MOscarbradley Reviews

The Exception (2016)

This really is 'the exception'.

[7/10 · 27 April 2025]

"The Exception" is aptly named as this war-time-romance-cum-espionage yarn is very much the exception to the rule as to what we might have expected in our multiplexes in 2016. This is definitely a thoroughly old-fashioned film that wouldn't have been out of place in the 1940's albeit without the full-frontal nudity.

The setting is the home of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, (a superb Christopher Plummer), where Captain Brandt, (Jai Courtney), has been posted, supposedly to protect the former Kaiser but really to spy on him for the Third Reich. There's also a British spy, (Lily James), in the household and it's not long before James and Courtney are banging about in the servant's quarters.

It's totally far-fetched, of course but it's got a good script and one that's not without humor and the performances are first-rate, (the cast also includes Janet McTeer. Ben Daniels and, as Himmler, an excellent Eddie Marsan). It's not the kind of film that was ever likely to win Oscars nor would it appeal to the Marvel crowd but it's very entertaining and certainly worth seeing.

La vieille dame indigne (1965)

Definitely a charmer.

[7/10 · 19 April 2025]

One of the least known films of the French New Wave perhaps because the subject matter is so old-fashioned like something you might have seen in the French cinema of the thirties or forties, (even the setting, Marseille, is the same as in Pagnol's famous trilogy). Berthe, (Sylvie, a lovely performance), has been widowed in her eighties and, for the first time in her life, begins to live much to the consternation of her family.

Not a great deal happens; its dramas are fairly small-scale but it's definitely a charmer and there's not a jot of sentimentality on view. Sylvie underplays beautifully and she's backed by an excellent cast while director Rene Allio films it with a documentary-like attention to detail. OK, it was never going to light up the cinema in the way that the films of Godard or Truffaut did but there is so much here to like and to discover.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Charming frippery.

[7/10 · 12 April 2025]

Charming frippery. No-one's quite at their best here, not Tierney, Harrison, Sanders or Mankiewicz but it has a lightness of touch that is very engaging and if we must have movies about people falling in love with ghosts and vice versa this is as good an example as we're likely to get. Tierney is the widow who moves to a seaside cottage with young daughter Natalie Wood but it's a cottage that's haunted by the ghost of Rex Harrison's gruff sea-captain. What follows may be predictable but it's nice to see Tierney in something light for a change. With a lesser director than Mankiewicz it might have fallen apart but he keeps it on course. No classic but perhaps unfairly overlooked.

Moffie (2019)

Subtle and understated.

[8/10 · 4 April 2025]

One of the best films to show the horrors of military training although the setting, (White South Africa during apartheid), is perhaps an extreme example. The raw recruits being turned from 'scabs' into 'men' in "Moffie", (the title is a South African slur for a gay man), are essentially being turned into homophobes and racists if they weren't already. The film's central character is neither homophobic nor racist but a young closeted gay man and he must hide it from those around him.

Directed with documentary-like realism by Oliver Hermanus and very well played by its mostly young cast this is a more subtle and understated LGBTQ+ film than many and a pretty horrifying reminder of what life was like in South Africa at the time and of just how toxic and destructive racism and homophobia can be and of how easily evil can flourish if we treat our fellow human beings this way. Although it ends on a positive note of sorts the horrors depicted here make those in Lumet's "The Hill" seem like a teddy-bear's picnic.

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Classic film-noir.

[9/10 · 1 April 2025]

Dick Powell may not have had Bogart's insouciance but he was just as good with the one-liners, maybe better, of which there are many in John Paxton's superb adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" which, if it's not the best film Edward Dmytryk ever directed, is almost certainly the most enjoyable. It is, of course, classic Film Noir with just enough of a convoluted plot to please the most ardent of mystery fans as Powell's Philip Marlowe is hired by Mike Mazurki's 'Moose' Malloy to find his old girlfriend Velma. Meanwhile, he's also asked to act as bodyguard to Douglas Walton's gigolo in a deal involving stolen jewels, a deal that brings him into the orbit of Claire Trevor, (they were her jewels), and some suitably shady characters. When 'Moose' turns up in the same orbit it isn't hard to put two and two together.

