Popular Reviews
A Dandy in Aspic
The film that killed the great director Anthony Mann, A Dandy in Aspic didn’t get killer reviews when it debuted in 1968. “Completely devoid of suspense” and “bland,” said the New York Times. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide declared it “wooden”. Mann died of a heart attack towards the end of shooting and the movie’s star, Laurence Harvey, took over directing, which isn’t the reason the film bombed. Harvey actually takes some pains to ape the claustrophobic, slick style of Mann. There just isn’t a whole lot going on in Derek Marlowe’s original story (which he adapted for the screen). But what looked like a failure back then looks more like a calculation all … Read more
The Flash
The Flash is a superhero movie that knows exactly where it is in the scheme of these things – the end of days – and uses that as its own super power. This is a film that cuts quickly to the chase, doesn’t overdo the lore and knows that laughter is a good alternative to roughage in a superhero diet. It even understands that the obligatory “guys beating the shit out of each other” big finish is in need of an overhaul and 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 … Read more
Breaking Fast
Can you be gay and a devout Muslim? Breaking Fast wrestles with that problem in, yes, an issue-driven drama tangling with concepts that rarely get an airing. The title stems from the practice of breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast required of committed Muslims during Ramadan. What fasting actually means seems to vary depending on many factors, but for Mo (Haaz Sleiman) it comes down to no food, no drink and no impure thoughts. Mo is gay and out and a Muslim, one who takes his religious observances seriously. As we’re introduced to him and his partner Hassan (Patrick Sabongui), they’re in the teeth of a crisis. Hassan is not out and is currently hyper-ventilating … Read more
Human Capital
First-world and real-world problems collide in Human Capital, which started life as an American novel, became an Italian movie (Il capitale umano) in 2013 and then returned to the US in 2019 for this English-language version. How best to describe all three? Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Ice Storm will about do it. In other words a broad spectrum portrait of modern life, with a narrow focus critique of the elite at its core. It starts, as Bonfire of the Vanities did, with a car accident, and then plays and replays the story from the point of view of each of the characters involved. Not the same events, exactly, but a “how … Read more
The Exchange
Director Dan Mazer edges further into the mainstream with The Exchange, an update on all those Michael Cera/Jon Heder-flavoured films from about 15/20 years ago – the geek shall inherit the earth. Tim (Ed Oxenbould) is the Canadian nerd and self-styled teen intellectual with a love of films with subtitles, existentialist novels by Camus etc, who signs on to take part in a French exchange program. What he’s hoping for is someone “sophisticated, smart and worldly”… because French. What he gets is Stéphane (Avan Jogia), a jockish guy in bleach-look jeans who wants to talk about sex all the time. Tim wears glasses, is despised for his pretensions by his classmates and can’t … Read more
Enemy at the Gates
Here’s a mixed bag of European war movie that is trying to be Saving Private Ryan in its impressive opening scenes, but looks as if it realises it doesn’t have the budget and so scales back the action to concentrate on two lone snipers. One German, one Russian. It’s set during the battle of Stalingrad, in which more than two million people died – yes, two million – and so the decision makes some logistical sense, even if it shortchanges the Russians and their epic level of sacrifice. The fact that it does that is what got the goat of a lot of historians masquerading as film critics, who suggested that the film … Read more
Boys State
Fascinating, sometimes grimly so, Boys State is a documentary about a Texas program designed to educate high schoolers in the intricacies and mechanisms of democracy. It’s been run by the American Legion since 1935 and claims to be a “week-long experiment in self-governance” during which young men run for office, get a team around themselves, organise into parties, committees and cabals. En route, the cream (or scum) rises to the top, and the sharp elbowed and quick-tongued win out over the more thoughtful and considered. They’re not an entirely self-selecting group. In early interviews conducted by Legion members in full uniform, it’s obvious what sort of “boy” is being sought – one whose … Read more
Snowpiercer
That sound? The plane taking off from LAX taking another great Asian director back home, sobbing with disappointment. It happened to John Woo, who did at least manage to crank out Face/Off, but his sad run of Hollywood films include Windtalkers, Mission: Impossible II and Hard Target. To the Pang brothers too, whose The Eye was one of the attention-grabbers of 2002. They came to Hollywood, made The Messengers for Sam Raimi, then put their tail between their legs and went home. So what about the latest Asian import, the great South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, whose uniquely flavoured movies include Memories of Murder, a killer-thriller-whodunit whose cops get their man more … Read more
Side Street
An overwrought civics lesson done as film noir, Side Street sees Farley Granger’s humble postman making one tiny mistake and finding himself in deep trouble. One minute he’s trading small talk with a cop in the bright daylight, the next he’s mixing with murderers, femmes fatales and other unsavoury sorts and has become a creature of the night. In Side Street, when you fall, you fall. No wonder it flopped – it’s overcooked. And it did flop, badly. So much so that its director, Anthony Mann, abandoned film noir for good and headed off into the hills where a career making highly regarded westerns beckoned. But all that was in the future. First … Read more
The Quiet Girl
Oh dear. There were tears before bedtime watching The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), an Irish-language film set in the 1980s and all about a girl whose parents send her off to live with a distant cousin on a remote farm. Mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) is overburdened with kids. Dad (Michael Patric) is a feckless womanising boozer, and young Cáit (Catherine Clinch), not fitting in too well at school, has become a handful. And so, without being consulted, Cáit is shipped off for the school summer holidays in what might be a dry run for something more permanent. It looks like the set-up for one of those misery memoirs à la Angela’s Ashes, … Read more
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly
Having shot everything from 1960’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to David Lynch’s A Straight Story, it’s no surprise that Freddie Francis is best known as a cinematographer, one of the greats. But he also has more than 30 director credits to his name. Much of it was gun for hire work but in 1970, after eight years of doing others’ directorial bidding, he was finally given his head. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (aka Girly) is his picture, done his way, co-conceived with writer Brian Comport, and shot at Oakley Court, a location he’d worked at many times on various Hammer horror productions when it was mostly used for its imposing exterior. … Read more
Martin Eden
With a couple of the names changed perhaps because Lizzie and Ruth don’t roll easily enough off the Italian tongue, this is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Jack London’s novel Martin Eden, about a lowly sailor who falls for a high-born girl and decides to become a writer in order to win her heart. Here, Martin is played by Luca Marinelli, and the rich Ruth character, now called Elena, is played by Jessica Cressy. The Lizzie character, the poor girl who loves Martin for what he is rather than his social status, inherited or newly acquired, is now called Margherita and is played by Denise Sardisco. A Bildungsroman, a Künstlerroman, a novel of … Read more
