Popular Reviews
The Batman
The Batman. Let’s get the plot out of the way first, since it’s the most straightforward aspect of the latest bulletin from Gotham City. A caped crusader, a trio of villains in the shape of Paul Dano’s Riddler, Colin Farrell’s Penguin and John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone, a campaign of murder being waged against city officials. The mayor dies first, in the opening moments of the film, forcing Commissioner Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) to call in Batman – he rates the mysterious vigilante but no one else does. Along the way Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz) becomes involved, a good girl in this version, and a crimefighting sidekick, should Batman want one, which he doesn’t seem to. … Read more
Firebrand
Unusually for a film concerning King Henry VIII of England, Firebrand is not interested in wife one (Catherine of Aragon) or wife two (Anne Boleyn). Instead focus is on the last of Henry’s six wives, Katherine Parr. And, no bones about it, she is the focus of this film, not the king. A history lesson. At the time this film is set Henry has broken politically but not entirely religiously with Rome. The Church of England has been established and Henry is its head. But because he’s relied so heavily on Protestants to support his break, Henry’s brand of Catholicism is on the defensive and the Protestants are on the prowl. It’s against … Read more
The Fallen Sparrow
“In a world at war many sparrows must fall.” A poignant line slightly out of keeping with the hard-boiled characters populating this atypical noir. Unusually on the money politically and psychologically, The Fallen Sparrow is a story about a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War who returns to New York only to find it full of Nazi sympathisers. John Garfield’s decent American John “Kit” McKittrick has been fighting the good fight abroad and is now ready to fight it at home too, even though he’s weighed down with a hefty amount of PTSD after being tortured in Spain. Kit never saw the Nazi who directed Franco’s torturers, he explains early on, but … Read more
Mary Poppins
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 December Dick Van Dyke born, 1925 On this day in 1925, Richard Wayne Van Dyke was born. As Dick Van Dyke he has been entertaining people since the Second World War, when he was a radio announcer. Since then he’s been an actor, Sunday school teacher, radio station owner, dancer, singer and keen amateur computer graphics man. More famous and well loved than his CV might suggest, Van Dyke’ imprint on the cultural consciousness has been made by a film and a TV series. The film is Mary Poppins, in which Van Dyke plays Bert, the chimney sweep with an … Read more
100 Years of… Battleship Potemkin
Imagine that, one of the best movies ever made is only 75 minutes long. All those epics striving for significance with buttock-flattening running times outdone by Battleship Potemkin, a century-old silent movie lasting only one hour and 15 minutes. Sight and Sound in their latest poll of the all-time greats currently have Potemkin in joint 54th place (alongside Blade Runner, Le Mépris, The Apartment and Sherlock Jr). Cahiers du Cinéma rate it highly. It’s one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. At breakneck speed it tells the story of a failed revolution, the one in 1905 when the Russian navy mutinied and, for a brief moment, the possibility of … Read more
Suspiria
What’s the point of remaking Suspiria if you’re going to take out all the stuff that made the 1977 original so unique? Dario Argento, the director of the original, asked that question himself after he’d seen this remake – wondering, in short, “why?” – after director Luca Guadagnino’s new version debuted in 2018. There’s something in what he says. Out goes the original film’s original grand vision – its bad-trip looks – and with it goes the original story’s big idea of not revealing what was going on until the film’s dying moments. In comes a bracketing structure which introduces Chloë Grace Moretz at each end of the film, for no real reason … Read more
No Sudden Move
On the principle that second-rate Soderbergh is better than no Soderbergh at all, a warm hello to No Sudden Move, a pastiche 1950s crime drama with a Maguffin that insists it’s more than a Maguffin. Don Cheadle, Kieran Culkin and Benicio Del Toro play three prickly guys hired to “babysit” a family (ie hold them hostage) while one of them takes Dad Matt (David Harbour) off to pick up something from a safe. That “something” becomes increasingly important as the story progresses, eventually bathing everything in a Chinatown-style glow as it becomes apparent that behind these no-marks is a vast scheme based on corporate corruption of a sort that makes day-to-day Mob activity … Read more
The Love of Jeanne Ney
The Love of Jeanne Ney is one of those torrid love stories told against a backdrop of roiling conflict. Or that’s what it looks like at the outset. But by the end it’s become more like a showcase for everything the great Austrian director Georg Wilhelm Pabst could do – all the genres in all the styles. By this point in his career, Pabst had given Greta Garbo her first starring role two years before in 1925’s Joyless Street (aka Die freudlose Gasse). Two years later he would turn Louise Brooks into a global icon with Pandora’s Box. If Jeanne Ney was a bit of bait designed to lure Hollywood into hiring him, … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 22 – Stay Tuned
Mind control as a plot driver became The Avengers go-to narrative, and it gets another run around the block in Stay Tuned, a fine example of the show’s ongoing attempts to recapture old glory. It takes flight quickly – Steed with a ridiculous amount of baggage heading off on holiday. And then Steed again some time later, also with a ridiculous amount of baggage setting off from his apartment to go on holiday for a second time, only to be met by a bemused Tara, who tells him he’s been away for the past three weeks, and she’s got a postcard to prove it. We know something is going on because a) that’s … Read more
Last Night in Soho
Edgar Wright, born 1974, hymns the 1960s, a decade he never saw, in Last Night in Soho, a genre mash-up and nerd’s custard with looks, style and verve to spare. Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is a shy 1960s-obsessed girl from the sticks who comes to London to study fashion. Having got off to a bad start with a gang of other students who’d be called “plastics” if this were a high school movie, Ellie takes a room with seen-it-all-dearie landlady Ms Collins (Diana Rigg). By day Ellie continues her studies, crafting bits of pink chiffon into babydoll outfits for imaginary peroxided 1960s women. But by night, in a magical meld of bodyswappiness and time … 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 Hater
The Hater (Sala Samobójców. Hejter in the original Polish) slots in alongside Brechtian “man on the make” dramas like The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, or the novel/film Room at the Top, or even Mephisto, the Klaus Mann novel and 1981 movie by István Szabó. It’s a film about a young man who believes in himself rather than anything else, and we meet Tomasz (Maciej Musialowski) just as he’s being thrown out of law school for plagiarism, though he doesn’t seem overly concerned about the fact that he’s trashed his own prospects. Later, at the apartment of the aunt and uncle who’ve been sponsoring his studies, he keeps quiet about what’s happened while … Read more