Bogart's Marlowe was undoubtedly a tough guy, (Bogie's snarl counted for a lot); Powell is clearly softer and more cynical along the lines of Elliot Gould's later personification and there were times when I was sure Dick was going to burst into song. Mazurki is the surprise here giving what is probably his most finely modulated and memorable performance while Trevor positively sizzles with duplicity. Beautifully shot by Harry J. Wild and with Dmytryk for once displaying the lightest of touches, what's not to love.

Vox Lux (2018)

Possibly Corbet's best so far.

[9/10 · 31 March 2025]

You can say one thing about Brady Corbet; he's not afraid to tackle big subjects in an original fashion. I hated his first film, "The Childhood of a Leader" which I found pretentious and clunky but at least it aimed high and was 'different'. On the other hand I found "The Brutalist" bold and innovative even if it did slip into melodrama by the end. Now I am finally catching up with his middle film, "Vox Lux" which came and went without too many people seeing it and I think it may be his best film to date.

It begins with a school shooting in which Celeste, whom we've already been introduced to in a home video, is a survivor. The movie is her story. Written once again by Corbet and Mona Fastvold it's clearly aiming for the all-encompassing "bigger picture", a life on camera with a solemn-sounding narrator, (here, Willem Dafoe), recounting the story while Scott Walker's incredible, if at times bombastic, score pounds us into submission.

It's a movie that keeps threatening to fall apart but it never does. This is material we've seen before and often, whether in tackling real or fictional artists but Corbet keeps shifting the perspective and subverting the cliches and he's greatly helped by his cast, (Raffey Cassidy and Natalie Portman as two versions of Celeste with Cassidy also playing Portman's daughter, Jude Law as her manager, Stacy Martin as her older sister and Jennifer Ehle as her publicist), as well as by the superb cinematography of Lol Crawley and that score by Walker but really this is Corbet's film. Throughout he's in total command of his material and he never puts a foot wrong. If, like me, you missed it first time round do try to see it now.

Bring Them Down (2024)

Often brilliant if unrelentingly bleak.

[8/10 · 29 March 2025]

Not even John B. Keane could come up with a rural Irish tragedy as bleak as the one director Chris Andrews and his co-writer Jonathan Hourigan give us in "Bring Them Down". The drama here is very simple. Two neighboring sheep farmers, one now married to the former girlfriend of the other, suddenly after twenty years find themselves at war with each other over the disappearance of two rams. Following on from a crime seemingly committed without real malice there's no road for these men to go other down into some kind of pit where death appears to be the only way out and forgiveness doesn't appear to be an option.

"Bring Them Down" is a grim movie but there is certainly an uncommon brilliance to it. Andrews handles the film's bleak scenario beautifully showing us the same events through two sets of eyes and it's very well acted by Christopher Abbot and Paul Ready as the two opposing farmers and by Colm Meaney as the ailing father of one of them and best of all by the brilliant Barry Keoghan as the son of the other.

As I've said before Keoghan may be most versatile actor of his generation with all the charisma of a young Brando and here he must restrain his natural tendency to break out and giving a fully rounded portrayal of someone not quite sure of his own actions. This may be a dark and unrelenting movie yet it grips like a vice.

Twilight (1990)

The worst kind of art-house movie; one that sets out to be an art-house movie!

[3/10 · 23 March 2025]

Clearly influenced by Bela Tarr and determined to outdo him when it comes to pacing, (funereal at best), and general moroseness Gyorgy Feher's "Twilight" isn't so much like watching paint dry as staring at the grey wall before it's painted. Based on the same Friedrich Durrenmatt novel as "It Happened in Broad Daylight" and "The Pledge" Feher strips it of all suspense yet gives it a sense of dread as it moves with all the slowness of a lackadaisical snail from scene to scene, image to image that is both disquieting and disorientating.

An eight year old girl is found murdered in the woods and the policeman whose last case it is is determined to find the killer even after retiring. We can just about figure this out from the material onscreen but really it helps if you've read the book or seen the other films. This is more like a palimpsest of Durrenmatt's novel, something not quite fully formed, a series of beautifully grim images rather than an actual narrative and not helped any by the monosyllabic performances of its cast.

