Popular Reviews
Antiviral
What’s that, you say, Cronenberg? Surely not a relation of David? Indeedy, this is the son, Brandon, and, apples not falling far from tree, chips tending to fly from old blocks, he serves us up a rather lipsmacking portion of body-horror just like dad used to make. And the lips, as you might have guessed, are blistered with herpes. We’re in a parallel world – it looks like today but the celebrity fever has got to such a point that people are happy, willing, desperate to be injected with herpes simplex virus harvested from rich and famous stars such as the Madonna-alike Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon). That’s when they’re not buying and eating … Read more
Nobody Is Crazy
Sci-fi as self-help, Federico Arioni’s second feature film, Nobody Is Crazy (Nadie Está Loco), does away with most of the trappings, scratch that, all of the trappings of the sci-fi movie and focuses instead on the mental well-being of Rafael, an Argentinian teenager with OCD. It’s a a strange, confident movie made for no money, starring whole swathes of Arioni’s family, including his mother, who plays Rafael’s mother, and Arioni himself, who turns up in black mask as a time-travelling “chrononaut”, or so he says. Or maybe he’s Rafael’s dad, arriving from the past, or Rafael himself, from some years in the future. The film is the story of the relationship between these … Read more
It’s a Wonderful Knife
A squeezing of yet more blood from a very well squeezed stone, It’s a Wonderful Knife takes the 1980s/90s slasher movie and gives it a multiverse tweak by way of that 1946 Christmas classic starring James Stewart. The slasher movie and the Christmas movie often have similar starting points – peace and goodwill to all men – before disruption rears its head. Director Tyler MacIntyre and writer Michael Kennedy situate us right in a familiar, cosy world of snow, warm winter clothing and a white-picket small town preparing for Christmas then deliver a twist we can see coming, followed by another one we won’t see coming if the reference in the title to It’s … Read more
Peter von Kant
François Ozon’s Peter von Kant is both a remake and a restoration of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. A remake because it takes exactly the same story and retells it in pretty much the same way, except with the genders flipped. A restoration because it peels away a layer of obfuscation added by Fassbinder to the original, to reveal where he was really coming from. In the 1972 original, Petra (Margit Carstensen) was a dreadfully self-centred designer waited on hand and foot by an entirely silent servant (Irm Hermann). One day Petra is introduced to a pretty young thing called Karin (Hanna Schygulla) and instantly totally loses her … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 20 – Wish You Were Here
After a couple of Tara-lite outings, a Steed-lite one for fans of Linda Thorson, who rises to the occasion in a fairly jokey episode, Wish You Were Here, which sees The Avengers doffing its hat to The Prisoner, whose 13 episodes had blazed across 1967 and 1968 (and continue to be talked about all these decades later). The premise behind Tony Williamson’s screenplay is laid out neatly in the opening sequence – two men, Brevitt and Merrydale (played by David Garth and Liam Redmond) discussing what appears to be a jailbreak. But when the camera pulls back… ta daaa… it turns out they are in fact guests at what looks like a high-class … Read more
Night Has a Thousand Eyes
If it’s a really good Edward G Robinson performance you’re looking for, can I suggest Night Has a Thousand Eyes, a knotty little potboiler elevated by Robinson. Out of gangster mode he was a versatile actor who could bring home the goods in all sorts of roles. Here he’s a stage magician who gets spooked when the phoney predictions he offers audiences start coming true. So spooked that he gives it all up and flees, away from the woman he loves – a premonition has told him she’ll die if he stays – and away from the best friend who will become stinking rich by investing in oil, another fulfilment of John Triton’s … Read more
Speak No Evil
Another film that’s hard to like but easy to admire, Speak No Evil comes hot on the heels of a recent example of the same – Soft & Quiet – which I watched last week. Both set up and stoke a tension that becomes so janglingly unpleasant that, for this home viewer, pausing, getting out of the chair and walking around a bit became a necessity. I suspect the way to really watch this film is in a cinema, where there is more pressure to stay in your seat and not out yourself as such an obvious wuss. Again like Soft & Quiet, Speak No Evil starts out in the sunlit uplands of … Read more
Two Night Stand
Two Night Stand takes the boy wins girl/boy loses girl formula, gives it a millennial spin and then lets its stars, Miles Teller and Analeigh Tipton charm the pants off us as they rip the pants off each other. Genuinely fresh and cute, refreshingly forthright and even sexy – most sex comedies, let’s face it, aren’t – its simple two hander story sees Tipton’s sofa-surfing slacker having rebound sex with stoner Teller, then attempting to sneak away from his place in the early hours, only to find they’re snowed in together. Which is embarrassing considering the “fuck you, too” farewells they’ve just been bidding each other. And that’s it: a boy, a girl, … Read more
The Big Steal
Of course The Big Steal is a noir. With a title like that what else could it be? And yet it’s also an undeclared screwball comedy. The IMDb might say crime, film noir and romance, but screwball is the real dynamic, and that’s how Don Siegel directs it and stars Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer play it. It’s a cat and mouser, with Mitchum as Halliday, an army lieutenant trying to clear his name by tracking down the man who really ran off with a huge amount of the military’s money. Along for the journey, in an uneasy alliance, is the man’s fiancée, Joan Graham (Greer), who has has been conned by him … Read more
Nightmare Alley
2021’s Nightmare Alley isn’t based on the 1947 film noir of the same name, so we’re told by various venerable authorities. Tell that to the judge. Even if it genuinely is a bona fide and honest reworking of the same source material, William Lindsay Gresham’s smash 1946 novel, even a quick look at the 1947 movie is enough to convince anyone that this Nightmare Alley has seen the older one, taken notes and then studied them hard. This extends to the casting choices. These start with Bradley Cooper as the grifter who starts out as a nobody in a carnival, works his way to the top of showbiz with a mentalist routine, over-reaches … Read more
Sweet Smell of Success
Sweet Smell of Success flopped at the box office on its debut in 1957, much as its producer, Burt Lancaster, feared it might. A dirty-underbelly-of-showbiz tale, like Sunset Blvd. and In a Lonely Place, it’s been redeemed by posterity, which often marks it as one of the finest noirs ever made, even though it doesn’t tick all the genre boxes. One reason for the failure was the casting of its star. Not top-billed Lancaster, who put his name at the head of the credits not just out of ego, but also to deflect attention from the real star. Tony Curtis was best known at this point for playing a series of pretty boys … Read more
Head
Head is many things. The Monkees’ declaration of independence, a psychedelic beanfeast, a wackadoo retread of Help by the Prefab Four, director Bob Rafelson’s big screen debut and one of Jack Nicholson’s rare writerly contributions to the movies to list just a few. What it isn’t is a good film. Tiresome in the extreme, it wears out its welcome very quickly. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Monkees are an extremely likeable foursome, it would be barely watchable at all. But there is something to be squeezed from it, and it’s not just the chance to see cameos by Frank Zappa, Sonny Liston, Victore Mature, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson himself … Read more
