nabokov95 Reviews

Skyggen i mit øje (2021)

The Shadow in my Eye

[8/10 · 27 December 2023]

I wasn't expecting a great deal from this movie and have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It's an in depth look at one of the more unknown, at least outside of Denmark, and tragic, examples of collateral damage in WWII. It's well acted, with great performances from the young cast, and well filmed and the story builds up a growing sense of tension which peaks in the raid itself and the immediate aftermath. Technically very impressive, particularly the filming of the planes on the way to the raid. Some historical points that may be of interest and weren't mentioned in the movie but may add to the viewer's appreciation of the film (spoilers ahead). The British Royal Air Force didn't want to conduct the raid because of the risk to civilians but were persuaded to by the Danish resistance. One British bomber, flying at roof top level, collided with a lamp post on the approach to the target (shown in the movie) and crashed near the school. The following bombers mistakenly thought the smoke from the crashed plane was from the target and dropped their bombs on it, hitting the school. 6 Allied aircraft were lost in the raid and 9 aircrew killed. I personally thought it was an oversight on the film maker's part that these losses weren't also acknowledged (as the Danish civilians' were) at the end of the film. The surviving aircrew weren't informed of the tragedy until after the end of the war. One can only imagine what they must have felt.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Bravo!

[10/10 · 18 April 2023]

Bravo! Brilliant from start to finish. An excellent and unusual storyline, great cast and an absolute tour de force performance from Anya Taylor-Joy who held the spotlight and mesmerised me for 7 straight hours. For anyone who may not know much about chess and might be put off by the thought of spending 7 hours watching people play, I'd highly recommend giving it a chance. I think you'll be hooked before the end of the first episode. For anyone who does know about chess the attention that's gone in to making it authentic (with Garry Kasparov acting as a series consultant) is an added joy. I have no idea why I enjoyed it as much as I did but I know I'm going to miss seeing Beth Harmon for a long time to come. A very, very, rare 10/10 from me. Highly recommended.

River's Edge (1986)

These go to eleven

[4/10 · 11 September 2022]

I guess every decade must have its "disaffected youth" movie and, for the '80s, this is it. Like the others, I don't think it has aged particularly well. Virtually everyone in this movie, even those characters you might expect to be level headed, (school teacher and police officer, I'm looking at you) overacts. The entire movie is "Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing". Even Dennis Hopper, playing a typical Dennis Hopper character, a one legged ex biker dope dealing murderer on the run, holed up and having an affair with a rubber doll, struggles to make any kind of impression among a cast that have all turned their acting up to 11, Crispin Glover being the worst offender by far. The normally wooden Keanu Reeves tries his best to keep up but here he is like an oasis in a desert, giving you a chance to relax and take a break away from the rest of the over amped cast. No doubt radical and shocking in its day I'd give it a 4/10 for a modern audience.

The Untamed (2016)

Mission accomplished

[4/10 · 29 June 2022]

It's hard to make a movie with frequent explicit sex scenes between attractive people (and an alien) difficult and boring to watch but this film manages it.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Rubbish, all over the place, everlastingly

[3/10 · 31 May 2022]

Oops I did it again ... I looked at the IMDb ratings and decided to take a chance, even though it was a 2022 film and I should have known the "magnificent", "fantastic", "once in a lifetime", "flawless", 10/10 reviews would be being posted on IMDb on an industrial scale. What a mess! Long, meandering, confusing, pretentious, boring, chaotic. Personally I couldn't wait for it to finally end and, when it finally, thankfully, did, reminded myself that, in future I'll only read the IMDb reviews after I've watched the film. Lesson learned.

