Popular Reviews
Old Henry
Suddenly everyone wants a very particular set of skills. Old Henry is the latest in a line of movies where the hero turns out to be capable of things he initially appears not to be capable of at all. Before Bob Odenkirk did it in Nobody. Before Keanu Reeves in John Wick. Before Liam Neeson got the current phase underway in Taken. Before all of those there was Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, reluctantly strapping the guns back on and doing what a killing machine does. Since then Marvel and DC have reminded us of the type with many variations of the same thing – the mild mannered type who’d rather not fight, but … Read more
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
A polemic rather than a drama, about a blameless Irish lad who becomes a Republican after seeing with his own eyes what the British are up to. Cillian Murphy plays the lad, peaceable to the point of cowardice, the prospective medical student who is caught up in the struggle to get the Brits out of Ireland in the 1920s. His brother (Pádraic Delaney) meanwhile heads off in the other direction – initially bellicose but softening his stance when a political compromise (a “sell out”) is brokered. Director Ken Loach’s film is partisan to the point of ludicrousness – at one point the Brits are depicted swooshing by in cars with their heads tilted … Read more
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man
For decades Cohen’s music has been misrepresented as the soundtrack to suicide. In fact the old (now 73) groaner is something of a comedian, though his wit is so dry it’s taken non-aficionados decades to catch on. He’s also something of a master of self-mythology, the sort of performer who seems to back into the spotlight rather than seek it out. His albums have titles such as Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs from a Room (1969) and Recent Songs (2001), this austerity matched in real life by his decision to become a Buddhist and the subsequent five years he spent in seclusion from 1994 to 1999. In fact Cohen’s recent higher profile … Read more
The Old Guard aka Les Vieux de la Vieille
You might not have seen 1960’s The Old Guard (aka Les Vieux de la Vieille), a charming French comedy of manners of the old school. But you might have seen Last of the Summer Wine, the British comedy currently holding the record for longest-running TV sitcom in the world. Since it ran 1973 to 2010 it’s a record in not much danger of being broken any time soon. They are almost identical in plot, tone and basic premise. Three old codgers, one of whom hasn’t seen the others for many years, reunite to reminisce, bemoan the lack of respect oldsters command these days and indulge in the sort of childish larks that exasperate … Read more
A Hijacking
Stories of Somali pirates hijacking ships and holding people hostage for months regularly make the news bulletins but rarely seem to make it to the big screen. Which is odd considering that foreigners waving guns about in front of frightened innocents’ faces is a staple of cinema. Enter A Hijacking (original title: Kapringen), a Danish offering that welds a cast familiar to viewers of Danish TV sensation Borgen to a twin-track plot – one half takes place on the high seas, the other back at base where negotiations for the hostages’ release are taking place. The result is a drama so involving that, though I’d dragged myself to the cinema with a heavy … Read more
Night at the Museum
One of Disney’s old standbys is the perky live-action comedy, of the sort they used to put out on the 1960s, invariably starring Dean Jones and a gaggle of pesky kids, plus a cute animal or two. These movies were zippy and had a gee-whizz wholesomeness that was easy to mock but hard to hate. Night at the Museum drills right into that vein, and even gives a small part to Dick Van Dyke, king of Disney’s live-action magnum opus, Mary Poppins. But he’s not the star. Instead there’s an appropriately bumbling Ben Stiller fitting right into the Van Dyke mould, as the hapless, hopeless dad who takes a job at a Museum … Read more
Candyman
Gory but not too scary, 2021’s Candyman is a direct sequel to 1992’s Candyman, which means it builds on the narrative and the lore of the first film rather than the 1995 and 1999 sequels. It also builds on the lore and narrative of Tony Todd’s Candyman, the first mainstream black horror whacko, someone to be pitched alongside Freddie Kruger or Leatherface in a nightmare beauty pageant. Clive Barker wrote the original story, The Forbidden, and set the action in rundown Liverpool. Bernard Rose relocated the whole thing to Cabrini-Green in rundown Chicago for the 1992 version he adapted and directed, reshaping the story to his liking – for example, in Barker’s version … Read more
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was first proposed, no one imagined that the sequel to the huge hit of 2018 was going to be made without its star. Chadwick Boseman died in 2020, having kept his battles with colon cancer super-heroically to himself. What to do? Cast someone else in his place? It was an option, and one Boseman’s own brother Derrick suggested, as a memorial to the character Chadwick had played. Or marshal the forces of CG to bring the lead actor back to digital life? For various reasons neither was considered a goer – social media kickback always being an issue. In the end, writer/director Ryan Coogler et al decided to … Read more
Mauvais Sang
French neo-noir at its most stylish, Mauvais Sang (confusingly it also goes by the titles The Night Is Young and the more literally translated Bad Blood) was Leos Carax’s second feature, the enfant terrible of French cinema still only a youthful 26 in 1986 when the film was made. The majority of his cast are pretty young too. We’re seeing early outings for Denis Lavant (25), Juliette Binoche (22) and a very young Julie Delpy (she’s about 15 here, having debuted the year before for Jean-Luc Godard in Detective). If you read any plot precis it’ll tell you that the action is set in some version of the future, where a virus is … Read more
Men in War
A “lost patrol” war movie, 1957’s Men in War shows that director Anthony Mann was as expert in this genre as he had already proved himself to be in film noir (Raw Deal), the western (Winchester ’73) and the epic (Quo Vadis). Made without any buy-in from the US military, it’s a pared-back affair and Mann uses the lack of budget to good effect, relying on key performances from his two leads to deliver the goods. There are two different types of human endeavour on display in Men in War – the social and the individual. Robert Ryan plays the fiercely egalitarian lieutenant in charge of a platoon trying to make its way … Read more
Mickey One
Old Hollywood meets new in Mickey One, a neglected thriller from 1965 directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty, both of whom would upend the cosy certainties of a sclerotic industry with Bonnie and Clyde two years later. They run through a few of the possibilities here. The film focuses almost entirely on Beatty, as a club comedian and light-entertainment guy who goes on the run from the Mob after getting on the wrong side of them over money, a woman, and possibly a few other things. Mickey One is what the fugitive ends up being called after assuming the identity of a turned-over vagrant, “One” being as near as most people … Read more
DC League of Super-Pets
The Superman story with a doggie twist. The tale, or tail, of the pup who jumped into baby Kal-El’s escape pod as his parents evacuated their son from the dying planet Krypton, and wound up as Superman’s best friend on planet Earth, complete with canine super powers of his own, a cape, and even a pair of black framed glasses as a doggie disguise. When he’s not being Krypto the superdog, he’s the Bark to Superman’s Clark Kent. Ho ho. Dwayne Johnson, surely at risk of spreading himself too thin, voices Krypto, the loyal companion whose daily round of walkies and fly-ies is interrupted by a series of events. First Superman and Lois … Read more
