Sasha Calle

On Swift Horses

by
Lee, Muriel and Julius on a swing seat

On Swift Horses is giddy 1950s melodrama for the 21st century, with Will Poulter and Jacob Elordi as brothers charting separate courses through the great American post-War boom. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the prize for one of them, or she would be if she weren’t also on a journey of her own, towards a sense of self-actualisation. The dynamic is good boy/bad boy, Poulter drawing the short straw as Lee, the hard-working, conformist brother married to wife Muriel (Edgar-Jones), while Elordi has the fun as Julius, the sexy gambler on the road less travelled. In the film’s opening moments Julius arrives back from the Korean War at the homestead of Lee and Muriel and … Read more

In the Summers

by
Violetta, Dad and Eva sit in the sun

This tricky but not tricksy feature debut for writer/director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio is a lightly dramatised account of the summers spent with her sister visiting her dad in New Mexico. Tricky because it’s a film about a lack rather than a presence, a failure to connect on both sides – though both dad and the kids do score points for trying. Done sometimes as snapshots, at other times as more extended scenes from a life, the story is told through the eyes of the two sisters who arrive in Las Cruces every year, to stay with dad while their mother back home in California – never seen or heard – does whatever footloose … Read more

The Flash

by
The Flash, in close-up

The Flash is a superhero movie that knows exactly where it is in the scheme of these things – the end of days for costumed heroes – and uses that as a superpower. This film cuts quickly to the chase, doesn’t overdo the lore and knows that laughter is roughage in a superhero diet. It even understands that the obligatory “guys beating the shit out of each other” big finish needs freshening up a touch. We need to talk about Ezra Miller. The onetime star of a film about a teenager with serious issues grew into an adult with problems of his own, problems (multiple lawsuits and accusations flying) that threatened to pull this … Read more