The Memories of Happiness (2017 TV Movie)

Warm hearted Japanese domestic drama

[6/10 · 14 May 2022]

Mr Miura has problems. His previous business has failed, he's walked out on his wife and two now grown up children, he's just been fired from his job and he's being evicted. Help arrives in the unlikely form of Nanami, his high flying executive daughter, who offers to pay him to check out his ex-wife's new suitor. How better to do that than for him to move back into the family home? First of all it's a "made for television" movie, so you can expect it to be fairly easy going, which it is. All the parts are well played and, of course, by the end of the film, all the characters are happy. I came to this through watching a run of Fumi Nikaidô films and she certainly doesn't disappoint. All the cast are good and Ken Watanabe is his usual charismatic self. Takeaways? American influence on Japanese culture - baseball and ten pin bowling feature. Biggest takeaway? It's a family drama that would be just as at home if set in any Western country, which surprised me a little as Japanese culture is quite distinct and divorce is still a bit of a taboo subject there. Lastly, being made for Japanese television, no allowance seems to have been made for including foreign subtitles, which struggle to keep up with the script. My score 6/10.

Diên Biên Phú (1992)

Mau len, Mau len - or maybe not

[5/10 · 1 May 2022]

I came to this movie after reading two detailed military history books about the battle. That proved essential because I don't think I would have learned very much about it from watching the film. For the positives: technically, the level of detail was excellent. With the exception of using M41 Walker Bulldog tanks instead of M24 Chaffee tanks, the equipment, weaponry, uniforms, badges etc. Were authentic. The timeline of the battle and specific incidents were perfect. So why did I come away feeling it was such a missed opportunity? Dien Bien Phu was famously referred to as France's "Verdun in the jungle". On the French side, French, Vietnamese, Algerian, African and other soldiers, able bodied and wounded, slept in water filled trenches by day and fought, often hand to hand in isolated actions, to protect them from dusk until dawn as the Vietminh launched repeated human wave attacks across ground that had been churned to mud through artillery fire. For both sides victory was a chance to gain advantage at the Geneva Peace Conference which had begun on 26 April and would only set the stage for the larger war that followed. Dien Bien Phu fell on 7 May and the Conference concluded on 21 July. That was the historical and political reality. Unbelievably in this film the Vietminh are invisible until the closing scenes of the French surrender, when they appear by the thousand. That any fighting is going on at all can only be inferred by the mass graves of French and allied soldiers, the overcrowded "field hospitals", the regular sound of incoming and outgoing artillery as soldiers sit in their trenches and talk, or listen to last radio messages that yet another position is being over run. For a war film showing the futility of ordering soldiers to risk their lives so their leaders can gain a political advantage I'd recommend Pork Chop Hill (1959). This could have so easily been so much more.

My Man (2014)

In the end everyone lives in a different world

[10/10 · 23 March 2022]

In the aftermath of the Hokkaido earthquake and tsunami of 1993 (the second of Nikaido's films with this backdrop after her breakthrough Newcomer of the Year role in "Himizu" (Mole) (2011)) a single man employed by the local Coastguard, adopts a young foundling, Hana, who may, (or may not), be his biological daughter. Her mother (with whom we incidentally learn the man has had a previous relationship) and father have both perished in the disaster. The film follows the twists and turns of their, potentially incestuous, and explicitly murderous, relationship through Hana's teenage years to her eventual independent adulthood. I'm sure this will be a controversial opinion but I thought it was a magnificent, tragic and, ultimately, quite heart-wrenching film from start to finish. Certainly one of the very few I immediately watched again, and appreciated even more when I did. I'd recommend that to any viewer as some of the plot points (the film is based on a book) are almost mentioned incidentally. It's certainly one of the best Japanese films I've seen in years, (and I watch a lot of them), and it's a shame that the controversial theme may limit its appeal to a wider audience. The backdrop of a coastal Japanese town in winter, beautifully filmed in whites and blues, with drifting pack ice, contrasted with the urban squalor of Tokyo earned a Best Cinematographer nomination. The lead actor, Tadanobu Asano, received a Best Actor award and Fumi Nikaidô a Best Actress. The recurring musical theme is "Going Home" from Dvorak's New World Symphony which captures the mood of the film perfectly. For reference the only explicit sexual scene is between consenting (unrelated) adults and there's limited violence. Finally, and last but not least, this is about the fourth film I've seen starring Fumi Nikaidô and she has impressed me in every one. She's prolific but mostly through television serials. She has recently decided to give these up to focus on films. As she's still only 26 I look forward to watching her films for years to come. My score 10/10.

