Popular Reviews
Annette
The formidably talented maverick Leos Carax hasn’t made a feature in nine years, nothing since 2012’s batshit Holy Motors, so that’s one thing to thank the new movie Annette for. Whether Annette actually is a Carax movie at all is the question though. How so, you ask. Because Annette is written by Ron (he of toothbrush moustache) and Russell (he of swooping voice) Mael, the brothers behind Sparks, the US band that bounced into the zeitgeist in 1974 with the song This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, and has returned, comet-like, every few years since with material ear-catching and interesting enough to win new fans. Originally bracketed with the … Read more
Patton
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 April President Truman fires General MacArthur, 1951 Today in 1951, President Truman fired his most popular, successful general, Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur had been chief of staff of the US army in the 1930s, had been commander of the US Army in the Far East and supreme commander of the southwest Pacific during the Second World War. It was MacArthur who accepted the surrender of the Japanese in 1945 ,and it was MacArthur who effectively governed Japan between 1945 and 1951. It was also MacArthur who led the United Nations forces into Korea, where he was initially successful, before being pushed … Read more
My Thoughts Are Silent
My Thoughts Are Silent (Moyi dumky tykhi, in the original Ukrainian) is one of a small clutch of films about or featuring a sound recordist, sitting alongside the likes of Silence (from Ireland), Upstream Color (USA) and Berberian Sound Studio (UK). All are odd and left-field in different ways, with My Thoughts Are Silent the most deliberately comedic. Which is not quite the same thing as “funny” though it does have its moments. There’s a black and white prologue before the film proper gets going, set in Hungary in 1526, where some priest is trying to flog a “holy relic” to two priests. “A foreskin?” asks one of the clerics hopefully. It turns … Read more
Juror No. 2
Juror No. 2 is a rare thing these days: a good old-fashioned courtroom thriller. Director Clint Eastwood, 93 when he made it, does it old-style, the way his mentor Don Siegel might have done it, and the result is a streamlined drama revolving around a central dilemma, just the sort of lean and fast second feature Siegel might have cranked out in the 1950s. It is a very neat plot, which I’m not going to ruin by explaining. What I can say is that Nicholas Hoult is the titular juror, a man who suddenly realises mid-trial that he can free the man accused of murdering his girlfriend at a stroke, but only if … Read more
The Avengers: Series 4, Episode 11 – Man-Eater of Surrey Green
Man-Eater of Surrey Green is the perfect Avengers episode title. Camp, corny, a bit sexy, a lot parochial, it sums up the series perfectly. And this episode, which is a mix of scientific blah blah and a lot of eccentric bombing about. Things kick off when two lab-coated scientists in love (Gillian Lewis and William Job) put their moist-eyed interchanges on hold when she suddenly hears a funny noise – it’s that 1960s mind-control noise created by someone furiously twiddling the knobs of an oscilloscope. Off she heads, in glassy-eyed “I hear and obey” fashion, to a Rolls Royce waiting to whisk her away. Steed and Peel are soon on the case of … Read more
Nowhere Special
The terminal-illness weepie needs a firm hand or it can run off all over the place. Nowhere Special is a great case in point. Writer and director Uberto Pasolini keeps a tight grip, and James Norton’s impassioned but restrained performance is a thing of wonder. It’s so good that – as happens with proper acting – barely anyone noticed him when it came to awards time. Check it out, though. This is an undeniably simple film, but like a fine meal made from a few good ingredients, it just all comes together. Norton plays John, a window cleaner with some non-specific cancer. The entirety of Nowhere Special consists of John trying to find new … Read more
Meet Me in St Louis
“Clang clang clang went the trolley” and ring ring ring went the tills in every box office all over America when Meet Me in St Louis arrived in 1944. Made when the war in the Pacific was at its height, it was a chocolate-boxy feast of nostalgia even then, a story about a decent paterfamilias (Leon Ames) considering uprooting his family and moving them from cosy St Louis to New York. What could be more appropriate in wartime than a film about a lifestyle under threat? Poor Esther (Judy Garland), the second oldest daughter. How is she ever going to croon and spoon with “The Boy Next Door”? Poor Tootie (an Oscar to … Read more
The Raven
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 November Boris Karloff born, 1887 On this day in 1887, the great horror actor Boris Karloff was born. Disappointingly, his birth name was William Henry Pratt and he wasn’t born in some Carpathian cave but in the inner suburb of Lewisham, South London. A well educated young man with a lisp and a stutter, he dropped out while training to become a functionary of the British Empire and instead took to farm labouring before becoming an actor. He took the name Boris Karloff while in travelling repertory theatre in Canada, and after arriving in Hollywood he played a number of … Read more
Fréwaka
There’s a definite influence of The Wicker Man in Fréwaka, Aislinn Clarke’s second feature. You might call it The Fréwaka Man if you were being facetious. But it deserves better than that. And in any case the main character is a woman, so that’s enough of that foolishness. It’s also the first horror movie in the Irish language, so doubly deserving of more than just a casual glance. Before the opening credits have rolled, Clarke has set out her stall – pagan, unnatural, spooky things are going to happen in this movie, it seems clear, from the vignette we’re given of a wedding where a clearly pregnant young woman is the bride, it’s … Read more
100 Years of… The Phantom Carriage
The Phantom Carriage is something of a phantom movie. Loved by Ingmar Bergman, who rewatched it every year and claimed it inspired him to get into film-making, it was also adored by Charlie Chaplin, who called it the best film ever made. Stanley Kubrick was also a fan, and lifted one of his most iconic sequences – Jack Nicholson axing through a door in The Shining – directly from it. But how many people have actually seen this classic? Bergman, Chaplin, Kubrick, this is clearly a film with “bottom” but it also has plenty going on up top. In short, it’s a Dickensian tale of a man who has lived a life as an … Read more
Nomadland
In January 2011 the US Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada, shut down. By July of the same year the town’s zip code had been discontinued. Nomadland makes personal a phenomenon that’s been going on for decades but has accelerated since the big crash of 2008. Of displaced older blue-collar workers who lose their homes and jobs and take to the road, travelling around the US working at any job they can, living out of cars, vans and recreational vehicles, a new nomad class. The film is based on the 2018 book by Jessica Bruder, an extended piece of non-fiction reporting detailing the phenomenon, and stars Frances McDormand as Fern – the only person … Read more
3 November 2014-11-03
Out in the UK This Week Chef (Lionsgate, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) The US TV show Diners, Drive Ins and Dives seems to be the inspiration for Jon Favreau’s warm-hearted comedy – which is simple, fun and just works. The story of a jaded high-flying chef who rediscovers his mojo working on a food truck, it’s put together with Favreau’s usual under-estimated skill (he writes and directs as well as stars), and he drafts in a few famous names (Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Vergara, Robert Downey Jr, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt) for what look like “I promise you, one day’s work, max” appearances. Though welcome, none of them are essential. Dealing incidentally with our culture’s internet-driven … Read more
