Popular Reviews
Murder, My Sweet
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 November Dick Powell born, 1904 On this day in 1904, Dick Powell was born. A remarkably adaptable man, Powell started his career as a singer in the 1920s, then became a movie star in the 1930s. In the 1940s he switched from light comedy and musical films to weightier, tough-guy roles. In the 1950s he was one of the founders of a TV company, Four Star Television, who made The Big Valley and Burke’s Law, among other hits shows, and gave an early leg up to talent such as Steve McQueen, Mary Tyler Moore and Sam Peckinpah. Powell also became … Read more
Wer
In any fight for the top slot in the “humanoid monsters of the movies” competition, zombies and vampires fight it out to be number one, while werewolves lope along way behind. It could be worse – the mummies in their tatty bandages get barely any attention and even further down the field are invisible men who are hardly ever seen (geddit?). So maybe the werewolf doesn’t have it too bad, all things considered. At first glance 2013’s Wer appears to be in the business of pushing the fanged, hirsute lycanthrope even further down the pecking order. But first a pre-credits sequence in which a nice French family on a camping holiday are subjected … Read more
Birth
Birth doesn’t quite sit with Jonathan Glazer’s other films. As I write (February 2024), his latest, The Zone of Interest, is attracting awards like an MRI scanner attracts spoons. As did Glazer’s debut, Sexy Beast, in 2000, and the film that followed Birth, 2013’s Under the Skin. As for Birth, it was booed at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its current rating on Rotten Tomatoes puts it around 40% “fresh”. Rotten, in other words. People probably need to take another look. First thing: it’s brilliantly made. Second thing: it’s brilliantly acted, with a great cast all rising to the challenge. Third thing: the plot. This is where it does come … Read more
Meshes of the Afternoon
Scan the most recent (2022) of Sight and Sound magazine’s polls of the greatest films of all time (critics are polled every ten years) and you’ll see films you know intimately (Singin’ in the Rain or Vertigo, maybe), films you might have seen once or twice (The Searchers, Playtime) and films by directors you’ve heard of but maybe aren’t over-familiar with (Ozu, Murnau, Varda, Renoir, Denis). And then, in the number 16 slot there’s Meshes of the Afternoon. Chances are you’ve not heard of it, or of its makers, Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied. But there it is. It stands out for other reasons too. It was made in 1943 and is silent … Read more
The Curious Return of Douglas Sirk
What is it about a film-maker who died around 25 years ago in obscurity that fascinates a new generation of directors? The director Douglas Sirk died in 1987 aged 90. Born in Hamburg as Detlef Sierck, he became well known for his string of lush melodramas made in Hollywood in the 1950s. Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), The Tarnished Angels (1957), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) and Imitation of Life (1959) are considered his key works. The French “auteurists” were the first to start the re-assessment of Sirk in the late 1950s – the distinctive look of his films marking them out as … Read more
Beau Is Afraid
Three’s a trend, so they say, and with Beau Is Afraid writer/director Ari Aster does just what his previous two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, did – he gets everyone talking. Terrible, some said. Brilliant, said others. Maybe it can be both at the same time, you could conclude, sitting right on the fence. And, fence-sitting coming naturally to some people, that is what it is – a brilliant meta-movie that simply doesn’t know when to stop and so outstays its welcome. In one of many comedy moments which seem less well advised the longer Beau Is Afraid goes on – it’s three hours long – Aster starts the action at the moment Beau … Read more
A Perfect Enemy
Keeping its cards close to its chest, almost until it’s too late, A Perfect Enemy is one of those low-budget Euro-thriller co-productions that also (eventually) makes some sense of its transborder elements, particularly its cast. There are only really two people, in a “starring” sense, in any case. The Polish actor Tomasz Kot you might know from Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War. He plays Jeremiasz Angust, a onetime high-flier architect who’s cashed in the status jobs and become even more of a somebody by taking on work that’s strictly humanitarian – hospitals in Rwanda, and the like, he tells the audience at the Ted-style talk he’s giving as the film opens. And Athena Strates, … Read more
What War May Bring
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 December President Truman declares the Second World War over, 1946 On this day in 1946, the US President declared that hostilities had come to an end in the Second World War. Whether this means that the war itself ended on that day depends on your terms. The war in Europe ended on VE day (8 May 1945). Some suggest that the war ended with the defeat of Japan and the signing of an armistice, with VJ day (14 August 1945). Still others reckon the war can’t be termed over until the signing of the peace treaty with Japan (1951). And … Read more
The Wrong Man
Atypical and yet very typical, 1956’s The Wrong Man is Alfred Hitchcock’s tilt at those noirish ripped-from-the-headlines crime dramas that were all the rage when people still said “all the rage”, films sold on authenticity and with a dedication to telling it how it was. That’s what’s behind Hitchcock dropping his usual comedy cameo early in this movie and settling instead on a moody, backlit intro in which the man himself informs us that what we are about to see is stranger than all the films he’s made before, and yet… “this is a true story. Every bit of it.” He is pretty much as good as his word. This is the story … Read more
Persuasion
Before popping up seemingly out of nowhere when he directed Notting Hill, Roger Michell had had a successful career as a theatre director, at the groundbreaking Royal Court Theatre in London with Samuel Beckett and John Osborne (where he also met Danny Boyle), before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and then switching to directing for TV. Persuasion was his second gig for the BBC, and considering that stories of difficult love (Notting Hill, The Mother, Venus) would be his future, and the theatre was his past, it is the Venn diagram overlap of the two spheres. His cast for Persuasion is theatrical through and through, Amanda Root (an RSC stalwart) … Read more
Rare Exports
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 December Saint Nicholas dies, 343AD On this day in 343AD (or CE if you prefer), Nikolaos of Myra died. Born in 270AD, in Patara, Greece, to rich parents, Nikolaos was a devout Christian who became a priest, then a bishop and attended the First Council of Nicea, where he was against the Arian heresy (which states that Jesus is subordinate to God), and signed the Nicene Creed, which is still the mainstream declaration of Christianity to this day. On a less bureaucratic level, Nikolaos became known for the miracles he worked during his life (bringing murdered children back to life, … Read more
The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady
The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady, for those who didn’t get enough musketeering with director Martin Bourboulon’s first trip out in a plumed hat, Part I: D’Artagnan. Shot back to back with the first movie, the sequel has all the strengths of the original, and all the flaws, but more so. It is static and lacking in drama but it does look fantastic, and the cast – who struggle to deliver because there is not a lot to work with – are exactly as you would want them to be. We pick up the story exactly where we left off, with D’Artagnan knocked unconscious while trying to prevent the abduction of his sweetheart, … Read more
