| MovieSteve

Father Mother Sister Brother

2026-05-21 by Steve

Acting when there’s something to do is relatively straightforward. But what about when there’s nothing to get hold of? Father Mother Sister Brother is full of empty space, and for whole stretches of time the characters in it don’t really know how to fill the silence. They babble. They fall silent. They pick up on a tiny detail and won’t let it go. Because where a relationship should be there is none. Jim Jarmusch’s latest film is episodic, three bijou, beautifully crafted Carver-esque mini-dramas. In story one a brother and sister visit their ageing father, who lives all alone and on the breadline miles from anywhere in rural New Jersey. As they approach … Read more

Megalopolis

2025-06-14 by Steve

Well, whatever else it is, Megalopolis isn’t boring. Mad, megalomaniacal, chaotic, absurd and confused, certainly, but also inspired and weird in a good way, it’s a deliberately difficult piece of “late style”, financed entirely by Francis Ford Coppola out of money made from his wine business. Not beholden to anyone, the director can do what the hell he wants, and he has. The closest thing to it in intention is Godard’s late works – odd movies like Film Socialisme or Goodbye to Language, doggedly playful and wilfully experimental attempts to say everything there is to say about everything. At another level it’s an 85-year-old man’s confusion about the way the world has gone … Read more

Ferrari

2024-08-292024-08-29 by Steve

The first obvious thing about Ferrari, a film from 2023, is that it was written by Troy Kennedy Martin, writer of 1969’s The Italian Job. Martin died in 2009! It’s taken a long time to get this film made. Michael Mann has been talking about it since the early years of the new millennium. Back then he was going to produce and Sydney Pollack was going to direct. In the end, after much to and fro, and with Pollack also dead en route, Mann wound up directing it himself. The second thing to say is that for a film about sexy cars, beautiful women, danger, speed, the thrill of the race and so … Read more

65

2025-05-052023-05-21 by Steve

“Adam Driver fights dinosaurs” seems to be the social media consensus on 65, in which Adam Driver does indeed fight dinosaurs, but also fear itself, in a surprisingly good and tense thriller directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the guys who wrote A Quiet Place. The buzz was not good before it opened, so the studio kept this film away from the press, allowing only one screening right before it premiered, to minimise negative publicity. Clearly, they felt, something had gone wrong. Which is odd because Driver is a proven quantity. Sci-fi – also a winner. Dinosaurs – who doesn’t love a dinosaur? And yet… The studio was right to be nervous but … Read more

House of Gucci

2022-11-012022-05-16 by Steve

House of Gucci, Ridley Scott, this looks like a good fit. A fashion house relying on its image to shift product and a director who started out in advertising and still has an eye for an arresting visual. And so it proves to be, mostly… though by the end you might be staring at the screen with head slightly aslant. The what, the huh? Pushing comparisons to beyond their limit, in some ways it’s a remake of Alien, though this time Lady Gaga plays the invading creature who’s going to wreak havoc, a brassy little minx called Patrizia who bumps into sober, low-key Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) – scion of the fashion house … Read more

Annette

2022-11-032021-09-10 by Steve

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