Lamb (2021)

An every day tale of Icelandic farmers

[4/10 · 27 February 2022]

It's well acted. It stars Noomi Rapace. It's well filmed. The scenery is bleakly impressive and the special effects surprisingly good. It's very, very, slow. It doesn't make any sense. It's not horror, or folk horror, or fantasy, and generally defies any genre you might try to assign to it. The best category I'd come up with is drama ... except that it's not dramatic. If you're into watching taciturn Icelandic farmers farming for 1 hour and 45 minutes then this is very much your kind of movie. If you're not then I'd find it hard to recommend.

Munich: The Edge of War (2021)

Hoping is waiting for someone else to do it

[6/10 · 30 January 2022]

The good thing about choosing a widely known historical incident is that it's widely known. Most people deciding to watch "Munich", based on the book by Robert Harris, won't require an explanation of who Chamberlain and Hitler were or the significance of the Sudetenland crisis. The bad thing about choosing a widely known historical incident is that it's widely known. Most people choosing to watch already know the outcome. With that constraint the film does a good job of superimposing a fictional story of the relationship between two friends, one English, one German, from their days as students at Oxford together up to the Sudetenland crisis and their respective roles in the British and German Governments under Chamberlain and Hitler. The scope of the film is as narrow as that. France and Italy have walk on roles and Czechoslovakia doesn't feature at all (although it's given a small part in the book). My biggest problem with the film is that all of the characters, from beginning to end, already see the outcome as inevitable which, of course, it wasn't at the time. The film has already prompted debate among historians - did Chamberlain appease Hitler to buy time or was he duped? Would there have been any war at all if, instead of appeasement, Britain and France issued Hitler with an ultimatum? Would the nascent resistance movement within Germany have acted if Britain and France had threatened war over the Sudetentland, as they hoped, instead of Poland? It's rare for a film to pose historical questions like these and, for that reason, I'd say it's definitely worth a watch ... and maybe some more detailed background reading afterwards.

Hatred (2016)

Powerful and depressing

[8/10 · 16 November 2021]

Four groups of people (Polish Catholics, Ukrainian Orthodox Nationalists, German Nazis and Russian Communists) meet in Volhynia, a historic and largely agricultural region between south-eastern Poland, south-western Belarus, and western Ukraine. The only thing that they appear to have in common is a hatred of Jews. The results are as deeply unpleasant (and graphically shown) as you might expect. The areas of Eastern Europe that lay between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, predominantly Poland, Belarus, the Baltic States and the Ukraine, are often referred to as the "blood lands" and, after watching this film, you'll see why. It's a deeply depressing film, all the more so because a little background research shows it's firmly rooted in historical fact. There aren't any "heroes", there aren't even any "good guys". There are just people wandering the countryside trying to survive routinely barbaric encounters with each other. This is one film that Hollywood certainly won't be remaking (with a happy ending) any time soon.

Anthropoid (2016)

A fitting tribute

[8/10 · 10 January 2017]

In 2008 I had the pleasure of visiting the Orthodox Church of St. Cyril and Methodius in Prague where the final scenes of Anthropoid are filmed. A well-dressed, elderly, gentleman was waiting for a tour group to arrive to guide them around the church. On learning I was British he asked me to join the group as it mostly comprised American students and so he would be conducting the tour in English. If he had sat down and written a book I would have sat down and immediately read it. He was a Czech Jew who had survived the war in hiding in Prague and so could personally remember many of the events he was describing. At the end of the war, being fluent in several languages, he had been recruited by the US army to serve as an interpreter at the Nuremberg war trials. In that capacity he personally met many of the individuals responsible for the holocaust and the deaths of the people closest to him. He had, remarkably, largely reconciled himself to what had happened during the years of Nazi occupation and the years of Soviet occupation that followed. He bore no grudges against the Western powers for surrendering his country at Munich or to the Germans who occasionally visited the church. His main concern, and the reason he conducted the guided tours, was the lack of interest or awareness among people, and young people in particular, of what had happened during the war and the sacrifices millions made standing against Nazi Germany, often, as in this case, against impossible odds. He may not be alive now but, if he is, I hope he thinks this film is a fitting tribute. I certainly did.

