| MovieSteve

Psycho Therapy

2025-10-222025-10-18 by Steve

One of the great benefits of the whole 1990s revival thing has been a run of movies inspired by the early Coens. Psycho Therapy does a bit of a number on Barton Fink, not the Coens’ funniest or weirdest film, and is a re-assessment of their re-assessment of Hollywood output in its golden age. Screwball and crime, for the most part. It’s an “only in Hollywood” caper, about a stalled writer whose latest book set in Slovenia in the Neanderthal era is never going to be world shaking, if it ever gets finished at all. Keane’s friends laugh at him, wife Suzie pities him and his agent won’t answer his calls. Then one … Read more

Lean On Pete

2023-11-23 by Steve

Lean On Pete isn’t at all like Andrew Haigh’s last film with the word “Pete” in the title. Greek Pete was a biographical mostly-documentary about the life of a London rent boy. It was adult in both senses of the word. Lean On Pete is YA, young adult, the coming-of-age tale of a lonely 15-year-old lad. No sex, no sign of any metropolis, no Brits. Haigh has set out to transform himself entirely as a film-maker and has succeeded entirely. If the whole thing even gets a bit aw shucks now and again, that’s probably also deliberate. His admirably direct approach remains the same, however, as it has been in all his films … Read more

Armageddon

2023-10-292013-11-06 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 November The Ensisheim meteorite hits Earth, 1492 On this day in 1492, a large meteorite landed in a field outside the walled town of Ensisheim, in Alsace (present-day France). The flaming passage of the meteorite through the sky was visible from over 150km away. It was one of the earliest instances of a meteorite fall on record. The stone can still be seen today in the town’s museum, though it is now nowhere near the original 127kg it weighed when it fell – the locals, having dug it up from a metre down in the soft arable land, started prising … Read more