Popular Reviews
The Collini Case
The Collini Case is a courtroom drama adapted from a book written by Ferdinand von Schirach, a laywer-turned-novelist in the John Grisham mould, though being German and having been born in 1964, von Schirach has a different set of concerns. He would have been about 13 when the murder of industrialist and former Nazi SS man Hanns Martin Schlayer happened in 1977, at the hands of the Red Army Faction (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang). He doesn’t directly reference that killing but it informs his book and this film, which is set in the here and now (ish) but is concerned with old atrocities and a peculiarity of the German penal code which allowed … Read more
Cloud
What would online life be like if actions had consequences like they do in the real world? That seems to be the motivating energy behind Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (Kuraudo), an overlong but fascinating thriller yanking a thread that’s visible from the start, though it takes a while to realise that it’s there. Ryôsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) has a traditional job in a factory making stuff. His boss likes him and wants to promote him, setting him off on a safe, decent and traditional career. But there is more to Yoshii’s life than the day job. He also has a side hustle buying distressed goods at knockdown prices and selling them online for a … Read more
Favolacce (Bad Tales)
Grim and matter of fact, Favolacce follows up the D’Innocenzo brothers’ Boys Cry, a grim and matter of fact mafia drama with a tale, a bad tale (it’s also released as Bad Tales) of kids cusping on teenagerdom living in intolerable family situations. Asshole dads, toxic family relationship and cowed kids make for a film that’s tough going and yet oddly through-the-fingers watchable. Perhaps because, like frogs being gradually brought up to a simmer, we are introduced to the awfulness by stealth. To start with it looks like we’re in the world of Raymond Carver. There’s even what looks like a reference to that Carver story Why Don’t You Dance, the one about … Read more
Deadfall
Remember Eric Bana in Chopper, frightening everyone to death as Australia’s most gruesomely violent criminal, Mark “Chopper” Read? There are echoes of Bana the Bad in Deadfall, in which he plays one half of a psycho sibling pair who are heading, unwittingly as far as they and everyone else concerned can tell, for a showdown rendezvous at a Thanksgiving dinner. Deadfall isn’t half as good as Chopper, though it does give Bana a chance to show us he can still do ugly. If only writer Zach Dean and director Stefan Ruzowitzky had worked out some way of telling the other four stories they’re trying to tell with economy, leaving Bana with more screen … Read more
The Avengers: Series 6, Episode 17 – Killer
Were showrunner Brian Clemens, fellow producer Albert Fennell and the rest of the production team trying to get rid of Linda Thorson? She had been introduced during his brief interregnum by producer John Bryce and when Clemens and Fennell returned, they were stuck with her. Killer is an episode bursting with agents – who die one after the other and wind up gift-wrapped in plastic – but Thorson’s character Tara King is notably absent, having told Steed in dialogue that protests a bit too much that she is off on holiday and there is nothing he can do about it… so there. Instead Steed is paired with Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney – referred to … Read more
City Lights
Charlie Chaplin started making his film City Lights in one era and released it in another. In the three years the picture was in production, an epochal shift occurred as Hollywood abandoned the silent movie and went wholesale over to talkies. When Chaplin started shooting what was intended to be his biggest picture to date in 1928 he was the king of the hill – and of the world, its biggest ever star before or since – in a world of silent movies. By the time he finished, Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and Harold Lloyd were all talking and the world was going crazy for the likes of Fredric March snarling his way … Read more
Ammonite
After a few years of doing mostly voice work on animations, Kate Winslet has been coaxed back into a leading role in Ammonite, the follow-up to Francis Lee’s powerful breakthrough debut as a director, God’s Own Country. The 2017 movie told the story of forbidden love between two men on the wild and windy moors of Yorkshire. It’s tempting to see Ammonite as a remake – forbidden love on the wild and windy shores of Dorset – but is there more going on here than that? Winslet plays real-life 18th-century fossil-hunter Mary Anning – a huge Wikipedia page on her awaits if you know nothing about her. To boil it down: she lived in … Read more
Bullet Train
So you’ve decided to watch a film called Bullet Train. You know Brad Pitt is in it. You know David Leitch directed it – he co-directed John Wick and was Pitt’s stunt double in Fight Club. You have certain expectations. In fact you almost know exactly what you’re going to get – something that’s expensive and glossy, well made, with driving action and perhaps a squeeze of humour. The names Sandra Bullock and Brian Tyree Henry back up the suggestion there’ll be comedy. And there’s Michael Shannon in the credits, so maybe a bit of badassery? Want to bet there’ll also be a runaway train factored into the plot somehow? Enter Brad Pitt, … Read more
Supergirl
Green kryptonite at the box office, Supergirl is standard superhero fare juiced with Deadpool-style wit and smarts. Well, that’s the intention. In fact, the wit is a bit strained and the smarts are a touch familiar. Everyone is trying just a bit too hard. Put it down to nerves. DC realised their DC Extended Universe (2013’s Man of Steel to 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) had lost whatever mojo it had ever had and so decided to reboot it as the more streamlined DC Universe – “Extended” was possibly a hostage to fortune. As part of all that, out went Sasha Calle, a perfectly fine Supergirl in The Flash, and in came … Read more
Russian Ark
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 May International Museum Day Today is International Museum Day, held annually by museum professionals as a way of highlighting the work that museums do in preserving the past. It was created in 1977 and has gained in popularity ever since, participating numbers rising from 20,000 museums in 2009 to 30,000 in 2012. Each year a theme is chosen: in 2002 it was “Museums and Globalisation”; in 1993 it was “Museums and Indigenous Peoples”. In 2012, the organisers, the International Council of Museums, encouraged people to take selfies of themselves at their local museum, under the rubric “Me and My Museum”. … Read more
Little Fish
Not to be confused with the 2005 movie of the same name starring Cate Blanchett, Little Fish puts a twist on one of the those big films about two people in love told against a torrid backdrop of war
Midnight Sky
Midnight Sky continues George Clooney’s fascination for sci-fi, a rocky relationship that’s only really yielded one proper old fashioned hit – Gravity. Both Solaris and Tomorrowland seemed to fall into the dark hole between reviewer favourite and audience hit. Unbowed, Clooney plugs on, directing here, and trying something rather bold as he attempts to weld the thoughtful meditative mood of Solaris to the gut-churning action dynamics of Gravity, a bold and some might say doomed endeavour. The postmodern futurism of Tomorrowland is nowhere to be seen. The action takes place out in space and here on Earth – out there is a ship returning from scoping out a new planet to colonise, down here … Read more
