Film Reviews by Steve

Quintessential post-Watergate conspiracy thriller with that 70s mood of paranoia, which still holds up. It suffers for a few clumsy plot twists which may be due to liberties taken with James Grady's bestseller Six Days of the Condor! The main problem is the improbable romance between Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

There's a classic Hitchcock-style scenario: a backroom drudge at the CIA is forced into the wrong man role when everyone connected to him is killed; so he hides out with a blonde photographer who assumes the dupe is a mass murderer while he tries to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth. The bondage is pure Hitch...

The conspiracy is hardly a stretch; that government offices intended to protect the public are actually answerable only to themselves, and destroy those who threaten its impunity. Redford and director Sydney Pollack are Hollywood liberals but they don't editorialise, at least until the last scene, which is the best part of the film...

A shady CIA fixer (Cliff Robertson) describes a country where the media is compromised by political authority and the voters unable to see beyond idiotic short term solutions. When Redford asks if the US plans to invade the Middle East for oil and his boss replies 'are you crazy?', it's tempting to shout bingo! at the screen! 

This is the masterpiece which poses the enigma of why Steven Spielberg never made other films on a similar level. It's an almost flawless account of the evolution of Nazi capitalist Oskar Schindler into a humanitarian who kept Jews out of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. This is emotive but there is little of the director's usual sentimentality.

Only in the misjudged coda does he lose control of the emotional throttle... There are a few welcome artistic flourishes, including the girl in the red dress, and the stunning b&w photography, but until nearly the very end this is also scrupulously austere, including the set design, and the script which mostly keeps the drama on mute.

While the detail of the economic and logistical administration of slave labour and mass murder is terrifying, the understated performances render these extreme situations plausible. Liam Neeson plays Schindler as an ambiguous, wily operator, who is hardly a hero at all until the third hour. The support cast is excellent down to the smallest role.

Given all the onscreen text, Spielberg surely intended this as an education, as well as a memorial. Of course, it's hard to watch, and not only because of the horror; sitting at home observing actors present as the skeletal victims of death camps diminishes the gravitas. But when holocaust films are made, they should at least be as great as this one.

This is the debut as writer-director of Shane Black who previously scripted the 1980s Lethal Weapons trilogy. He clearly has a formula, though personally I prefer this as a subject for comedy because it sends up hardboiled crime fiction rather than the action thriller. And I lean towards the '70s neo-noir style this imitates.

Otherwise the crosstalk and cartoonish action inserts are similar, except this is better written with some decent wisecracks and a sardonic voiceover. A bonus for genre fans is this ostentatiously alludes to Raymond Chandler, and not just resolving knotty plot convolutions by making a heavy enter the scene with a gun... 

Even the chapter headings are borrowed from Chandler. Otherwise, much of the attraction is the buddy double act between Robert Downey Jr. as a New York shoplifter who goes to Hollywood to research an acting role... and Val Kilmer as a private detective who gives him a tour around West Coast crime and corruption.

And there are satirical sneers aimed at Hollywood. It's got that oversaturated colour of '70s noir and there are references to those films, and pulp fiction. Much of the response will depend on tolerance of the irony overload (and swearing). But this is a must for noir buffs, and eventually picked up a cult following on tv.

This is a milestone in Clint Eastwood's emerging stardom as he takes a break from his Italian/US westerns and refines the blueprint for the post-noir crime film. The premise is quite apt- he plays a Deputy from Arizona who turns up as a fish-out-of-water in New York City, which is a freak-zone of liberal permissiveness.

The kids are turning on and dropping out while the insubordinate, alpha-male lawman gets it on with a couple of free-loving metropolitan chicks and chases down an outlaw junkie. You can't miss Coogan as he's tall, carries a gun and wears a cowboy hat. This is a hippie era period piece and now seems comically dated.

But it's still entertaining and besides, it was always a spoof. And it's interesting to see how much will be channelled into Dirty Harry (1971): it's the first collaboration between Eastwood and director Don Siegel and there's a score by Lalo Schifrin; the visual style is similar and there is the same dystopia of urban and moral decay.

