Popular Reviews
The Black Panther
If you were alive and aware of what was going on around you in the UK in the 1970s, The Black Panther will ring all sorts of bells. Because it tells the story of the man behind the abduction and death of Lesley Whittle. She was a blameless teenager who wound up suspended by her neck on the end of a wire in a reservoir drain, where her abductor had hidden her while he tried to scare up a ransom from her family. The tabloids ran with the story and it became a national talking point. So much so that when this film came out two years after Lesley’s death, many councils in … Read more
Tenet
After pausing for Dunkirk, a (for him) human-scale drama, Christopher Nolan is back on Inception/Interstellar territory with Tenet, a grandiose exercise in hi-tech bogglement that doesn’t shortchange the fans. It’s spectacular like Operation Desert Storm was. Designed to shock and awe, it’s a technological marvel that would almost rather there were no human involvement at all. Can’t we just get drones to do the acting? Actually, drones have done a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the plot, because rather than come up with anything too new, Nolan has taken a whole load of James Bond bits and pieces and then given a quick wipe over with a massive spend … Read more
Salvo
What do solitary hitmen want? To get out. Or a normal family life. Or for the senseless killing to stop. Salvo gives us versions of all these possibilities, with masses of style and a cool, thrilling central performance by Saleh Bakri as the titular Salvo – it means “safe” in Italian, a name that can be read ironically, depending on which end of the gun you are at. Cannes liked it, and awarded it the grand prize in Critics Week in 2013, which is the one they hand out to new talent. Which situates Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza alongside Bernardo Bertolucci, Leos Carax, Wong Kar-wai, Julia Ducournau and Andrea Arnold. For its money … Read more
Friends with Money
Having struggled to escape the long shadow of Friends, Jennifer Aniston ends up in a film with Friends in the title, playing the singleton with three married couples as chums. Nicole Holofcener’s follow-up to 2001’s Lovely & Amazing walks the same line – it’s a gentle comedy exploring human foibles. Then, families were the subject, here it’s rich people with first world problems, metrosexual tastes and lives obsessively focused on themselves. It is quite a cast – with Jennifer Aniston at its centre, playing the only one of this gang with no wealth and no love life, the only one who has to do shitty jobs for a living, including working as a … Read more
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Professional musician and amateur situationist John Lennon has always been an easy target for anyone wanting to level a charge of hypocrisy. “Imagine no possessions,” he sang, and the fingers started pointing at his lavish lifestyle – insert your own version of the story about the fur coats kept in a refrigerated room in the Dakota Building. David Leaf and John Scheinfeld’s documentary will provide fuel for both the haters and the idolisers, it being the story of how the US authorities revoked the chippiest man in rock’s Green Card in the 1970s, in an attempt to get this dangerous dissident out of the country. Well, that’s ostensibly what it’s about. In fact for … Read more
9 September 2013-09-09
Out in the UK this week Iron Man 3 (Disney, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/VOD) Drawing a veil over the fact that Avengers Assemble was in effect Iron Man 3, the official Iron Man 3 arrives with Jon Favreau bumped from directing duties and Shane Black in the writing/directing chair. Black wrote the Lethal Weapon films and, blow me, if he hasn’t turned Iron Man – one of the best superhero franchises of recent years, thanks to its understanding of the sheer exhilaration of being able to do cool stuff – into a leaden, clanking 1980s action movie. Yes, Black can fashion a quip, and Robert Downey Jr is certainly the man to deliver them, … Read more
Divine Love aka Divino Amor
There’s an opaque quality to Divine Love (Divino Amor), as there was with Gabriel Mascaro’s last film, Neon Bull. But, subject matter to one side, the big difference between them is that Neon Bull didn’t explain itself, whereas Divino Amor does, only in the film’s last third revealing that it hasn’t really been explaining itself at all. It’s all been a bit of a feint. The genre, for instance. Sci-fi, or so it claims, with the action set in Brazil in 2027 (barely into the future at all then) where Joana and Danilo, a loving couple are members of a charismatic evangelical church. When not dancing like dervishes at church raves – the … Read more
Tommaso
Tommaso is a film by Abel Ferrara that’s essentially a film about Abel Ferrara, with Willem Dafoe in the lead role as an avatar of the writer/director, a creative dude trying to live out his golden years in Italy but finding old demons constantly resurfacing. It’s an uncomfortable and not entirely gripping drama, though Dafoe’s amazing performance does almost get it over the line. We first meet the talented, accomplished and open Tommaso at a language school learning Italian, making the effort because he has a much younger wife at home (Ferrara’s own wife, Cristina Chiriac) and an infant daughter (Ferrara’s own daughter, Anna). He’s a film-maker, still working, and because of a … Read more
Stories from the Chestnut Woods
Stories from the Chestnut Woods could so easily have been a misery memoir or poverty porn but thankfully it’s not. Instead director/writer Gregor Bozic has crafted an elegiac film of real beauty and poignancy. It’s set on the border where old Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) meets Italy, a region that’s been in decline for a long time and, judging by most of the houses and the people in them, has seen better days. The people who are left are either old, or they’re young and have a plan to get out quick and take advantage of the prosperity that’s transforming much of the rest of Europe in the post Second World War era. Mario … Read more
Charlie’s Angels
Good god this film got some bad negative publicity when it came out. I’m really not sure why. Of course it’s not Ingmar Bergman, but it’s not trying to be. What it is trying to be is a light and frothy, giddy and bubbly pastiche of the Seventies adventure series – which was the TV equivalent of that poster of the tennis woman scratching her bum. Perhaps naysayers were all still carrying a torch for Farrah Fawcett, the star of the original who left after one season to parlay her TV fame into a cinematic career. That didn’t work too well for her. Taking the Farrah role in McG’s film (perhaps the naysayers … Read more
The Tenth Victim
The Tenth Victim is a textbook case of a cult film that’s actually no good. Released in 1965 and billed as sci-fi (it barely is), it’s a camp Italian spectacle combining the unique talents of Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni, and just that cocktail – 1965, Italy, sci-fi (ish), Andress and Mastroianni – is plenty of reason for seeing the film. It’s set in the 21st century, where violence has been outlawed and is now limited to carefully controlled contests between designated Hunters and Victims. These contests, adjudicated by the Ministry of the Big Hunt, are broadcast on TV, where advertisers line up with sponsorship deals – Ming Tea being the product successful Hunters (or … Read more
The Night
A Farsi-language horror film from the Iranian diaspora, writer/director Kourosh Ahari’s The Night is the latest entry on a very short list of crossover hits, most notably headed by A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