It is, in other words, the worst kind of art-house movie, one determined to hold onto its 'masterpiece' credentials whatever the cost. Amazingly it's never really boring; you watch it transfixed in the vain hope that something might actually happen and, of course, it never does. As Jean Brodie might say, 'For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like'.

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

One of the best lesser-known horror films

[7/10 · 11 March 2025]

Forget the preposterous plot and concentrate instead on Riccardo Freda's superlative direction and his sublime use of color and you have one of the great unsung horror films, Filmed in Italy with a largely Italian cast, (the leads are dubbed), it uses Poe as the jumping off point for an original screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi as "The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock", (one of the film's several known titles), kills his first wife then tries to recreate the beauty of her resurrected corpse using the blood of wife #2, (Barbara Steele, who else!). It's nonsense, of course, but splendidly over-the-top nonsense that deserves to be better known.

Ship of Fools (1965)

A career-best performance from Oskar Werner.

[8/10 · 9 March 2025]

It has become fashionable to deride Stanley Kramer as nothing more than a maker of turgid polemics and his early standing as a director of intelligent trailblazers passed quickly and, despite its success at the Oscars, by the time he got around to making "Ship of Fools" the critics really had it in for him. It may be no masterpiece and despite its subject, (antisemitism), it's no trailblazer but it's certainly intelligent, superbly acted, (particularly by Oskar Werner and Simone Signoret), and a fairly faithful rendering of Katherine Anne Porter's novel; Abby Mann did the outstanding screenplay working with sometimes highly melodramatic material.

The setting is a liner on its way from Vera Cruz to Germany in 1933 with the kind of sundry group of passengers on board you might find in a mini-series. They are a mixture of Germans, a few Americans, (including Vivien Leigh in her last film as an amalgam of Blanche Du Bois and Mrs. Stone), and for dramatic purposes the obligatory Jews, ostracized and heading unknowingly perhaps to a concentration camp.

Mercifully, these are more than mere stereotypes thanks to a superb cast, (Kramer was always a good actor's director). The problem is we've met them all before and since and more successfully. Nevertheless, whatever its faults Werner, in a career-best performance, and Signoret together raise it to the level of art whenever they are on screen. It's a joy to watch acting this good.

September 5 (2024)

Terrific filmmaking.

[9/10 · 7 March 2025]

Making a movie now about the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist attacks might be considered something of a political hand-grenade since political opinion is clearly divided between those who side with Israel's continuing attacks on Gaza and those who are sympathetic to Palestine.

In "September 5" the 'villains' are clearly the Palestinian terrorists and the horrors of what is currently happening in the Middle East may put many people off seeing this film but then you could also say that "September 5" isn't so much about the hostage taking as it is about the reporting of the situation by ABC and this is definitely the best film about political journalism since "All the President's Men".

Director Tim Fehlbaum films it like a documentary and his remarkable cast respond beautifully. Every performance is pitch-perfect as is Markus Forderer's cinematography, Hansjorg WeiBbrich's editing and Fehlbaum's screenplay co-written with Moritz Binder and Alex David which doesn't feel like a script at all but a piece of actual news reportage and the thrills come not so much from hostage taking as from the dangers involved in simply recording it. The result is terrific cinema that simply shouldn't be missed.

Nickel Boys (2024)

A difficult watch.

[8/10 · 18 February 2025]

Using a subjective camera throughout, RaMell Ross' "Nickel Boys" shows us its world through the eyes of, not one but both , it's principal protagonists, (Elwood and Turner), as they struggle to survive life in the Nickel Academy, a 'reform' school run like a concentration camp and it betrays its director's origins in documentary film-making. On the one hand it's something of a visual marvel but it's also a difficult watch and not always an easy film to like or empathize with which is probably the very antithesis of what Ross intended.

This is a 'clever' film, clearly aimed at an art-house audience and magnificently photographed by Jomo Fray in the Academy ratio but the technique leaves no room for the actors to express themselves, (someone's always talking directly to the camera or, as in a lengthy scene near the end, being observed by the camera in a single take).

