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A solid, straightforward British noir/ police procedural from Val Guest that hits almost all of the expected tropes for this kind of film, a cat and mouse detective story pitting obsessive cops (who make terrible husbands) against psychopathic criminals (who make terrible everything). It won't win any awards for originality, and indeed Guest would improve upon this formula two years later in his underrated serial killer drama JIGSAW, but nonetheless HELL IS A CITY has an agreeably…
I found myself rather taken by Hou Hsiao-hsien's lovely second feature, a rambunctious, nostalgic, charmingly comedic slice of lifer set in the Taiwanese countryside. The film's primary protagonist is a newly-arrived teacher at a remote village's school; we follow his ups and downs as he tries to romance a fellow teacher, and later his attempts to campaign for better environmental protections for the village stream. But THE GREEN GREEN GRASS OF HOME is equally interested in…
A sumptuously-shot treatsie about faith, power and redemption, backed up by the haunting sounds of possibly Morricone's finest ever score. However, the uneven screenplay fails to match up to the visuals, the plot asking questions (will De Niro's character get his redemption? Who will the Catholic envoy side with?) that the film answers anti-climactically with a shrug. The knotty politics surrounding all of this-- the interests of the Portuguese versus the interests of the Spanish, with the Church…
Great practical effects, great screenplay, great performances. Hits all the contemporary vampire story notes-- this is basically half a step away from being SALEM'S LOT-- but still works. Would make a great double feature with AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
Will Ferrell earnestly singing 'Por Ti Volaré' at the Catalina Wine Mixer-- sorry, the fuckin' Catalina Wine Mixer-- whilst John C. Reilly plays the drums and occasionally yells "boats and hos!", Kathryn Hahn has a centaur-based sex fantasy about Reilly and Adam Scott breaks down remembering the time his brother taught him how to fly a kite is simultaneously one of the funniest yet weirdly moving scenes in any film ever.
Unexpectedly, given his later reputation as a weighty autuerist, Hou Hsiao-hsien's debut is a charming, frothy piece of confection: part goofy romantic comedy, part cheeky satire on familial expectations and contemporary life in late-70s Taiwan, part kind-of-musical? (the soundtrack is a big part of the film, and the characters occasionally burst into song). The comedy is broad-- sometimes almost to the point of irritation-- full of episodic skits and occasional flights of fancy, but there is ubdeniably…
This slow-paced but affecting indie about a young Afghan woman and her unsettled new life in America is very much a vibes-based film, a lilting character study of a stranger in a strange land stuck in a liminal space, her identity as an Afghan and the life she fled sitting uneasily with her new life in America. There is very little in the way of discernable plot or narrative, the film instead simply following our protagonist going…
A stunning, at times visceral, docu-drama examining the Hiroshima nuclear bombing: both the events of the day itself and the (pun not intended) fallout over the subsequent years. Amazingly, this film was made less than a decade after the blast (basically as soon as American occupation had ended), which gives it a sense of authenticity and immediancy even though the film is, ostensibly, a narrative fictional drama. The sequence depicting the day of the bombing is…
A fascinating film: for the most part this is a shambling, structure-free, semi-autobiographical story of a young Nigerian immigrant and his insecure life in San Francisco; falling somewhere between neo-realism and impressionism, BUSHMAN also features ethnographic footage shot in Nigeria, depicting both its traditional customs and post-independence civil war, constrasting this with similarly documentary-style location shooting of run-down inner-city San Francisco. It is all a bit repetitive and aimless, which I guess is sort of the point. The…
John Sayles and Haskell Wexler teamed up to make a fantasy film about Irish mythology? Sounds like it should be awesome, right? Sadly, no. It looks amazing for sure (but then again, point a camera in almost any direction on the Irish coast and it'll look like a painting), and there are a couple of moments of the fantastical here and there. But overall it is really quite dull and plodding-- it is basically two hours consisting of…
Tried watching this film twice in my confident/arrogant twenties, didn't 'get it' either time.
However, watching for a third time in my anxiety-prone, paranoid, slightly obsessive-- yet more romantic-- thirties: suddenly PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE clicks!
It's so brilliant. The Sandler performance, the Watson performance, the absolutely insane Hoffmann performance; the almost screwball comedy direction with so much happening in every scene; the light-as-air screenplay, casually juggling multiple storylines and converging them beautifully; the panic-inducing score; the 'love conquers all' ending. It is stressful and weird and funny and angry and deeply romantic all at the same time. Sorry for ever doubting you Mr Anderson!!
Ronan is of course great in this, and there are tonnes of gorgeous shots of wind-swept Orkney, but does the world really need yet another trauma-addiction-redemption drama (I mean, TO LESLIE was only a year or so ago, and BEAUTIFUL BOY only a few years before that)? THE OUTRUN is perfectly okay as 'one of those', but there is no getting away from the fact that it has absolutely nothing original or especially interesting to say; oh,…
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