Popular Reviews
United 93
A reconstruction of what happened on 11 September 2001 to the fourth hijacked plane, which went down in Pennsylvania before getting to its target in Washington DC, probably the White House. It’s shot in a documentary-like shaky-cam style, has not a single recognisable face to hook onto and there’s a complete absence of heroic Hollywood dialogue. Writer/director Paul Greengrass lets events unfold in real time which, coupled with the knowledge of how things pan out, has the effect of making every otherwise mundane detail – stewardesses sharing a joke, businessmen working on their laptops – unbearably poignant. As we have already seen in The Bourne Supremacy, Greengrass is a master of dramatic irony … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 17 – Killer
Were showrunner Brian Clemens, fellow producer Albert Fennell and the rest of the production team trying to get rid of Linda Thorson? She had been introduced during his brief interregnum by producer John Bryce and when Clemens and Fennell returned, they were stuck with her. Killer is an episode bursting with agents – who die one after the other and wind up gift-wrapped in plastic – but Thorson’s character Tara King is notably absent, having told Steed in dialogue that protests a bit too much that she is off on holiday and there is nothing he can do about it… so there. Instead Steed is paired with Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney – referred to … Read more
Kajillionaire
There’s a lot to like in Kajillionaire, apart from the film itself, since what it boils down to is a story of child abuse told in a tone so wilfully whimsical that it’s hoping to sell itself as a comedy. The abused party is Old Dolio, a bizarre name for a child, daughter of a pair of grifters whose bar is set so low that their regular gig is to steal mail from the post office and just chance to luck that there’s something in there. The parents don’t see themselves as bottom feeders, more as revolutionaries who have rejected the blandishments of modern capitalism – where everyone wants to be a “kajillionaire” … Read more
Wonder Man
Yes, Wonder Man, not Wonder Woman, a 1945 musical comedy with a dash of crime thriller starring Danny Kaye as Danny Kaye, or sailing so close to his public persona as makes no difference. As happened quite often in Kaye’s career, he plays two roles, twin brothers, one of whom is a light, facetious, musical theatre type, the other a bookish stiff. After big, brash, brassy musical opening credits with the word Technicolor prominent, a musical number right at the beginning showcases most of the Kaye skillset – corny songs delivered with a wink, tongue-twisting wordplay, goofing about, awful puns (dad jokes), silly dances and so on. It looks like this version of … Read more
Of Time and the City
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 July John Lennon meets Paul McCartney, 1957 On this day in 1957, a 15-year-old Paul McCartney went to a gig held after a church fete at St Peter’s Parish Church, Woolton, Liverpool. The fete had been a traditional affair, with tombola, a cake stall, games of hoop-la and a rose queen. There had also been entertainment, in the shape of a young local skiffle band called the Quarry Men – so called because most of the members were schoolboys at Quarry Bank Grammar School. The band was led by a 16-year-old John Lennon and as they set up again for … Read more
A Little Prayer
Writer/director Angus MacLachlan has built a career mapping the dynamics of functional and dysfunctional families. A Little Prayer slots neatly in alongside earlier films such as 2014’s Goodbye to All That and 2017’s Abundant Acreage Available. You could add his stage play The Dead Eye Boy to the list. I’ve not seen any of them but having now seen A Little Prayer I’d be interested in having a look, because MacLachlan has made an interesting drama in a genre I don’t generally have much time for. We’re in smalltown America where the tightly knit family of Bill (David Strathairn) and Venida (Celia Weston) is having a moment. Their son, David (Will Pullen) and … 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
Reflections in a Golden Eye
Like a yard sale of the junk in Tennessee Williams’s mind, Reflections in a Golden Eye is a trawl of pre-loved Southern gothic artefacts in various states of disrepair. Directed by John Huston in 1967, it was adapted from a novel by Carson McCullers – a Williams protégé. Brace yourselves. What might you expect to find at that yard sale? Elizabeth Taylor for one. A range of variable Southern accents for another. Quite possibly a manly man who is secretly gay. Excesses of booze and other narcotics. Lonely people. The repressed. People who are victims of themselves. Self-harm. Sexual transgression. Broken patriarchy. A love of animals and a disdain for humanity. In beautiful, … Read more
Plan B
The comedy Plan B hits the road with a pair of young women as they scour the South Dakota badlands for a morning-after pill. If Plan A is not getting pregnant, Plan B is… you follow. Lupe (Victoria Moroles) and Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) are two smart, funny, best buds from strict families – Lupe’s is Hispanic and her father’s a minister, Sunny’s is Asian, with all the educational expectation that typically comes with. Of the two Lupe is the more sexually knowing – she wears vampish dark lipstick – though it’s Sunny who we first encounter thrusting her hand down her pants as she settles down with a school biology textbook and the chapter … Read more
Poor Things
Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow-up to The Favourite, is an act of restitution to Emma Stone, who was the best thing in that movie and yet lost out at awards’ time to Olivia Colman. Queens (as Colman was) trump upstarts. Stone does not lose out this time (in between writing and posting this, she has won the Best Actress Oscar). She is not just the focus of the movie but increasingly its purpose, once Lanthimos’s huge arm-sweep of influences and genres have bedded down. It’s Frankenstein meets Alice in Wonderland in a world styled by Jan Svankmajer and Jonathan Miller (both did Alice movies), Bertrand Bonello at his most decadantly fin-de-siecle (see House … Read more
The Lost Weekend
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 June Dr Robert Smith takes his last drink, 1935 On this day in 1935, an alcoholic doctor called Bob Smith took his last drink. He was 56 at the time and had been drinking heavily since he was a college student, checking himself into drying out clinics periodically in an attempt to kick the habit. He had drunk through Prohibition, thanks to his access to medical alcohol and the profusion of bootleggers. And he’d drunk through nearly 20 years of his wife’s attempts to get him to cut down or stop drinking. It was his wife who encouraged him to … Read more
The Rabbi’s Cat
It’s a bit all over the place, The Rabbi’s Cat. That’s part of its charm and is potentially also a bit of a problem for people who like their stories topped and tailed, neat and tidy, starting off in with a destination in mind and then eventually arriving there. The piecemeal nature reflects its origins as a series of comics by Joann Sfar, who, with co-director Antoine Delesvaux and writer Sandrina Jardel, has opted to take a bit from here, a bit from there in an attempt at a greatest-hits compilation of the good stuff. But what if you don’t know the hits? Things you need to know are that it’s in French, … Read more