This is a pity because the technique detracts from what the film is really about, namely the horrors of the Academy, and because there is still a lot to admire here. I mean, if you are going to adapt a Pulitzer Prize winning book for the screen this is as original a way of doing it as any but it's also likely to alienate many of its audience. Worth seeing, certainly, but far from the masterpiece 'Little White Lies' and other critical publications think it is.

The Brutalist (2024)

Epic in the best sense of the word.

[9/10 · 6 February 2025]

The cinematic equivalent of those great door-stopper novels certain authors feel obliged to write from time to time, Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist" has a great deal to recommend it even if it does fall short of greatness, (a dip into melodrama slightly takes the edge off things near the end), and for a movie that runs for 3 hours and 35 minutes, (with a self-imposed 15 minute intermission), it fairly gallops along. Of course, it also leaves itself open to accusations of pretentiousness; this is a big movie with big ambitions, shot in 70 mm and in VistaVision.

It is the story of Laszlo Toth, (Adrien Brody in a career best performance), a Jewish Hungarian architect and a Holocaust survivor who, when the film opens, finds himself in America where he encounters the excessively rich Harrison Lee Van Buren, (Guy Pearce in another career best performance), who commissions him to design a building in memory of Van Buren's mother and basically that's it but if you think this might be just a long, boring film about buildings, think again. There is a depth and a depth of feeling to Corbet's film, (which he co-wrote with Mona Fastvold). Rare in what we might describe as commercial cinema.

Toth has his demons and he carries them with him wherever he goes. He's an alcoholic and a drug-addict with a fierce temper and as it turns out those demons also make themselves manifest in the people around him and in particular in the man who might have been his savior. Pearce's Van Burren is a monster and it is his treatment of Toth that ultimately draws the film into the realms of melodrama. His wife, (Felicity Jones, very good), whom he left behind in Europe, when she does finally arrive, (after the intermission), turns out to be a lot tougher than she looks and maybe not quite as simpatico to Toth as he would have hoped. In other words, life seems to have dealt him a bad deal.

For the most part Corbet treats all of this with the straightest of faces and a considerable amount of technical skill. This is an epic of the old-fashioned kind; long, sprawling and perhaps biting off more than it can chew. Toth is a 20th Century Job and his ills do tend to become wearying after awhile and somewhat circuitous. There were times when I thought, haven't we been here before; just give the guy a break. And yet it's never miserabilist; there's a streak of black humor running through the film and it does provide a sense of closure. In fact, this is just the kind of film the Oscar-givers love.

Longlegs (2024)

Overpraised codswallop!

[3/10 · 26 January 2025]

This hugely overpraised horror film sacrifices suspense and shocks for a nonsensical plot about a serial killer though it would appear it's the Devil who takes centre stage. It says he gets the best tunes but it's unlikely any of his tunes here will chart. "Longlegs" is nothing more than a pretentious and self-consciously arty horror movie with a woefully one-dimensional performance from Maika Monroe as the FBI agent on Longleg's trail.

If the film has a plus side you could say it's very attractively photographed and the casting of an almost unrecognizable Nicholas Cage as the serial killer gives the film a certain OTT liveliness but the psuedo-supernatural element and all that business with the dolls scuppers the film. Whatever happened to the good old bad old days of the likes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" when serial killers were serial killers and devil dolls were devil dolls and never the twain met. Mostly a load of codswallop.

The Girl with the Needle (2024)

Could this be the most depressing film I've ever seen?

[7/10 · 26 January 2025]

Horror movies come in all shapes and sizes and there's no denying that black and white Nordic art-house movies, by their very 'look', can often be classed as horror movies particularly when set in the past and dealing with what we might call 'grim' subject matter. Magnus von Horn's "The Girl with the Needle" qualifies on all accounts from the superimposed faces and silent screams of its pre-credit sequence to its attempted abortion with a needle in a Turkish bath and that's before we even get close to the film's real horrors; the ghost of Bergman is never far away.

