Popular Reviews
Rising Phoenix
As the documentary Rising Phoenix makes clear, the rebranding of what were previously regarded as “disabled” people as a kind of army of X-Men type characters was what transformed the Paralympics. Before London 2012 the Paralympics had been a tacked-on event, the Cinderella of the Olympics. But suddenly the stadiums were full and the crowds were eager to see these remarkable people do their thing. Working like an extended version of one of those montage clips that big broadcasters like the BBC are so good at making when a big sporting event is in full roar, it’s a film of two parts. One tells the inspirational story of individual athletes and how they … Read more
And God Created Bardot
“I am really a cat transformed into a woman… I purr. I scratch. And sometimes I bite.” Brigitte Bardot – icon, activist, bigot and just possibly the future president of France. By Steve Morrissey In a recent poll of the Sexiest Movies Stars by the film magazine Empire, Brigitte Bardot squeaked in at number 98. Down the list maybe, but she was nestling next to Thandie Newton, one of the undisputed knockouts of our time. And that isn’t bad for a woman who hasn’t made a film in 40 years. Which raises the question: why is she still so fondly remembered? It’s not her ageless good looks. Bardot has always refused the surgeon’s … Read more
Cadejo Blanco
A naive young woman searches for her missing sister in Cadejo Blanco, a bloody coming-of-age thriller featuring a fabulous performance by Karen Martínez. If you’re wondering what the title translates as, the cadejo blanco is a mythical white dog – a spirit animal of Central America folklore. And once you know that you might also start wondering what it has to do with Guatemalan gangs and the sentimental education of an innocent young woman. You might still be asking that question as the film winds to a close and director/writer Justin Lerner is teasing us with a shot of a white dog roaming in the forests of Guatemala, where Sarita (Martínez) has finally … Read more
The Scarlet Empress
When it came out in 1934, everyone knew that The Scarlet Empress was a reference to a scarlet woman, a sexual libertine. Doubly so once they learned that it was a biopic about Catherine the Great, the Russian royal who notoriously died while making love to a horse, or so the story went. Things are slightly more fragrant than that in this sixth collaboration between director Joseph von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, one of the first films made after Hollywood put into effect its infamous morality code, for fear of having one imposed on it by the government. Even so, right there, right after the information that this film has indeed been made … Read more
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert. A marketing award to whichever genius came up with that title for this epic rebrand of old product done with such polish and dash that it casts Elvis Presley anew – all over again. Baz Luhrmann is credited as the director but here he’s more an editor. Having come across tons of never-seen material in the vaults while researching his Elvis biopic a few years back, he decided to take a closer look at what he’d found, the raw footage to the Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and the Elvis on Tour movies. Undoubtedly this was prompted by the realisation that the celluloid itself was in astonishingly good … Read more
Thor: Love and Thunder
Though the Asgardian deity has appeared in other Avengers movies in the interim,Thor: Love and Thunder is the first outing for Chris Hemsworth’s caped godhead since the last standalone Thor movie, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. Time has moved on and we’re now in a different phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one determined to bolt a “meta” onto the usual stew of tall tales, quips, dressing up, special effects and heroics. Some things have changed, but some remain the same. In textbook Thor fashion, we first meet the villain. Christian Bale plays Gorr, a grieving father driven into a frenzy when he discovers that Rapu, his liege lord/godhead, doesn’t give a stuff about his … Read more
TMNT
Can the sewer-dwelling Mutant Ninja Turtles dudes named after renaissance painters really still be teenagers? Just one of the many questions raised by the latest animated iteration of the once popular franchise that can trace its origins back to a comicbook spoof of the early 1980s. Foremost of those questions must be “Why?” Feeling a lot longer than its 87 minutes, TMNT is a franchise reboot that follows the familiar pattern – hence the “getting the gang back together” element which needs to be got out of the way before the real plot (a tech-industrial magnate, voiced by silky Patrick Stewart, wants to destroy the world) can be embarked on. The look is … Read more
Count Yorga, Vampire
Going in to 1970’s Count Yorga, Vampire, the thing to remember – and the reason why it sometimes flies under an alternative title, The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire – is that it was originally destined to be a vampire movie of a softcore persuasion, at least as much about tits as teeth. It explains odd moments when the focus shifts from the matter at hand – an update on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story, in all the key essentials – and on to female flesh. There isn’t that much of it, to be fair to the film, which took its swerve away from the carnal early in the production process, at the point … Read more
Cut-Throats Nine
With eyes obviously much sharper than mine, some people maintain that 1972’s Cut-Throats Nine (Condenados a Vivir) is the inspiration for Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. It’s true both are westerns and the snowy setting of Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent’s original is unusual in the same way that The Hateful Eight’s was (though let’s not forget Sergio Corbucci’s great snow-filled western The Great Silence of 1968). And it’s also true that Tarantino loves to plunder overlooked genre movies of yore. Which would make this spaghetti western – a paella western, more precisely, since it’s made in Spain – a prime candidate. But having watched it I cannot see much more connecting the two films than … Read more
Dead Man’s Wire
In 1977 Tony Kiritsis walked into a loan company in Indianapolis and took mortgage broker Richard Hall hostage. With a gun to his hostage’s head, and a wire connecting Hall’s neck to the trigger, Kiritsis had the broker where he wanted: any interference and Kiritsis would pull the trigger; should Hall make a sudden movement, then the “dead man’s wire” would activate the trigger. The police, who were soon on the scene, were helpless. Kiritsis had a beef with the company, which he claimed had lent him a lot of money to develop a shopping mall and then engineered things so the project would fail. In the process Kiritsis had gone bust and, … Read more
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner claims to star Bette Davis, but this is not true. The real star – the person around whom the story revolves, who drives the plot and takes up most of the screen time – is Monty Woolley, as the eponymous “man”. He’s the hoity-toity metropolitan-elite writer who arrives in a nowheresville town along with his personal assistant Maggie (Davis), complaining loudly of having to have dinner with “mid-western barbarians”. The Stanleys (Grant Mitchell, Billie Burke) are middle-class stalwarts – he’s in ball bearings, she’s a fluttery wife – and she’s delighted that Sheridan Whiteside (Woolley) has deigned to grace them with his presence. Until Whiteside slips on the … Read more
Sleep, My Love
The 1948 thriller Sleep, My Love has a Chandler-esque title reminiscent of Farewell, My Lovely, and opens in strong Freudian style with a train in the night screaming towards the camera. It’s a solid piece of work directed by Douglas Sirk with style and pace but he can’t do much with Leo Rosten’s too-familiar story. Also screaming is wealthy New Yorker Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert), who wakes up on a train bound for Boston with no idea how she got there. In her bag is her husband’s gun. He (Don Ameche), meanwhile, is back in New York nursing a bullet wound and filling in Detective Strake (Raymond Burr) on details about his missing … Read more