Plus the detective gets his man despite the interference of the liberal establishment... so the politics is already established. The attitudes are lost in time, including Eastwood's star persona and particularly the ultra-compliant females, but it's still possible to detect that this is a sendup, even if fans of the star wanted to believe!

Maybe it's absurd to reflect on the cinéma du look in terms of its masterpiece; but this is at least quintessential. Many films conceived as an exercise in style now look/sound dated, especially those released in the 1980s. Yet this avoids that fate; its combination of modern, classical and distressed-industrial is fabulous.

And the aural mix of opera, rock atmosphere and ersatz Erik Satie is still chic. In his feature debut, Jean-Jacques Beineix isn't reluctant to show us around the set design, which makes the thriller plot (adapted from a novel) overextended. But the narrative isn't the main reason to watch, and the suspense just about holds.

The McGuffin is the mixup of two audio cassettes in the possession of a cool/cute postal worker (Frédéric Andréi) who zips around Paris on his moped- including in the Metro- while he's pursued by the mob and a pair of music moguls who want to release his hi-tec bootleg recording of a black-American opera singer...

The cast is chosen on appearances and no one gives much of a performance; Wilhelmenia Fernandez as the diva makes the film possible, but isn't an actor. Though Dominique Pinon grew a career from his role as an impassive psycho-baddie. This is arthouse-Hitchcock wrapped in the dream of a loft living lifestyle.

More grim social realism from Ken Loach which is a rare case of him making serious crime the heart of his dissection of working class life; in this case the normalisation of drug use and the absence of law on a council estate in a town close to Glasgow. And be prepared... most viewers who are not from Scotland will need subtitles.

This is about 'chavs' who steal cars for fun and trade smack as the only possible way out of poverty. The title couldn't be more ironic. But of course the director and screenwriter Paul Laverty look beyond the stereotypes. Loach was already a pensioner but despite some occasionally clunky dialogue this feels very switched on.

As usual they extract a story from the experiences of those living in the community, and use local non-professional actors. Martin Compston (then 17) plays a 15 year old kid with a father rarely mentioned and mother in prison, who gets inexorably drawn into criminality. His 4-real performance is the emotional core of the picture.

Loach creates a detailed, nuanced impression of the cost of growing up without support, where the men are mostly absent, if you're lucky. Where drug addiction has augmented alcoholism as a means of carrying on. Any irritation this initially provokes eventually gives way to profound horror, which leaves us with little hope.

*the extreme swearing is constant.

High concept arthouse thriller, where the concept is Anne Parillaud in a Little Black Dress holding a huge automatic pistol. Which- of course- she immediately puts in her mouth... It begins as a Pygmalion story with the junkie cop killer made-over into a sexy gamine assassin... who falls in love with her instructor (Tchéky Karyo).

She makes a normal home life with a cute shop assistant (Jean-Hugues Anglade) while carrying out hits for the deep state. The initial premise is infallible and led to many remakes and spinoffs. It has also been unofficially ripped off, not least by writer-director Luc Besson who made a career from this setup. This is the superior version.

Still, it loses its way in the second act. The spy games are pure McGuffin and eventually the story arc reroutes into black comedy when Jean Reno appears in a cameo as a government 'cleaner' who tidies away the mess left behind by the spooks. There's an odd score which rotates supper club muzak, Mozart and industrial techno!

Parillaud and Besson generate some neo-noir sadness to obscure the issue of Nikita having shot a gendarme in the head... The visuals are cool and whenever the plot falters, it's rescued by the star's photogenic charisma. Okay, she's a babe with a gun but Parillaud gives a performance; and she's still the best killer-femme out there.

Uneven Gen. X melodrama which still strikes a few deeper notes. In the present era of social media, and since the Columbine Massacre, this seems unexpectedly prophetic. A teenage pirate radio shock-jock operating from his bedroom in suburban Arizona changes the climate at his ultra-Conservative High School.