Karoline, (Vic Carmen Sonne, excellent), is a young seamstress whose husband comes back from the Great War with most of his face missing while she's pregnant by her employer who drops her like a hot potato. She is saved from a botched abortion by Dagmar, (a terrific Trine Dyrholm), who seems to be running some kind of black market adoption agency and who takes Karoline under her wing but this so-called act of kindness isn't what it seems.

The horrors inherent here are the horrors of trying to survive in a cruel world in which survival doesn't seem like an option. This is the grimmest of morality plays in which every image feels like a slap in the face. It might look amazing but as we come to realize just how terrible the actions of these people are the further we withdraw from them and from the movie itself. As I said, horror movies come in all shapes and sizes.

A Real Pain (2024)

A small masterpiece.

[10/10 · 12 January 2025]

The first time I remember seeing Jesse Eisenberg was as the teenage nephew of Campbell Scott in an underrated little gem called "Roger Dodger" which he had no trouble in stealing from his co-star and then as the teenage son of divorcing parents in "The Squid and the Whale". I knew then he was a talent to watch. Unfortunately, apart from "Adventureland" the films in which he subsequently found himself cast did little for his career until the dream role of Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" came along.

He was brilliant in the part but by now it also had become clear that Eisenberg was no character or method actor; he was recognizably Eisenberg in every part he played; nerdy, fastidious if always a little challenging. If he has grown as an actor he has also grown as 'Eisenberg', cementing his reputation for nerdy heroes and he's no different in "A Real Pain" but here he's not just playing a variation of Eisenberg created by someone else. This time he's written the film and directed it as well; he's his own 'Eisenberg' and quite frankly he's magnificent.

Pain is the operative word in this picture which is about two youngish American cousins who go on a Holocaust tour of Poland to honor the memory of their deceased grandmother. Eisenberg, naturally, is the nerdy, sensible one and an equally magnificent Kieran Culkin, giving the performance of his life, is the bombastic, extrovert and deeply troubled one; the pain is all his and watching them play off against each other is a masterclass in acting.

Clocking in at around the ninety minute mark this is a film of real depth and says as much about the legacy of the Holocaust as any number of "Schindler's List"s. Who could fail but to be deeply moved by the scenes in the concentration camp or by Culkin's reaction to the visit. This is a film that's profound on so many levels yet nothing in it feels like overkill.

It may seem odd to go as far as to class it as a comedy and yet it's often laugh-out-loud funny. Eisenberg's genius as a writer and director is that he can move from comedy to tragedy in the blink of an eye; he seems to see them simply as the opposite sides of the same coin. Culkin, of course, is the one whose performance will win the Oscar but Eisenberg, too, deserves his place in the sun, (Best Original Screenplay, perhaps). Nerdy he may still appear on the surface but that boy from "Roger Dodger" has definitely come a long way.

Mascarpone (2021)

Not bad exactly, just a bit ho-hum!

[5/10 · 23 December 2024]

So what have we here? "Mascarpone" is an Italian LGBTQ+ remake of "An Unmarried Woman", (well, perhaps not but we are in the same ballpark), as Antonio is dumped by his husband and partner of 12 years. For the rest of the movie he's basically having sex with a number of handsome hunks presumably in the hope that one of them will turn out to be Mr. Right. What little spare time he has he spends baking and looking for the perfect Mascarpone recipe until finally he realizes....

Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it. It's obvious the attractive cast were picked for their looks and not their acting abilities though the screenplay does provide a few laugh-out-loud moments. On the one hand, too explicit for mass consumption and on the other too coy, (no full frontals), for its intended audience so it's unlikely to find a market. Not bad exactly, just a bit ho-hum.

Juror #2 (2024)

A first-class entertainment that also makes you think.

[9/10 · 17 December 2024]

If "Juror #2" turns out to be the last film Clint Eastwood makes, (quite possible since the man is 94 now), at least he will have gone out in some style. This may not be a late career masterpiece but it's certainly the best thing he's done for awhile and is undoubtedly one of his best non-westerns.

The story-line, (a little far-fetched initially but as it progresses it becomes increasingly more realistic), concerns a juror on a murder trial who from the very start doubts the guilt of the accused because he realizes he himself may be the inadvertent killer so it works both as suspense movie, (who is the killer? Was the killing a tragic accident?), and a well-judged and thought out morality piece.

