Popular Reviews
The Vanished
The Vanished stars three names who used to keep casting directors’ phones busy. Anne Heche, Thomas Jane and Jason Patric all bring a useful intensity to an incredibly wayward kidnap drama written by Peter Facinelli, whose face you’ll probably know (from the Twilight films, or Supergirl or Nurse Jackie on TV) even if you don’t quite recognise the name. It’s a simple whodunit, in many ways, loaded up with paranoia, and kicking off in a trailer park that’s largely deserted, on account of it being Thanksgiving weekend, where married couple Wendy (Heche) and Paul (Jane) rock up in their RV with their daughter for a family camping weekend. What with the film being … Read more
BAC Nord
BAC Nord (released by Netflix as The Stronghold) tells the story of a case that’s notorious in the annals of French policing, when a unit of Marseille cops was hauled in and accused of drug trafficking and dealing. Their defence? They were part of an undercover and slightly off-limits operation ordered from higher up and now being officially denied. Whether that was or wasn’t the case is what the film is about, though it makes it clear from the beginning that it clearly was. And in the characters of the three main characters – granite-tough middle-aged leader Grégory Cerva (Gilles Lellouche), new family man Yass (Karim Leklou) and charming playa Antoine (François Civil) … Read more
Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events
Somewhere near the end of this highly anticipated children’s adventure movie there’s a cameo by Dustin Hoffman. He just blurs on, says a couple of indistinct phrases and is not seen again. The pointlessness of his appearance is indicative of what’s wrong with this film, a series of disconnected and poorly motivated events which no amount of star power – Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall – can give shape to. There’s even narration courtesy of Jude Law, though it could be Father Christmas for all the difference it makes. The plot follows three young orphans, bookish Klaus, resourceful Emily and gurgling infant Sunny, as they are farmed out to a … Read more
Hanky Panky
Sam and Diane? Dr Crane and Lilith? Why is everyone in Hanky Panky named after characters in Cheers? The answer would appear to be that writer Nick Roth and his co-director/wife Lindsey Haun thought it was funny. Nothing deep, nothing meta, just good old-fashioned funny. The film’s title logo is styled like the Cheers one too, giving absolutely no indication that comedy horror is on the menu (though the Cheers set-up of a bunch of characters trapped together in a bar isn’t that far from horror). How to describe this? An inventive lo-fi gonzo comedy set out in a remote log cabin where Stephen King and Eli Roth might once have stayed. That … Read more
Raw Deal
Everyone gets a raw deal in Raw Deal, a taut and dark film noir from 1948, directed by Anthony Mann, lit by the great John Alton and so often overlooked when Greatest Noir lists are being compiled. Its characters all come with a tragic flaw which writers John Higgins and Leopold Atlas are eventually going to prise wide open but it’s the additional wallop of sheer bad luck that makes this unusual – that and the voiceover by one of its female characters, Pat Regan, played by Claire Trevor. Pat is in love with Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) but Joe is in prison doing a stretch as the fall guy for bigshot criminal Rick Coyle … Read more
Mill of the Stone Women
1960’s Mill of the Stone Women was the first Italian horror film to be shot in colour – Technicolor, no less – and is a landmark film which opened the door to the lurid looks and titillating scenarios of the giallo genre. Also known as Drops of Blood (or Il mulino delle donne di pietra, in the original Italian), but not in the slightest bit frightening no matter what you call it, it’s soaked in atmosphere only enhanced by the dislocating effect of the foreign language dubbing. It’s dubbed no matter which language you watch it in – originally it came in German, French, Italian and two different English dubs (one more US, the … Read more
Encanto
If you liked Moana then you are the target for Encanto, a song-filled animated story of young female derring-do, set against the background of an ancient civilisation and with a sprinkling of magic to help things along. Polynesia did the decorative thing for Moana, it’s Mesoamerica in Encanto, but if actual knowledge brings you in out in hives, be not afraid, it’s largely just a few masks and other accessories borrowed from the Amerindian back catalogue to give Disney’s latest princess a USP that sets her apart from Pocahontas, Mulan, Merida et al. This one also wears glasses just to make her stand out from the increasingly homogenous big-eyed throng. The action takes … Read more
Amsterdam
That looks like Taylor Swift, I thought to myself, watching the opening moments of David O Russell’s promising looking Amsterdam, his first film since 2015’s Joy. It actually is Taylor Swift, just one of a galaxy of stars in a cast list so luminous that the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough and Zoe Saldana could almost be safely removed without harming the texture of the movie. No, maybe not Taylor-Joy, one of the important components, it turns out, when Amsterdam finally gets round to revealing its nature – an angry political drama, and a good thriller, hidden inside a meringue of deflection, pastiche, jokes, songs, historical factoids, good performances and all the … Read more
Starve Acre
Starve Acre starts out looking like it’s going to be a folk-horror reworking of The Amityville Horror, spooky house and all that. Then changes tack and appears to be attempting a folk-horror reworking of The Exorcist, possessed child and all that. Before finally settling down to tell a story about different ways of coping with grief. It’s a mood piece in many ways. So if you’ve pitched up looking for entertainment – boo scares, ghoulies, things going bump – park those expectations. Subterranean sounds and bleak visuals abound in this story set on the Yorkshire moors in the 1970s, where the modern, rational mindset meets the old ways and comes off second best. … Read more
Petite Maman
Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman takes such a massive turn at a certain point in its brief 1hr 12 minutes running time that it could only be spoilerish to mention it. Let’s just say she might have been watching Netflix’s German TV series Dark and leave it at that. As to the rest of it, it’s absolutely classic Sciamma territory – sentimental education, always female – following on from Sciamma’s 2007 debut and taking in Tomboy, Girlhood and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the last of which is definitely on a very short shortlist of the best movies of 2019. Petite Maman may be brief but it’s so densely packed that if you’d … Read more
The Last Man on Earth
Four years before George Romero is supposed to have revived the genre, the zombies are already alive and kicking (well, shuffling) in 1964 in The Last Man on Earth, a lurid yet oddly static example of a genre movie with all the signs of something knocked out with little respect for its audience. Unsurprisingly it got little respect back in return. It does have a few things in its favour, though. Vincent Price as the titular last human, and a story by Richard Matheson which would be repurposed a number of times, most famously as The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend, with Will Smith. There’s a legend surrounding the … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 11 – Look – (Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One)…
Look – (Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One) but There Were These Two Fellers… that’s the full title to an episode determined that, since the day of The Avengers are numbered, things might as well go out with a bang. It’s written by the insanely prolific Dennis Spooner, whose name came to dominate British TV as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and was dead at the ridiculously young age of 53 in 1986. Perhaps it was overwork. Musings on mortality to one side, this is a great episode for all sorts of reasons. Top of those is the cast, which is full of British comedians from all sorts of different … Read more