Lake Eerie (2016)

A waste of your time and theirs

[2/10 · 18 November 2016]

I like indie films and I'm prepared to give them slack that I wouldn't give to mainstream movies. I hated this movie. The acting was, throughout, bad. Sometimes painfully bad. Again, I can put up with that. Professional actors cost money that independent movie makers don't have and indie films give new talent a chance to make their marks. Plot and script writing on the other hand costs nothing and, in both, this movie literally falls apart. Horror movies, even the best of them, require a suspension of disbelief but, when the characters in horror movies start acting in ways that stretch credibility, you have a major problem. Example (one of many): There's a strange man in my new house. Response: Find a knife (check), find a light (check), take some pills, find a comfortable sofa, lie down, sleep till morning (nope). By the end I had completely lost interest in both the characters and the story line. The IMDb rating has been boosted by lots of positive reviews (no doubt from friends and family) and I'm confident it's only going to head in one direction. Don't waste your time watching it and, if you do, leave a suitable review. Don't be surprised however if your review is instantly attacked with lots of "This review was not useful to me" hits.

Muck (I) (2015)

Different

[4/10 · 12 March 2015]

Well, that was ... different! Firstly I thought I'd missed the start of the film. It just jumps right in with a group of half naked, injured, young people staggering through a marsh in the dark outside the town of "West Craven" (get it?) to an empty holiday home seeking refuge. Only when you're a couple of minutes in do the title credits start to roll and you know it's supposed to be that way. Refuge from what? Well, mute, psychopathic, albino, half naked zombie "creepers" of course. That really just about does it for the storyline. I read it's a kick starter funded sequel to a former film that didn't get made (?) and it's got that feel about it. Some of the script lines also support that. The girls are attractive (several ex beauty queens) and they scream, run about and get naked and wet pleasantly often. The guys are, well, guys. All of them are expert in the do's and don'ts of horror films. Always go into the dark cellar; always leave any weapon you find behind; always, if you're a girl, get naked and take a shower in a strange house; never, ever, phone the police even when you eventually get a phone that works etc. etc. etc. Overall I'd say that, as it stands, it's an exercise in style over substance. The style, to be fair, isn't at all bad but the lack of substance really kills the entire effort. Written, produced and directed by newcomer Steve Wolsh, a sequel,"Muck: Feast of Saint Patrick", (It'll make more sense after you've seen this one) is already in the pipe for 2016. Unfortunately, the film ends just as abruptly as it starts. Steve actually makes a cameo appearance in an end credit scene that, you guessed it, bears no relation to anything in the movie. The end credits just come out of nowhere. Take an adequate B movie horror film, miss the opening 20 minutes and walk out 20 minutes before the end, and you've got "Muck". Checking on the net there's a level of background chaos that appears to go deeper than this film. A prequel that was never made, plans to release the first part in the trilogy after the second, and maybe even after the third. Different names given for the different films. Different answers given to people making enquiries. I'd be tempted to write the whole thing off as a shambles but ... there's something there. On the basis of watching Muck I'd say that, if Steve actually gets enough money to make an entire film, (with a beginning, a middle, and an end), it might, just might, be worth watching ... but this isn't it. My score 4/10, mostly for the girls. Steve, I envy you. It was probably way more enjoyable to make than to watch. If you ever make the sequel, or the prequel, or any movie, I'd still give it a watch.

Lucifer's Angels (2015)

Ugly, amateurish, non-entity of a film

[1/10 · 24 February 2015]

An ugly, amateurish, non-entity of a film. Looking at the user ratings to date, of 28, 14 give it a 10, rating it as one of the greatest films ever made. Well, that's the views of the people responsible for making this, and their family and friends, taken into account. Worryingly, this appears to be at least partially supported by supposedly independent critics. Of the rest, actual viewers I assume, the majority give it a 1 and it's score, at time of writing, is a grossly exaggerated 6.9. I'm confident that score is only going to head in one direction. If the people involved in producing this effort had spent as much time in making a decent film as they appear to have in trying to give it a manipulated high score it might have been better. As it is my only recommendation would be don't waste your time and, if you do, leave an appropriate rating. This film, and the rating, really left a bad taste in my mouth. Guys, if you had any confidence in your movie, you'd release it and stand by it, not try to con people into thinking it's not as bad as you obviously know it is.