With an outstanding screenplay from Jonathan A. Abrams, beautifully nuanced direction from Eastwood and first-rate performances from the cast, (Nicholas Hoult is particularly good as the conscience-stricken juror), this is both an excellent entertainment and a film that challenges us to think before rushing to judgement.

Starve Acre (2023)

I just didn't see the point.

[3/10 · 13 December 2024]

Nicely filmed if decidedly underwhelming slice of British folk-horror with a plot clearly influenced by both "Don't Look Now" and "The Wicker Man" as married couple Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark try to come to terms with the sudden death of their young son while living on a remote farm on the moors. It's a mostly low-key affair, strong on atmosphere if not on scares or suspense and relying too much on its over-emphatic score for effect.

Both leads are fine and Sean Gilder is good as the neighbor with a dark side but for too much of the time not a great deal happens making you think that this might have worked better at about half the length and once it moves into the realm of 'the supernatural' it really gets rather silly.

Dìdi (2024)

Coming-of-age movies don't come much better than this.

[9/10 · 7 December 2024]

Coming-of-age movies don't come much better than "Didi", the first feature film from Sean Wang, who has clearly a big future ahead of him. This movie, set mostly amongst the Asian American community, is so authentic it feels like a documentary as young Chris Wang, (an excellent Izaac Wang), negotiates the pitfalls of early adolescence. (fighting with his older sister, hanging out with his friends, learning to skateboard, falling for a girl and perhaps most significantly learning how to make videos).

His mom is a luminous Joan Chen and his grandmother the wonderfully expressive Zhang Li Hua, real-life grandmother of the director, who prefer to speak Mandarin at home and live a mostly traditional lifestyle, (dad is away working in Taiwan), and despite the arguments and the squabbling this is as loving a family unit as you will find in the movies. Indeed Wang has nothing but affection for every character in the film which is clearly autobiographical. Funny, very touching and a joy to watch.

Conclave (2024)

The ridiculous plot scuppers what might have been a decent movie.

[3/10 · 6 December 2024]

Robert Harris doesn't do things by halves; he writes far-fetched thrillers and none more far-fetched than "Conclave" so anyone who goes to see the film version expecting to see a documentary-like account of how the Catholic Church elects a pope are in for a shock. "Conclave" is a melodramatic political thriller with the most ridiculous plot anyone could concoct. It's entertaining but in a very bad movie kind of way with more twists than a sailor's knot, each one sillier than the one before with a punchline that would be laugh-out-loud funny if it weren't in such questionable taste.

The director of this nonsense is Edward Berger who also made the Oscar-laden and overrated "All Quiet on the Western Front" and to be fair he does bring a certain style to the material. It's also quite well acted by a cast that's far too good for the script they've been saddled with. Ralph Fiennes brings his usual gravitas to the presiding Cardinal Lawrence while, once again, Stanley Tucci steals the movie from his co-stars. If you're Catholic and take any of this rubbish as fact you'll probably run from the Church and set up your own religion but anyone with a modicum of intelligence should see through it twenty minutes in.

Emilia Pérez (2024)

This may turn out to be a classic.

[9/10 · 2 December 2024]

Musicals come in all shapes and sizes. This year alone we've already had "Joker: Folie a Deux" which certainly broke new ground in the way in which it incorporated its musical numbers into its dark narrative but "Joker: Folie a Deux" feels almost commonplace when set beside Jacques Audiard's extraordinary "Emilia Perez", the tale of a Mexican drug-lord's transition from male to female with the musical numbers so seamlessly woven into the narrative it often feels like an opera with swathes of dialogue sung by its large cast; it really is quite unlike anything else out there.

It's been described as 'a women's picture' in that it is dominated by its mostly female cast, with all four leading actresses taking the Best Actress prize at Cannes, namely the incredible trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon who plays both the male drug-lord Manitas and Emilia, the woman he becomes, Zoe Saldana, the lawyer who helps Emilia on her journey, Selena Gomez as Jessi, Manitas' wife and Adriana Paz as the woman who becomes Emilia's lover.

