episodes between 1959 and 1973) and Gunsmoke (635 episodes between 1955 and 1975). Together, with … Read more
The Substance
Youth is wasted on the young in The Substance, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s long, exciting and technically brilliant sci-fi fable swaggering like a 1980s action movie. Demi Moore plays Judith Sparkle, the ageing actress who takes “the substance” after being nudged in the direction of the age-reversing serum by a doctor with too-blue eyes, too-tight skin and too-perfect hair. With a wave of a magic syringe she has soon budded, allowing a younger version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley) to go out and play in Hollywood, leaving the aged and inert husk back at the ranch. The wrinkle is that it’s a week on, a week off. Every seven days Young Judith has … Read more
Love Exposure
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 November Premiere of Ravel’s Bolero, 1928 On this day in 1928, Ravel’s Bolero made its debut at the Paris Opera. Ravel was originally going to call the work Fandango but changed his mind to Bolero, keeping his original intention – which he almost apologetically in later years would describe as “orchestral tissue without music… there are no contrasts and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.” Bolero is a long rhythmic crescendo, starting out with a simple rat-tatta-ta-tat-tatta-ta-tattata-tattata-tat snare drum, a sinuous melody over the top, at first with just a few members of the orchestra … Read more
Foto Háber aka Haber’s Photo Shop
There’s a lot that’s good about Foto Háber (aka Haber’s Photo Shop), a pithy Hungarian spy thriller from 1963, but it does have one obstacle to surmount. Of which more later. One of the best things is Zoltán Latinovits as the cool, calm spy infiltrating an espionage ring that steals state secrets. Or secrets, let’s just say secrets, of which more, also, later. We meet Gábor Csiky (Latinovits) in a prison where he’s introduced as an ex-priest and theologian – the other inmates refer to him as “Reverend”. When they ask him what he’s in there for, Gábor replies “political stuff”, modestly. One inmate points out that, rationally, all crime, no matter how … Read more
Ryan Reynolds and the Death of the Real Man
All aboard Ryan Reynolds, prime example of Hollywood’s new breed of depilated, exfoliated, irrigated masculine star. Whatever happened to real men? From out of the low, strong sun, three figures ride towards the camera, tall in the saddle, squinting into the wind. As they hit medium shot, John Wayne turns to the compadre on his left and parts the lips on his line-free face to reveal two rows of snowy white teeth. Meanwhile the man he is about to address, Clint Eastwood, has thrown aside his poncho to reveal a shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his tan, hairless chest cresting sensually towards what might or might not be a nipple ring. And on … Read more
Dellamorte Dellamore aka Cemetery Man
First, Dellamorte Dellamore is a much better title for a movie than Cemetery Man, which is how it went out in English speaking countries in 1994. Cemetery Man suggests something slasher-inspired, maybe. Dellamorte Dellamore, and its literal translation, Of Death, Of Love, something much more gothic and weird. And that’s exactly what this mad piece of super-cultish garage grindcore is. It’s Italian, who are good at weird, and is based on the novel Dellamorte Dellamore by Tiziano Sciavi. Sciavi had based his main character in an earlier work, the comicbook Dylan Dog, on the actor Rupert Everett (specifically the listlessly upper-class Rupert Everett character in Another Country) and so when it came time … 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
