Popular Reviews
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 February The 500,000-year-old rock containing a spark plug On this day in 1961, the Coso artefact was found by three people out hunting for geodes. It appeared to be a spark plug inside a rock. A geode is a hollow stone, rock or boulder formed either by bubbles forming in volcanic rock, or by the action of water dissolving away a space in a sedimentary formation, which then fills with different minerals – quartz crystals being particularly common. Either way there was little chance that a Champion spark plug from the 1920s, as used extensively in Ford Model T and … Read more
The Traitor
The Corleones weren’t fictional. There really was a crime family called the Corleonesi, after the town in Sicily where they came from. In The Traitor (Il traditore in the original Italian) we learn what happened when the Corleonesi fell out with a fellow mob family, in a dramatisation of the true story of Tommaso Buscetta, the crime boss who went “pentito” and sang like a canary to the authorities. Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino) wasn’t a Corleonesi, he was from the other mob, and as Marco Bellocchio’s film opens Buscetta is in Brazil, where he’s living in happy early retirement, having divined that war between rival mobs was imminent, that it was going to be … Read more
Class Action Park
Class Action Park is a punning title for a reasonably even-handed documentary about Action Park, Vernon, New Jersey, a trailblazing theme park when it opened in the 1970s, which later became infamous on account of the number of accidents and deaths that happened there. It was the brainchild of Gene Mulvihill, a disgraced Wall Street trader who realised there was money to be made from a park that varied its offer with the seasons – by winter a ski resort, a water park in summer. “Uncle Gene” is what the teenagers in his employ affectionately called him, and it’s their testimony that forms the bulk of Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott’s film. … Read more
L’argent
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 October Black Monday, 1929 On this day in 1929, the Dow Jones index fell by 13% in a day. After nine years of an exuberantly rising market, during which time the index had risen tenfold, some economists had started predicting an end to boom and bust – “stock prices have risen to what looks like a permanently high plateau” said Yale’s Irving Fisher at the time. Theoretical neoclassical economists notwithstanding, the New York market tumbled on 18 September 1929. Two days later in London the flamboyant entrepreneur Clarence Hatry confessed to fraud and forgery, having propped up his underfinanced companies … Read more
The Wrestler
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 December Big Daddy dies, 1997 On this day in 1997, the wrestler born Shirley Crabtree in Halifax, England, in 1930, died. Crabtree came from a wrestling family – his father, also named Shirley Crabtree, was a wrestler, as were his nephews Steve and Scott Crabtree (though they both wrestled under the name Valentine). Shirley Crabtree followed his father into the ring in 1952 (the same year that Vince McMahon was creating the WWF brand in the USA). With his 64 inch chest and blond hair, Crabtree became a prominent blue-eye (ie hero type) and won the European Heavyweight Championships twice … Read more
Dracula
Persistently undead, always on point, it takes more than a stake and some garlic to keep the Carpathian count in his box. This Dracula is one of several outings for the thirsty aristocrat and pretenders to his crown in recent years. As well as a recent Nosferatu, other high-profile entries on a long list include The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield, not forgetting El Conde, The Vourdalak, Day Shift and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. In 2025 alone there were two movies called Dracula. This one, by Luc Besson – also known as Dracula: A Love Tale – and Radu Jude’s starkly mononymic Dracula. No surname required. To be honest, … Read more
Tár
Tár, not Tar – even in the title of this drama about a world-famous conductor’s epic fall from grace there are hints as to what exactly caused it. Writer/director Todd Field, in his first film since 2006’s Little Children, structures this grand return like a symphony, with a big opening statement à la Mahler’s Fifth, introducing conductor extraordinaire Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) on stage in conversation with Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker. This is the full data-dump of personality – a glamorous, garrulous, driven, intellectual, unapologetic, combative internationally feted conductor at the top of her game. Tár’s self-satisfaction is almost unbearable to watch. After that a series of sketches dip slightly behind the … Read more
The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 8 – Death of a Great Dane
We’re now eight episodes into the second series of The Avengers and change is afoot. Even before Death of a Great Dane gets underway, something clearly sets this episode apart from the ones that came before. John Dankworth’s theme music has been perked up a bit – that 1950s-influenced jazz-inflected drone was sitting increasingly at odds with the increasing jauntiness of the series, largely thanks to Patrick Macnee’s playing of the dashing John Steed. And Honor Blackman gets a co-starring credit in the titles, where her face is featured prominently. Ever since Ian Hendry left at the end of series one, Patrick Macnee’s face alone had appeared. Blackman is also noticeably sleeker, more … Read more
Pathfinder
A Viking orphan is raised by American Indians in Newfoundland, circa 1000AD, only to be confronted with the mother of all identity crises when the warlike Norsemen return years later, and set about raping and pillaging their way through the villages of his adoptive nation. Which call is he going to obey – blood or upbringing? Offering the viewer the supposed delights of the clash of two of the world’s ur-peoples – the Viking and the Native American – Marcus Nispel’s follow-up to his fairly pointless remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre proves he’s still more at home with pop promos for Janet Jackson and Billy Joel than as a big screen director. … Read more
Thunderbolts*
What is that little asterisk doing at the end of Thunderbolts*? Yes, that one there. By the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 36th adventure all has been revealed. Or maybe not. Thunderbolts is both a sequel and an origin story tonally harking back to the MCU when Joss Whedon had a hand in it. It’s not quite as quippy and doesn’t reference popular culture as much as Whedon would, but it’s on his spectrum, and the film is full of actors who do that sort of thing well. Like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Harbour and Geraldine Viswanathan (underused, word of her upstaging superpower obviously having got out). Florence Pugh, though, Florence Pugh. She … Read more
Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville is slightly off his turf in 1969’s Army of Shadows (aka L’Armée des Ombres). No trenchcoat-wearing criminals driving American cars. Instead he gives us a slice through the activities of the French Resistance during the Second World War. Like all his late-era film, from 1966’s Le Deuxième Souffle to 1972’s Un Flic, Army of Shadows is an absolute must-see. Joseph Kessel, who wrote the original book, had been in the Resistance himself and based it on his own experiences. Melville, too, had been a member and is keen to present a nuts-and-bolts, warts-and-all portrait of the men and women who risked everything to help rid their country of the Nazi invader. … Read more
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 April Anita Loos born, 1889 On this day in 1889, or possibly 1888, Corinne Anita Loos was born. Always cagey about her true age, Anita became best known for her comic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She grew up in a theatrical family – her father managed a theatrical stock company – and she was performing on stage as a young girl. Her father wrote one-act plays for the company and a precocious Anita started turning them out too. Having seen an early silent film in 1911 she decided to turn her hand to a screenplay for one-reelers. Over the next … Read more