Indeed this is a work of real brilliance and imagination; if it does have a failing perhaps it lies in its score, (by Camille and Clement Ducol), which doesn't always come off and the treatment, however bold and remarkable, is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience. This is a film for the critics and the awards circuit and I'm sure the prizes will keep coming. In fact, this may even turn out to be a classic.

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

The best American musical in decades.

[10/10 · 23 November 2024]

What should a sequel be? More of the same or something radically different? If you go down the radically different route you risk alienating the very audience that perhaps made the first film the hit that spawned the sequel which is exactly what has happened with "Joker: Folie a Deux". Having given us the darkest of dark comic-book villains with "Joker" where was Todd Phillips to go with part two? Down the 'Batman' route with diminishing returns or break the mold and take the risk? Thankfully he chose the latter.

"Joker: Folie a Deux" may be a failure both critically and commercially but artistically it's a triumph. It's also a musical in the same vein as Herbert Ross's masterpiece "Pennies from Heaven" only this time the cast sing the songs which have been brilliantly woven into the plot and which, as with "Pennies from Heaven", explore the feelings of the characters making this one of the very finest American musicals and a sequel superior to the original with Joaquin Phoenix even surpassing his initial outing as Arthur Fleck. This is one of the great performances by an American actor.

This time round he's got a co-conspirator in the form of Lady Gaga's 'Harley Quinn' who he meets in Arkham State Hospital, (in a music class, naturally), and it is she who gives him something to live for but this is no "Bonnie and Clyde", no "Wild at Heart", no boy and girl killers on the lam movie, (about 95% of the film takes place in either the hospital or the courtroom), but a dark psychological study of tortured souls filtered through the gaze of the Hollywood musical. In fact, it's so 'out there' it's almost an art movie. (Did Phillips really expect the same audience who embraced the first film to embrace this one?). Phoenix's Oscar should be in the bag but it's highly unlikely the Academy will embrace this one. It's a downer but it's magnificent.

Kneecap (2024)

The second great Irish film in 12 months.

[10/10 · 20 November 2024]

After what seems like decades in the cultural wilderness home-grown Irish cinema has produced three great Irish films in as many years, firstly with "The Quiet Girl" and now, this year, with "That They May Face the Rising Sun" and now "Kneecap", named after the Irish-speaking Hip-Hop band who just happen to brilliantly play themselves.

Fundamentally Rich Peppiatt's instant classic is about how two lads from West Belfast became the highly successful and highly controversial band Kneecap with more than a little help from their Irish teacher who became band member number three with a balaclava and the name DJ Provai but unlike most films about bands or the music industry "Kneecap" is a kaleidoscopic gem of almost surreal sounds and images that blows the cobwebs off the genre with all the force of an exploding bomb.

This is at once a history of a band and of the Northern Ireland Troubles unlike any other and it's very funny in a way no other film that's dealt with the Troubles has been before. Of course there are people in Northern Ireland who would ban the film or just maybe flush it down the toilet, (a recent concert by the band had to be rescheduled after protests that the venue, on the East Bank of Derry's River Foyle, would prove problematic), but then that's their loss since both the film "Kneecap" and the band Kneecap are just about as good as movies and music can get.

The Driver's Seat (1974)

It really is as bad as its reputation.

[3/10 · 10 November 2024]

Generally regarded as the worst picture Liz Taylor ever made "Identikit" aka "The Driver's Seat" barely saw the light of day and virtually disappeared until now but then Taylor was always a force to be reckoned with and the director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi was no slouch either so could it be as bad as its reputation? Well, frankly yes. Both the plot and the screenplay are preposterously daft but if you read it as the imaginings of a highly unstable woman, in its crazy way, perhaps it makes sense and when Liz goes over the top she's always worth a look.

On the other hand, for a film clearly dealing with mental illness, you could say it's in the worst possible taste. It plays in English with most of the supporting cast dubbed, (it's an Italian production), so maybe it suffers in translation. If there's comedy here it's mostly unintentional and God only knows what audience it was intended for or what author Muriel Spark thought of it, (she wrote the original novel). A curiosity at best.