This is surprisingly sincere and while the disillusioned kid’s diatribes are often artless, then that's part of his vulnerability and some of the more profound material goes straight to the heart. Maybe looking like Christian Slater (or his eventual companion, Samantha Mathis!) would alleviate many teenage problems.

But Slater plays up his social anxiety which is unusual for the period. He can't communicate, except via his broadcast, when he talks for everyone and offers an outlet for misfits who suffer alone. Obviously there's a soundtrack of punk and hiphop classics. Boomers get Leonard Cohen singing Everybody Knows.

It loses focus in the later scenes, and the reaction from the fascist headteacher is idiotic. Plus it borrows the climax from Smokey and the Bandit! Yet this stands apart from other 80s/90s High School pictures and makes salient observations on how some colleges finagle good grades; which is sadly now relevant to the UK. 

This is the last of four collaborations between director Susanne Bier and screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen in the decade after the millennium. This may be the least of these, though the standard is high and this won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. They all trace a connection between the personal and global politics.

This one features a pair of decent child performances with Markus Rygaard and William Jøhnk Nielsen as middle class 12 year olds who escalate some bullying into an act of domestic terrorism, while one of their fathers (Mikael Persbrandt) is absent working as a doctor in a field hospital within a war-zone somewhere in Africa.

The link between the resentful kids in Denmark and tribal hostility is tenuous, but both scenarios are interesting. Persbrandt is a charismatic lead as the medic divided between two worlds; this is what a real flawed superhero looks like! There are ethical dilemmas drawn from conflict within group dynamics and the abuse of power.

The extreme situations are explored with sensitivity, wisdom and realism. Sometimes it's hard to watch the helplessness of the victims; there may be tears.  Bier performs a small miracle in making this all seem plausible over a lengthy running time. It's a shame her later Hollywood career has been relatively disappointing.

Mystical gangster/black comedy hybrid which generates Jim Jarmusch's usual surge of irony and eccentricity. Forest Whitaker stars as a mafia hitman who takes his doctrine from a 17th century Samurai, which gives him the discipline and self-respect missing from the mob and his ghetto brothers.

But this is merely a first impression. Gradually the etiquette which appears to set him apart from the moral and urban decay is revealed to be an insane obsession. The code cannot raise him above the street sickness. Whitaker does well to make the ruthless, violent assassin even halfway appealing.

There is an overload of popular culture with the cartoons watched by the idiot mob goons, plus Ghost Dog's reading list, including the Rashomon story which offers some commentary on the action. And Jarmusch references screen gangster classics, most obviously Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï (1967).

There's the urban sadness of neo-noir, augmented by a funk/hiphop soundtrack from RZA. The mafia loves rap. And there's some reflection on modern tribal subcultures. It comes towards the close of the director's period as an arthouse superstar and it's not quite his best; but still a unique, cultish genre mashup.

* Includes racist language.

Delirious period melodrama set in 18th Century Jutland. A brief internet search suggests there isn't much real history here, and is adapted from a novel closer to Catherine Cookson than Hilary Mantel. Other than the superior set design and luminous widescreen photography this might suit Sunday evening tv more than a cinema release.

There was still rural feudalism back then, but this is awfully schematic. Mads Mikkelsen is a low born soldier who applies to the King for land on the barren heathland of the Jutland Peninsular where he plans to grow potatoes. Through formidable perseverance he clears the land but faces even greater hardship from the vicious, idiotic bandits...

More infuriating resistance comes from the most feckless, decadent - and psychopathic- aristocrat in fiction, in a portrayal from Simon Bennebjerg which must have been inspired by Tod Slaughter. Well, this is melodrama! With the support of a pair of selfless women unexpectedly enamoured of the dour farmer, he ultimately prevails...

Which is ideal, as everyone gets what they deserve, which is all we really ask. There is a tiresome plot strand with a 'cursed' little girl which goes nowhere. But we get a lavish, epic production and aside from the extreme events, an impression of the incredible hardship endured by pioneers to prepare the land for their apathetic descendants!