Backtrack (2014)

If only they had a dog!

[4/10 · 21 February 2015]

Wow! just wow. Two mismatched Brighton couples travel into the deepest darkest depths of the South Downs in search of their Nazi war criminal pasts and meet the locals, who have long memories. Yes, you did read that correctly. If they had a dog this could have been the Famous Five novel that Enid Blyton always wanted to write but never did. Throw in a perpetual quest to find the village pub and ale, references to the Battle of Britain, Spitfire fly pasts and "strange" locals and you have a truly weird and wonderful mix. I found myself actually laughing out loud at some points which I'm sure were unintentionally funny. I defy anybody to watch the tractor and tent scene and not chuckle. The greatest mystery to me is how Julian Glover, a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an actor, got roped into this. Julian plays his part very well, as you would expect, but only adds to the problems of the film by acting, underlining the fact that he is the only one of the cast who can. I couldn't help thinking that he was probably more annoyed at the other cast members than anything the Nazi invaders might have done but it no doubt helped him get into character. As one of the characters memorably says "There's no point in pretending this isn't happening." Regretfully, I can but agree. For the unintentional but genuine pleasure it brought me my score 4/10.

Before I Disappear (2014)

Take a chance, you might really enjoy it

[8/10 · 1 February 2015]

Firstly, I came to this movie without having seen "Curfew". Several commentators have pointed out that that is important in the way you see this movie so I'll get that out of the way to start with. I checked out the user score (7.2 at time of writing) and the Meta score (47/100 at time of writing). A bit of a mismatch I thought and maybe it was down to the film being "upped" by users. (We all know it happens right? Reviewers who come out of nowhere and submit one review giving a film 10 / 10 and then disappear as quickly as they appeared. All's fair in love and marketing). Anyway, as a result I decided to take a chance on it but with some reservations at the back of my mind and not really expecting anything that would really get me. What followed was rare, the realisation that the users had nailed it and the critics had really come down way too hard on this movie for all the wrong reasons. "Underwhelming, inconsistent, superfluous, bloated, meandering, posey, abrasive, over amped" to mention a few of the words used. I really don't know what film they were watching. Shawn Christensen, the writer, director and star of this film has already picked up an Oscar in 2013 for best Live Action Short but this film is dismissed as "not a bad freshman effort"? Ignore the critics and take a chance on this one. If you go in with an open mind and let yourself go with it's unusual flow you might really enjoy it. Finally, the cast were uniformly good. Fatima Ptacek, who I hadn't come across before, was brilliant, certainly one to watch, and Ron Perlman was Ron Perlman, nobody does that better than him.

10,000 Days (2014)

Rats can't vomit

[1/10 · 23 November 2014]

