Popular Reviews
The Others
Oddly, quite a few people hated this atmospheric ghost story when it came out. It’s a tale with a twist, set just after the end of the Second World War and it’s directed by the Spaniard Alejandro Amenábar. He was a cult name back then, thanks to Tesis and Abre Los Ojos and perhaps he was a bit too out there for some tastes. Nicole Kidman plays the woman waiting for her missing husband to return from the war, a too-dutiful mother who keeps their kids locked away from the light (they’re allergic to it, she says) in a weird dark house kept functioning by a trio of servants. They, we have seen, turned up … Read more
The Brooding Intensity of Michael Fassbender
Passion, power and emotional ferocity are all hallmarks of aMichael Fassbender performance. But is he just a kitten in real life? Here’s a funny thing. I’m in the audience at the New York Film Festival. On stage director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender are answering questions about the disturbing, brilliant film that’s just been shown. Shame, McQueen and Fassbender’s follow-up collaboration to the gruelling Hunger has Fassbender delivering a volcanic performance as a sex addict who’s either dialling rent-a-hooker, beating off at work or devouring porn at home. Intense, dark stuff. Someone from the floor asks Fassbender a question about the relationship between the two damaged lead characters, a brother and sister … Read more
The Girl with the Needle
Imagine reading Oliver Twist and suddenly Jack the Ripper turns up in it. The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen in the original Danish) is a bit like that. A bracingly miserablist trek through the life of one of the urban poor in post-First World War Denmark, its Dickensian traipse from one grim situation to the next is interrupted towards the end with the dawning realisation that its heroine, poor benighted Karoline, has somehow wandered into the orbit of Dagmar Overby, Denmark’s most prolific serial killer. The film never tells us that the Dagmar on screen is Overby but the woman portrayed is presented as a serial murderer of infant children, which … Read more
5 May 2014-05-05
Out in the UK This Week Like Father, Like Son (Arrow, cert PG, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) A couple of years ago Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda made an enchanting film called I Wish, about two separated brothers, the importance of family ties being its theme. With Like Father, Like Son he’s similarly sure-footed and on the same turf but is coming at it from a slightly different direction. The story of the Nonomiyas, a well-to-do couple who discover that their five-year-old son isn’t actually their son at all – a mix-up in the maternity ward – this drama is all about the competing values of rearing over blood. The white-collar family discover that the owner … Read more
The American
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 May George Clooney born, 1961 On this day in 1961, George Timothy Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Raised a Catholic in a showbiz family (father a news anchor, aunt singer Rosemary Clooney, mother a beauty queen), George was a bright student. He was also adept at sport and at one point wanted to become a professional baseball player. Instead he studied broadcast journalism, taking small roles as an extra on TV to make a bit of money on the side, turning up in shows such as Centennial and The Golden Girls before getting a semi-regular gig on the sitcom … 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
Rampart
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 3 March Rodney King beating caught on camera, 1991 On this day in 1991, one of the inaugural events of the age of citizen journalism occurred after paroled felon Rodney King was stopped by police after a high speed chase and then beaten by five officers. King was drunk and had been trying to outrun the police, knowing that arrest while driving under the influence would mean a violation of his parole and an immediate return to prison. George Holliday’s videotape of the beating of Rodney King was what made the event important. He’d switched his camera on just as police … Read more
The Axe
What is a man in capitalism if not his job? Costa-Gavras asked the question in The Axe (Le couperet) in 2005 in much the same way that Park Chan-wook did in 2025’s No Other Choice. Both are working from the same source material – Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax. Both come to pretty much the same conclusion – shorn of his job and his title, a male in this situation loses his status and becomes dangerously unmoored. This, both conclude, is not a good thing. The stories are similar right down to the little details. A man who works as an executive for a paper company gets made redundant and cannot find other … Read more
One Minute of Darkness
At first glance One Minute of Darkness, last of the Dreileben trilogy, seems to be the most straightforward of the lot. A honest-to-goodness cat-and-mouser. On the one hand the escaped murderer Molesch, who has been little more than a bad smell in the first two films. On the other a cop on a mission to bring Molesch in, in spite of the fact that he’s ill and on leave. It’s deceptive, though, and the deception starts with the opening shots, of Molesch in custody being driven to a police station. This, it seems obvious, is a continuation of the previous instalment of the series, Don’t Follow Me Around (Komm Mir Nicht Nach), the … Read more
The Paperboy
You want Southern Fried? The Paperboy has it for you by the boneless bucketful. Gourmets, look away now. Thanks to the success of Precious (Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire etc), a peculiarly successful misery memoir, for his follow-up its director Lee Daniels is able to call on a cast starry enough to open several films – Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack. A cast he then submerges in a 1960s Deep South swamp of gators and racial segregation, the spirit of Blanche Dubois invoked by Kidman’s performance as a slut of a certain age who relies on the comfort of whoever happens to be available. What little plot there … Read more
The Nature of Love
A cliche sits at the centre of The Nature of Love, caught by its original French title, Simple Comme Sylvain (which translates as Simple Like Sylvain). Namely, that what a nice middle class woman with a white-collar job really wants is a no-nonsense big-handed guy who knows his way around a toolbox and a woman’s body. After putting up the shelves he’ll take her roughly from behind, or from any other direction he fancies. Writer/director Monia Chokri introduces us to nice middle-class Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) at a dinner party, where she and her partner Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) are having a lovely evening with old friends, chatting about things in a conceptual, liberal … Read more
Rudo y Cursi
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 March The Wanderers FC win first FA Cup, 1872 Today in 1872, the London football club Wanderers won the first football association cup, the oldest football competition in the world. It was the first of three wins of the cup for the club. The FA Cup is a knockout cup open to all football clubs who are established enough, and with facilities enough, to take part. In 1871-72, being the first season of the cup, there was a piecemeal and eccentric series of regulations – Wanderers managed to get to the final having won only one of their four games … Read more