More esoteric gloom from Béla Tarr and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky, which extended their unique visions across arthouses beyond Hungary. It's a bleak, bizarre tale sparked by the arrival in an austere town of a dismal circus whose sole attraction is a dead whale.

Tarr said this is not an allegory, though maybe he did not speak for Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai who adapted his own novel. It's inconceivable that the rotting carcass which is starting to stink doesn't represent the manifest end-stage of the Soviet occupation.

Especially as the book was published in 1989! Critics claim the anarchy that follows is under the malign influence of the exhibit, but surely it is a prediction of what its decay allows... Still, this is a Béla Tarr film so we get the long tracking shots in b&w, the non-performances...

Plus the black comedy. Tarr said he merely reveals what he saw in his home country, which was surely bad news for Hungarian tourism; he always seems to be balancing the weight of misery! This is a dream of life which takes us to places only Béla knows.

My pick as the the best of Hirokazu Koreeda's classical Japanese dramas which have accumulated global popularity in the new millennium. This one delivers a measure of gravitas with its themes of loss and time and the reflections on old age and mortality.

He is often compared to Yasujiro Ozu because of the similarities in technique... Which makes this his own personal update of Tokyo Story (1953). Three generations of a middle class family gather each year to acknowledge the premature death of the elder son of a retired doctor and his wife.

And by day two, the barely discernible resentments climax into a muted spasm of passive aggression... and then they get out the dirty washing. But this is mostly understated and implied, in the Japanese way. It's an ensemble actors film with Kirin Kiki the standout as the stoical, conciliatory matriarch.

Though she later reveals a slight edge. We get the expected tasteful piano score and long edits from a static camera. This may not be on the level of the postwar Japanese masters but it's still wistful and absorbing, especially considering there is little plot and a great deal of gnomic conversation.

Rollocking stop motion pirate adventure from Aardman, which is my pick as easily their best picture... that doesn't feature Wallace and Gromit. It's really very funny with a fast moving, whimsical plot and all the imaginative spoofy detail we have come to expect. Plus, of course, the extraordinary animation. 

This includes more CGI than usual to fill in the backgrounds, but it isn't obvious and the real sets and models are exceptional. It's based on one in a series of books by Gideon Defoe with recurring characters. In 1837, the (relatively) likeable crew of a pirate ship gets tangled up with Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria.

The historical characters both have their eyes on the dodo the Captain has perched on his shoulder, while he attempts to win the prestigious (among buccaneers) Pirate of the Year award. The anachronisms are all cheerfully intentional and it's an unexpected twist to make the Queen the psycho-bad guy.

The voice talent is appropriately pantomimic. Hugh Grant is the standout as the underdog skipper, and I enjoyed Jeremy Piven as an insidious rival. Maybe this doesn't play well to kids as there is no child identification character... but it's another Aardman that certainly crosses over to grownups. Now, make that sequel!

Passionate Hollywood left polemic based on the real life experiences of a reformist prison warden in Arkansas, US and the astonishing crimes he uncovered, including rows of unmarked graves. These farm penitentiaries were intended to make money and were mostly run for the benefit of the board and parasitic suppliers.

The administration of the prison was mainly left to armed trusties who were themselves serving sentences. The level of corruption is scarcely credible and this institution was eventually closed after some jailbirds sued the state! Anyone committed to the idea of making public institutions self funding should refer to this case.

The strap and worse tortures were still in use. Robert Redford is probably no one's idea of a prison warden, but at least his star power brought attention to such obscenities. The Oscar nominated original screenplay is outstanding and there are convincing support performances, including an early role for Morgan Freeman.

The new boss sets about cleaning the place up, which is gratifying to watch; if only life was really like this! The system is run for the benefit those who enforce it, rather than the stated intention... This is an incredibly powerful, righteous denunciation which might usefully serve as an allegory for any public institution run for profit.