Rats can't vomit and I can't walk out of films. Normally that's not an issue. In this case I had to remind myself of that throughout and take increasingly frequent glances at my watch to see how much time was left before I could leave while muttering "Please, please let it stop" under my breath. Poor special effects, a ridiculous storyline, appalling dialogue and terrible acting (but, to be fair, the actors really didn't stand a chance from the get go in this one). Apparently, within a generation, our future selves have divided into scientifically and technologically gifted guitar playing peace loving Eco hippies who still pray before meals and testosterone driven Ghenghis Khan ninja style combat loving Mongolian warriors who talk in suitably archaic language about their clan, fortresses, honour and the glory of battle. (Talking of ninjas the film is written and directed by Eric Small, who was the assistant director of "3 Ninjas: Knuckle Up" (1995) IMDb rating 3.9). Between them you've got what I guess the film makers would like to call a doomed romance "Romeo and Juliet" sub plot going on. I very quickly wished all of them had died in the apocalypse like apparently everyone else on CGI planet. Ninety one minutes of watching a frozen empty landscape would have been more entertaining. Sometimes a film can be so unintentionally bad that it exerts a mesmerising and highly entertaining fascination all of it's own, like watching a train wreck. This isn't one of them. The Christmas turkey has definitely come early this year. Please be kind to yourself people and stay far, far, away. There are better, more life affirming and rewarding, ways of wasting 91 minutes of your all too short existence. Book a root canal treatment and turn up early, go to your train station and deliberately miss your train, try to read a book written in a language you don't know, go shopping and leave your wallet at home, start a collection of interesting things you find on your sidewalk, go out and start saying hello to people you've never met, see how many hot dogs you can eat before you throw up ... anything but this. If you see any ratings higher than 3 then I suggest you check out just how many other ratings the reviewer has submitted. My guess would be just one, glowing, for this film and this film only. My score 1/10, simply because IMDb won't let me go any lower. For clarity, that means that "3 Ninjas: Knuckle Up" (1995) is 4 times better than this! In conclusion, just about every other film I've seen in my whole wasted movie watching life was better than this one. This is the kind of film that makes you wish film had never been invented. Finally, the "end" of the film directly suggests there will be a sequel. If there is a God ... there won't.

Postscript: 25 days later 4 reviewers have given it a 10, making it obviously one of the greatest films they have ever seen. They are either: a) Masochists who need serious help; b) Sadists who want you to suffer the way I suffered; c) in the pay of those responsible for this monstrosity; d) a combination of the former. Despite this it's still pulling a (grossly exaggerated) score of 3.7 on the crapiness index. IMDb - you really need to do something about these people!

The Treatment (2014)

What a film! Searing!

[9/10 · 12 October 2014]

A policeman with a personal back story of child abuse / abduction attempts to track down a paedophile who has attacked a family. The start of the film is deliberately unclear and it starts at a slow pace but stick with it. Note everything. Add one detail or take one detail away and this film would be less than it is. The pace steadily picks up with the increasing frustration of the brilliantly played investigating officer as he attempts, through official and increasingly unofficial means, to prevent another attack. The mood of the film is dark. The story line meticulous. This film doesn't spoon feed you. You really have to concentrate and even then I guarantee it will throw you off balance more than once. The subject matter couldn't be darker or more disturbing but is never shown directly on screen. The crimes are shown through the consequences, and the corrosive effects on the victims and the investigators. The perpetrator is a truly chilling creation. Entertaining isn't really an appropriate word for this film but, if you bear with it until the story begins to unfold and you can bear with the subject matter, you'll stick with it to the end and it will stick with you for a long time afterwards. Watch this genuinely stunning Belgian film before America goes for the almost inevitable remake. I cannot imagine America producing anything approaching this level of bleak brilliance. Reminiscent: Silence of the Lambs, Seven. My rating 9/10.

Don't Look Back (2014)

Not quite twisting enough

[7/10 · 10 October 2014]

Lucy Griffiths (True Blood) stars as Nora, a (seemingly too) young accomplished children's / young adults author who, on the death of her grandmother, inherits the remote family house she grew up in as a troubled child. It is, she thinks, the ideal place to work in solitude on her new book. The combination of a vivacious female lodger, Peyton (played by Cassidy Freeman), and memories stirred by meeting the people she left behind lead to a settling of scores. The good - cinematography, acting (both of the female leads spark off of each other nicely and Cassidy really crackles in some scenes). The bad - you'll probably see the end coming a fair way off and, once you've seen it, the rest is just watching the story play itself out by the numbers. There's some soft core sex (but no nudity) and the violence is virtually blood free. Whether you want to slot that under good or bad I'll leave to you. I'd say it was to the Director's (William Dickerson) credit that he didn't try to boost the film by gratuitous amounts of either. Conclusion - well worth a watch but not quite twisting enough to keep you guessing till the end. 7/10

Kantemir (2015)

Yawn

[3/10 · 5 September 2014]

A troop of actors gather together in an isolated Gothic mansion in autumnal Pennsylvania to rehearse a play. The play is as Gothic as the setting and centres around the romantic and murderous intrigues surrounding a medieval Transylvanian merchant's family. Cue the actors being unable to differentiate the play from reality, a cursed book, assorted gypsies, witches, vampires, slow motion running in forests, killer hounds and other assorted hokum. It isn't bad. It's just run of the mill - which is worse. A shame really as, given the unusual premise, in more creative hands it could have been much better. On the plus side it does have Justine Griffiths who would look good even reading a telephone directory, which in this case might be more engaging.

