Popular Reviews
Deep Blue Sea
Not to be confused with high-tone The Deep Blue Sea, from 2011, this action thriller whose USP is “smart sharks” got a mixed reception when it came out, everyone suddenly having forgotten how many people have tried to follow in the wake of Jaws – and totally failed. Renny Harlin’s film succeeds, mostly, thanks to his understanding of action, his writer’s reliance on the old “someone’s been messing with nature” plot, of Godzilla vintage, and a better cast than these things often have (Michael Caine in Jaws: The Revenge being a rare exception). So we have Saffron Burrows as a scientist who’s been genetically modifying sharks in an attempt to find the cure … Read more
Manon
Manon isn’t Henri-Georges Clouzot’s best film by a long stretch but it is a great example of how good he was at what he did. A richly detailed story about an amoral woman and the man she falls for, its interesting personal angle is that Clouzot is possibly using it to examine his own behaviour during wartime. The story is an updating of Manon Lescaut, by Abbé Prévost, a story familiar to most French people, who would also be familiar with the other “Manon” – Manon des Sources (which has also been turned into a film several times). Not to be confused. Prévost’s story remains popular because there’s sex and scandal aplenty in … Read more
Antiviral
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 February Rare Disease Day This day every leap year is Rare Disease Day. Initially chosen because the day itself is rare, and to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Orphan Drug Act in the USA (which makes it easier for therapies for designated diseases to be developed), it was first observed in 2008. When there isn’t a 29 February in the year, the day is observed on the last day of the month. A rare disease is technically defined as one found in fewer than five people in 10,000, but there are more well known rare diseases than might at … Read more
Crime 101
Slick operators meet slick movie in Crime 101, a drama about capable people being pushed out of their comfort zones for our entertainment. It’s 21st-century film noir, to a large extent, Michael Mann in its glossiness and sexing-up of the city, utterly familiar in its set-up, less so in its payoff. Bart Layton has made two feature films before, both with a strong documentary flavour. The Imposter was a full-on doc about one guy passing himself off as another, and everyone, including the replaced guy’s mother, somehow being taken in. The other, American Animals, used documentary elements to tell the story of an elaborate real-life heist. Both were remarkable. Layton edges more obviously … Read more
The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 23 – Conspiracy of Silence
Tight direction is the saving of Conspiracy of Silence, episode 23 of the second series of The Avengers, a mix of the confusing and the humdrum. Why, for example, is Steed being targeted by a killer while he’s out walking his dog? The imdb brief description tells us it’s because he interrupted a drug-trafficking op run by the Mafia. So, assuming you are the Mafia, why not just kill him in one of the more usual ways, rather than deploy an innocent, Carlo (Robert Rietty), transformed into an automaton killer by a trigger phrase in a redundant mind-control subplot? Perhaps The Avengers were just warming up the idea for future episodes – mind control … Read more
Loving Vincent
It’s likely that nothing is ever going to knock Loving Vincent off the top spot when it comes to films about the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. Whether it relegates 1956’s Lust for Life – which starred Kirk Douglas as the tortured artist – into second place as a biopic is another mattter entirely. It’s a Polish movie with British/Irish actors in most of the key roles and an unashamed Citizen Kane structure. Douglas Booth takes the investigative role as Armand Roulin, the rough postmaster’s son trying to return a letter sent by Vincent to his brother Theo, and in the process going from one person to another, talking out of each details … Read more
The Kill Room
Walking the line between complex and convoluted plotting, The Kill Room is a dark comedy throwback starring Uma Thurman and Samuel L Jackson. It’s the first time these two have appeared together since 2004’s Kill Bill: Vol 2. The time before that was Pulp Fiction and it’s obvious that it’s the Tarantino connection that this movie is really all about. Thurman plays Patrice, a gallery owner on the skids. Jackson is Gordon, the local baker whose store is a front for a crime operation. He comes up with a novel scheme for laundering the vast sums of cash that come his way. He’ll buy worthless tat from her for a vastly inflated sum … Read more
Talk to Me
Talk to Me announces Danny and Michael Philippou as gifted new arrivals on the Australian indie scene. With a feature debut this strong, how long the twins remain indie and in Australia is anyone’s guess. Apparently they turned down a directing gig on one of the DC Extended Universe movies to do this, so they clearly felt they had something special to offer. And it’s horror, too. With the horror market particularly crowded right now, this makes their determination to go it alone (if two people can be said to go it alone) all the more admirable. So what’s it about? A séance that goes wrong, in short, leading to demonic possession and … Read more
Twisted Nerve
“A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry, predestines the sinner or the saint.” Twisted Nerve gets its title from a poem by George Sylvester Viereck – a German migrant who did time in a USA jail for being a Nazi spy – and worries away at that “predestines” bit for nearly two hours. What is it that makes this film’s protagonist, Martin, so weird? Was he born that way or is he just maladjusted? Nature or nurture? It’s Hywel Bennett as Martin, for a while in the late 1960s and early 1970s the go-to man for weirdos, his cherubic features, hipster aspect and big eyes suiting him to roles like this, a dissolute … Read more
Immaculate
Sydney Sweeney plays a nun – how about that for an elevator pitch? Immaculate is a film that Sweeney really wanted to play, having first auditioned to play the lead role aged 17. Now, ten years on, with money in the bank and acting as a producer on the movie, she finally gets the project aloft, a touch of a rewrite here, a fave director there and casting herself as a sweet novitiate nun who become the brood mare of… well it must be Satan, though no one ever utters the name. A “devil’s dick” movie then, joining the likes of Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, with the plot remarkably close to The … Read more
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America
I’m not sure why there aren’t more movies like Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America. To make one all you need is some found footge – real found footage, not stuff you faked – an edit suite and a voiceover. Plus ideas. This strange movie from 1992 is a collage of bits and pieces that writer/director Craig Baldwin got his hands on when, according to Wikipedia, lots of film works were being “discarded by institutions changing to VHS” (who would discard film for VHS, makes no sense at all). Baldwin snapped up bits of pieces of celluloid heading for the dumpster and headed off to make his film with them, picking up Sean Kilkoyne … Read more
Les Tontons Flingueurs aka Crooks in Clover
There’s something about 1963’s Les Tontons Flingueurs as a title that sounds wackier, funnier, just better than the usual English translation – Crooks in Clover. The film also goes by the name Monsieur Gangster but the original French literally translates as Gunslinging Uncles. Tontons Flingueurs is better because it sounds a bit ridiculous, and that’s really what’s going on in this amusing French drama from 1963, often described as a comedy but only properly funny if you speak French. Michel Audiard’s screenplays deal heavily in slang and wordplay and neither of those quite survive the translation into English. The film has a real cachet in France; elsewhere barely any. If like me you’re … Read more
