Popular Reviews
The Tunnel
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 August Tower Subway opens, 1870 On this day in 1870, the Tower Subway opened in London, UK. Running under the River Thames between Tower Hill on the north bank and Tooley Street on the south, it is a 1,340 foot (410m) tunnel and was the first built under a river expressly to carry a train. Though it caused a lot of excitement at the time, the tunnel was only narrow, at just over 6.5 feet (2.026m) wide, and its tiny train did not have much room for passengers. The company that built it went bust and the tunnel closed at … Read more
Fantômas
With a new Fantômas film in the works, a quick look at the first one, Fantômas: À l’ombre de la guillotine (aka Fantomas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine), which came out in 1913. Which is, let’s face it, a hell of a long time ago. Remarkably, it stands up pretty well and is a good reminder that the camp and larky Fantômas we know today (if we only know the 1960s movies) owes quite a lot to The Pink Panther. This Fantômas is more sombre. A creature of the underworld, a criminal first and foremost, he’s a master of disguise, which director Louis Feuillade conveys in the opening montage of Fantômas looking … Read more
House of Bamboo
In many ways an atypical Sam Fuller film, House of Bamboo does conform to Fuller type in one specific way – strong performances by his two leads. They are Robert Ryan and Robert Stack, as two guys involved in different ways in crime in post-War Japan. Doing almost nothing at all, Ryan acts Stack right off the screen as crime boss Sandy Dawson, an American who has found rich pickings in the debris of post-War Japan. And yet Stack is also pretty effective as a smalltime hoodlum who arrives in the country and immediately starts throwing his weight around and extorting money in the smallest of smalltime ways. What Eddie Spanier (Stack) doesn’t … Read more
Amour de Poche aka Girl in His Pocket
The IMDb plot summary for 1957’s Amour de Poche (aka Girl in His Pocket) credited to Keath brought a smile to my face. “A professor experimenting in suspended animation accidentally shrinks his dog and later, his female lab assistant, when she drinks the liquid by accident and shrinks to 3 inches tall. The professor keeps her in his pocket until he can find an antidote. Sometimes she’s naked, too.” It’s the final sentence, “Sometimes she’s naked too” that’s the killer. That, really, is what Amour de Poche is about, a chance to see a pretty lady’s sexy bits, which the movie does oblige us with, once, maybe twice, depending on how sharp your … Read more
Fruits of Passion
If you’ve ever wanted to see Klaus Kinski’s hairy anus, Fruits of Passion (Les fruits de la passion) is the movie for you. A sequel of sorts to the infamous/scandalous Story of O, it’s a “life inside the brothel” tale about the sentimental education of an impressionable young beauty at the hands – and other body parts – of a ripe old western roué. Directed and co-adapted from the Anne Declos novel Retour à Roissy by the multi-hyphenate Shūji Terayama, it is both orientalist and a critique of the same, with Kinski the absolute embodiment of the lordly patron. Dressed in white throughout, shock of blond hair, eyeliner, cadaverous as usual, he is … Read more
U-571
The standard submarine drama – depth charges, beep-beep sonar, bursting bulkheads, “secure that hatch” dialogue – gets an efficient workthrough by director Jonathan Mostow, who did a lot with very little in 1997’s “who stole my wife” thriller Breakdown. He’s got a good cast here too – Matthew McConaughey putting in one of his brattish turns as the “I’m ready for command” lieutenant, Bill Paxton as his “No, you’re not” commander, an underused Harvey Keitel and Jon Bon Jovi, continuing his hopeful advance into movies – but it’s the presence of the Enigma coding machine that is the film’s USP. By which I mean it’s the presence of the Enigma machine that is the … Read more
The Phantom of the Opera
It’s something of a minor industry to make fun of Andrew Lloyd Webber. But with this film version of his stage phenomenon (billions of dollars at box offices worldwide, and counting) it looks like the musical lord is once more going to be having the last laugh. It’s a story we all know – a hideously disfugured creature, endowed with a gift for music, yearns for the love of a pretty, young singer. He tutors her and turns her into a star. But could she ever love him? It’s often said that the story is a coded version of the relationship between Lloyd Webber and his ex-wife, Sarah Brightman. Brightman was the original … Read more
Rabbit-Proof Fence
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 July Nazi eugenics law passed, 1933 On this day in 1933, in Germany, the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) was put onto the statute books. It allowed for the compulsory sterilisation of anyone whose genetic disorders might be passed on to their children. Disorders originally included manic-depressive insanity and alcoholism, as well as more usual hereditary conditions, but were eventually widened out to include homosexuality, idleness and dissidence. Genetic health was decided in a series of courts set up expressly for the purpose, with the Nazis taking their cues from the work … Read more
Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 April Serge Gainsbourg born, 1928 On this day in 1928 Lucien Ginsburg was born, to refugees from the Russian revolution who had fled in 1917. Later, he would change his name from Ginsburg to Gainsbourg to reflect his admiration for the British landscape painter Gainsborough, and from Lucien to Serge to honour his Russian heritage. Originally intending to be a painter, Gainsbourg wound up supporting himself by playing piano in bars and so entered the world of music more by accident than design. However, once he realised he had something of a knack for chansons in the Jacques Brel style, … Read more
Mulan
Anyone for a live-action remake of a much-loved animation? The latest of Disney’s live-action makeovers of its own back catalogues continues a “so-what?” run of remakes – Jungle Book, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo to name a few. They’re not bad films exactly – no, hang on, Dumbo is – but how many of them have been necessary, what are Disney playing at exactly, and how long before Snow White? Junking the songs and comedy sidekicks of the 1998 animation, this Mulan sticks fairly close to the original Chinese folk tale, first written down about 1,600 years ago, of a feisty young woman skilled in combat who, fearing for her sick father’s … Read more
The Old Guard
Dark hair, dark shades, dark clothes, it’s Badass Charlize Theron who turns out for The Old Guard, a superhero adventure with a mournful air and an eye on a franchise. There are four distinct Therons – the actor (Monster, In the Valley of Elah), the babe (Gringo, The Devil’s Advocate), the snark (Young Adult, Tully) and the buttkicker (Aeon Flux, Atomic Blonde). She’s good at them all but it’s the last in that list that we get here. Though at 45 Charlize isn’t bouncing out of the helicopters the way she once did. But if Tom Cruise can do it… and he’s 13 years older. Theron plays androgynously named “Andy”, head of what looks … Read more
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
You know The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a Guy Ritchie film even without knowing it’s a Guy Ritchie film. That Gentleman bit of the title is the giveaway – whether it’s Holmes and Watson or the Lock, Stock lads, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or The Gentlemen (film and TV versions), Ritchie has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s a guy Guy. Even his most feminine sounding movie, Snatch, is all about the boys. So the real-life story of the dude who became the template for Ian Fleming’s James Bond sounds like a good fit. And with Henry Cavill – regularly proposed as the next 007 – as Gus March-Phillips, what could possibly wrong? Before answering … Read more