Find Me (I) (2014)

Haunting - in more ways than one

[6/10 · 5 September 2014]

It's winter in the American Mid West. A young newly married couple, the husband a teacher with a new job at the local school, the wife unemployed, move into their newly purchased first house in the wife's home town. Almost immediately things start to go bump in the night. That suggests a pace the film doesn't have. It's a melancholy, bleak, almost artsy ghost story with shots of empty winter scenery, open skies and dripping icicles. The characters are well played, likable and intelligent, the horror mostly peripheral and special effects sparingly used. There are some genuine unforeseen twists in the plot. It's not a classic of the genre but, considering how bad many films in the genre are, I found it difficult to dislike. Nothing to write home about but, if you don't go in expecting a CGI filled gore fest, it has a bleak charm. 6/10.

R100 (2013)

Bondage and Beethoven

[8/10 · 24 August 2014]

A businessman, raising a young son with the help of his father in law while his wife lies in a three year long coma, takes out a one year subscription to an S&M club. His life is soon complicated by dominatrices who abuse him unexpectedly, in restaurants, on the street, at his work. Just when you think "where exactly is this going?" things take a whole new turn into weird. By the time the film "climaxes" you'll either have left the audience long ago or be sitting with a wide grin on your face enjoying the spectacle. At a time when American cinema has descended into predictability, special effects, superheroes and remakes it's great to see a genuine imagination at play. It's not for everyone but, if you enjoy creativity, humour and going along for the ride then it's one hell of a ride. Recommended.

The Browning Version (1951)

Climax or anti-climax?

[7/10 · 24 July 2013]

Firstly, I'm a Rattigan fan. Separate Tables (1958), although it hasn't aged well, is still one of my top ten films. I came to The Browning Vesion late, first hearing it as a radio adaptation. The radio adaptation was faithful to the theatre script in every detail and I was genuinely disappointed by the abrupt (and seemingly anti-climactic) ending when the script appeared to be heading towards a more dramatic resolution of themes. In the play the resolution is left to the imagination. The film goes beyond the play and adds the much anticipated ending. Unfortunately, for me, it didn't work. It seemed contrived and unrealistic, tacked on in an attempt to satisfy a cinema going audience. I'm sure Rattigan himself was well aware of the dilemma. Crocker-Harris' last line in the play is "An anti-climax can be surprisingly effective". While I can understand the studio's concerns I think I have to agree with Crocker-Harris and wish the film makers had had the courage to end this film on the same line.

Le chignon d'Olga (2002)

Quintessentially French

[8/10 · 3 March 2013]

A tale of provincial life in the south of France focusing on the lives of two young people, brother and sister, who live together with their recently widowed father. It is as languid and slow moving as the summer heat.

Very little appears to happen. What story there is is oblique, subliminal, played out in peripheral vision. If you stick with it, and I strongly recommend that you do, it may linger in your mind long after the closing credits roll. I only began to really appreciate how much I'd enjoyed it the day after I'd watched it. It is an acutely observed, heart-warming, touching study of the realisation that must come to every adult - that it's time to leave the comfort and security of the family home, to make our own way in the world, to become ourselves, and to face all the pain and challenges that involves.

When I read the Director was only twenty three in one sense I wasn't surprised. The film, for me, perfectly captures the joy and pain of semi independent youth. It is a film that had to be made with these feelings fresh in mind. That the Director does this with such style, so beautifully, so subtly, is what really impressed me. The title, referring to a female character's hairstyle, is typical of the film. Nothing is addressed directly but the film, taken as a whole, is a wonderful evocation of a moment in life that I'm sure will strike a chord in everyone who watches it - even if you can't exactly put your finger on the reason why. It's charming, it's quintessentially French, and it's beautiful. I loved it.