Popular Reviews
Obex
Shut-ins of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your screens. Obex is an ingenious bit of no-fi sci-fi and if you like this sort of thing – I do – then you will be hugely entertained by Albert Birney’s film folding blocky 1980s visuals and parping ancient synths into an Albert in Wonderland story of a recluse who enters a computer game. First, though, a bit of scene-setting. This starts with the opening credits, which show real production company idents rendered in clunky 8-bit. After which we meet Conor (Birney), a supernerd who lives alone with his dog (Birney’s own dog, Dorothy). Conor’s only communication with other humans is a weekly … Read more
Final Destination
Remember The House of Wax or The Abominable Dr Phibes and the highly elaborate ways Vincent Price would off his victims? Films in the decades that followed had budgets running into squillions, yet the victims always seemed to die the same way: sharp knife, sharp billhook, sharp what-have-you. How dull. Then, for people desiring more elaborate, designer-label death, Final Destination turned up right on time. In terms of plot all you need to know is that it’s about a gang of hot guys and gals who “cheat death” when they get off a plane just before it explodes. But what if that plane had their number on it? Our clean-limbed posse of grave … Read more
Ray
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 September Birth of Ray Charles, 1930 On this day in 1930, Ray Charles was born. Six times married, the father of 12 children, Charles also found time to help create what is now known as soul music, a fusion of gospel, jazz and blues, a prime example being his song Georgia. Sighted at birth, Charles started losing his vision when he was five and was completely blind by the age of seven, thanks to glaucoma. Charles was playing in bars in his early teenage years, by the time he was 19 he was having his first hits. Ten years later, … Read more
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person does in six longish words what Snakes on a Plane does in four short ones – telegraphs a plot and a tone in a title. In the original French (or French Canadian, if you’re being picky), Vampire Humaniste Cherche Suicidiaire Consentant, it comes in one word shorter. So there’s not a lot more to say about the feature debut by Ariane Louis-Seize, except that you should watch it if vampire movies like What We Do in the Shadows (for laddish Ocker humour), or Let the Right One In (Nordic minimalism), or My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (dark US family relations), or A Girl … Read more
30 March 2015-03-30
Out in the UK This Week Interstellar (Warner, cert 12) I wasn’t a fan of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films – too long, too much yak, humourless, over-insistent and with a poor grip on action – so I wasn’t exactly warming up a welcome for this much hyped slide sideways into space fantasy. How wrong was I? This is the best “hard sci-fi film” for decades, so grand in scale that it dwarfs Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway. McConaughey is the star, playing the retired Nasa astronaut heading back into space after years kicking his heels on a world heading towards annihilation. There he finds that, out on the edge of a … Read more
Despicable Me 4
Are you still here? That’s how I approached Despicable Me 4, an intellectual property that had done all its emotional work already in the first movie – how super-super villain Gru became a decent sort – but somehow miraculously re-purposed itself and sailed on to franchise glory. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this fourth iteration is that everyone involved seems to still give a stuff. The story is zippy, the voice cast is committed, the animation is lively and colourful, it has a good soundtrack. It’s busy, too busy really, but it’s still pulling out the stops, being inventive when it could just ride along on its own coat tails. You could start … Read more
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
A film of two halves, two time periods and, in fact, two films, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World also tells two stories. In one the everyday travails of a production assistant driving around Bucharest auditioning injured people to appear in a public information film about workplace safety. In the other, snatches of a 1981 movie, Angela Moves On, the adventures of a female taxi driver in the same city 40 years earlier. In the here and now we have Angela Raducanu (Ilinca Manolache), an earthy, forthright woman with a love of a dirty joke. When not charging about the city filming potential (injured) candidates for the film, … Read more
Valhalla Rising
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 September The Battle of Stamford Bridge, 1066 On this day in 1066, an Anglo Saxon army led by King Harold Godwinson went into battle against a Norwegian army led by Harald Hardrada. The English (ie Anglo Saxon) army numbered about 15,000, the invading army around 9,000. As the numbers suggest, the English won, though at a cost of at least five thousand men (estimates put the losses on the other side at around six thousand, or two thirds of the army). Why does this battle matter? For a start it marks the last time the Anglo Saxons would win anything … Read more
The Amazing Mr. X
The only really normal person in The Amazing Mr. X, Richard Carlson’s Martin Abbott, is presented as a complete dope. It’s that sort of film – exotics, psychotics, psychics, camp conmen and vamps circle each other while boring old Martin sits stupidly at the centre. The two real reasons to watch are Cathy O’Donnell, again effortlessly sexy as she was in They Live by Night. She plays the concerned sister trying to get her widowed sibling Christine (Lynn Bari) to marry again. To… you guessed it… chump and dullard Martin. Christine is understandably hesitant. Martin clearly a mistake. But Christine is also reluctant to let go of the hope that husband Paul (Donald Curtis) … Read more
Crossing Delancey
Very New York, very Jewish, very of its time, 1988’s Crossing Delancey seems to divide opinion sharply. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is largely in favour, though back in the day Roger Ebert wasn’t so keen (“not good enough,” said the usually fair-minded Ebert). It’s often billed as a rom-com, which is like calling Hamlet a comedy because it has the gravedigger in it. No, it’s a romance, a romantic drama, plain and simple, a genre that often has to fly under a flag of convenience. Plot: pretty but no longer quite so young Izzi works at New York’s most bookstore bookstore, where she’s in charge of looking after the writers who turn up … Read more
The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 9 – The Sell-Out
Just as the keel of the series had started to lift, floating at last in its own water, episode nine of series two plonks it back on the sea floor. The Sell-Out is a throwback to series one, which itself harks even further back – to the film noir genre which originally originally inspired the series. The trenchcoats, the respect for authority, the sense of white knights in a dark world. As The Avengers moved away from this founding idea, noticeably less and less actual avenging got done. In a plot set at the United Nations, Jon Rollason is back as Macnee’s sidekick, displacing Honor Blackman as the producers use up another of … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 26 – Homicide and Old Lace
An episode written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, and then rewritten by Brian Clemens when he returned to the series. It was Clemens who inserted the framework narrative device – Mother visiting a pair of aged aunts and spinning them yarns about legendary feats of Avengers derring-do. The Great Great Britain Crime was the original title, under producer John Bryce. Clemens renamed it Homicide and Old Lace. And the old dears are rather good fun, a pair of bloodthirsty old broads who love nothing better than a wallow in gory tales of yore, keen on Cagney-era slang (“gats”, “rods” etc) and handy with a gun – they’re ready to shoot Mother the second … Read more
