Popular Reviews
A Dandy in Aspic
The film that killed the great director Anthony Mann, A Dandy in Aspic didn’t get killer reviews when it debuted in 1968. “Completely devoid of suspense” and “bland,” said the New York Times. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide declared it “wooden”. Mann died of a heart attack towards the end of shooting and the movie’s star, Laurence Harvey, took over directing, which isn’t the reason the film bombed. Harvey actually takes some pains to ape the claustrophobic, slick style of Mann. There just isn’t a whole lot going on in Derek Marlowe’s original story (which he adapted for the screen). But what looked like a failure back then looks more like a calculation all … Read more
Gaia
Gaia is a South African horror film. Unusual enough. An eco-horror, a survivalist horror, a myco-horror and a Freudian horror too. And somehow, in among all that, it even manages a bit of old-fashioned girl-in-a-T-shirt horror titillation, a demonstration of its limber ability to play to and against horror expectations. The supreme example of this comes early on, right after we’ve met Gabi (Monique Rothman) and Winston (Anthony Oseyemi), a pair of forestry workers far from base, punting up river in a canoe, on a mission to collect data. Having lost the drone they’re using as a tech wayfinder, they separate. Expectation one – this is a bad idea. This turns out to be … Read more
Shock Corridor
Shock Corridor is a great example of the indie writer/director Sam Fuller’s ability to make films with a social subtext that weren’t overwhelmed by worthiness. Not being a studio movie it’s got no famous names in it, and isn’t shot in colour (apart from a few drop-ins). Instead Fuller and DP Stanley Cortez (who was instrumental in making The Night of the Hunter so memorably sinister) opt for a breezy film noir style of harsh lighting that’s quick to set up, effective and cheap – together they turned the film out in ten days. It also looks great in the Criterion Blu-ray I watched. A look at the plot tells us where Fuller’s real … Read more
The Bank Dick
The Bank Dick is one hour 12 minute of WC Fields doing what WC Fields does – comedy in an erratic, chaotic, incoherent and brilliant way. It’s barely a film at all, more a series of sketches linked together by the familiar Fields character, a dyspeptic layabout and drunk who spends so much time and effort trying to avoid work that it’s a full-time job in itself. Loosely, and this is very loose, the “plot” follows the irascible shirker into and out of his favourite bar and then into and out of two different jobs. In one, he somehow becomes the director of a movie, merely by claiming to some wits-end producer type … Read more
The Counterfeiters
When The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008, there was disquiet in some quarters. How come Cristian Mungiu’s brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days hadn’t even been nominated? Didn’t that glaring omission obviously invalidate all the other entries? As with most cases of whataboutery, the answer is yes, but mostly no. The Oscars are always a bit of a scrum and for all their claims to objectivity are best seen as industry awards first (ie the “Buggins’ Turn” rule is in play) and guarantors of quality second. In the end The Counterfeiters won and, while not quite a classic on the Mungiu level, it’s a fine … Read more
Keyhole
“That penis is getting dusty” – a line of dialogue in wonky auteur Guy Maddin’s latest film, another arthouse exploration of arthouse themes delivered in high contrast monochrome, from a camera on a bungee and via an editor with attention deficit disorder. There are a couple of famous names too, just to lure in the unwary, or more likely to open the wallets of the various art foundations that funded this mad collision of references. Isabella Rossellini, longtime Maddin collaborator and utterer of the great line in his film The Saddest Music in the World – “If you’re sad and you like beer, I’m your lady” – she’s here. So too, as you … Read more
Looking for Venera
Men are mostly lurking presences rather than characters in Looking for Venera, Norika Sefa’s film which she says is about showing the world that life in Kosovo isn’t all about poverty and exotica. Sitting in London, it looks pretty poor and exotic to me. Sefa opens with a shot of a teenage female having pounding sex with a man in the woods, observed sight unseen by another teenage female. Later we learn that the young woman having sex is Dorina (Rozafa Celaj) and the one watching is Venera (Kosovare Krasniqi). They are not friends, but after Venera pulls Dorina aside to quiz her about what she was up to on her back among … Read more
Rage
George C Scott, as well as acting, also directed three films. Rage, the second, was the first to get a theatrical release and is an interesting failure, unlike Scott’s first film, The Andersonville Trial, which was a critical hit. Scott’s last, The Savage Is Loose, tickled neither audiences nor critics – it was probably the theme of incest. The fascinating thing about Rage is that it’s a conspiracy thriller with a plot that’s all about the US government conspiring against its own people. This was 1972, pre-Watergate, when mainstream US-set conspiracy thrillers generally still hinged either on malevolent foreigners hatching dastardly plots (The Manchurian Candidate) or rogue generals planning a coup (Seven Days … Read more
Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien aka A Radiant Girl
For her debut feature as a director, French actor Sandrine Kiberlain has decided not to take the easy route and instead go for something a bit bolder. Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien (A Radiant Girl) is a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way. Kiberlain returns to the grim history of the Jews of Paris under the Nazi occupation but filters it all – well, mostly all – through the eyes of a young drama student whose entire focus is on an upcoming audition to gain entry to the conservatory. As the film opens Irène (Rebecca Marder) is rehearsing Marivaux’s L’Épreuve with a fellow drama student. She faints. It might be part … Read more
Catch My Soul
What a strange beast Catch My Soul is. A rock musical released in 1974 to widespread indifference, if not jeers, it was directed by Patrick McGoohan, produced by Jack Good, starred Richie Havens and was an adaptation of the play Othello by William Shakespeare. There’s so much talent in here and yet… pfft. Thumbnail sketches of the above. McGoohan was the creator/co-writer/co-director/star of the 1960s cult TV series The Prisoner. Good had created “youth TV” in the UK, producing shows like Six-Five Special and Oh Boy!, before taking off for the US and reproducing the success with Shindig!. Havens was the charismatic singer-songwriter who had catapulted himself to fame after electrifying the Woodstock … Read more
The Forty-Year-Old Version
First, the title. It’s called The Forty-Year-Old Version because this autobiographical, documentary-style drama is about the 40-year-old, grown-up version of the kid who wanted to be a writer. Now a struggling actor/writer/director, Radha Blank had once upon a time also turned up on a 30 Under 30 list of hot young talents to watch, so the kid wasn’t deluded. Clearly, something has gone wrong in the intervening years. Instead of having a successful career in the theatre, Radha teaches. They’re nice, funny, feisty kids – the girls want to fight, the boys are obsessed with genitalia. But it’s not what she really wants to do. Radha’s mother, a painter, has recently died and … Read more
Earth Mama
A remarkable feature debut by Savanah Leaf, Earth Mama is the grim social drama that’s had a magic wand waved over it. Not the story, though. That remains grim. Young single mum Gia has lost her children to social services. She is a recovering drug user and is heavily pregnant. She loves her kids and realises she has made a mess of things. So she is trying to do whatever it takes to get her life back on track. But the system seems gamed against young black single women like her. How can she take on more work and earn enough money to satisfy the authorities’ stipulation that she be financially OK if … Read more
