Film Reviews by Steve

This critically adored arthouse-fantasy made little impact on release but is now standard in lists of all time horror classics. The setup is pure gothic, though this is more like dreamy/languorous screen poetry which chills through unsettling b&w imagery and transgressive themes. So there are zero jump-scares... 

But there is a seriously impressive cast led by Pierre Brasseur as an imperious surgeon who means to transplant a new visage onto his once beautiful daughter after she is burned in a car accident; and is willing to expend other young women in his crazy enterprise. Alida Valli is no less disturbing as his submissive enabler.

Presumably this alludes to the Nazi doctors of WWII. Everything the mad medic does is insane, but- to the duo- unavoidably, regrettably necessary; as with the fascists, the end always justifies the means. Though what makes it so horrific and unsettling is his aristocratic assumption of superiority over his lonely victims.

And director Georges Franju absolutely understands that while hospitals are modern white palaces of medicine, they also accommodate practices which might look to the uninitiated like torture, endorsed by staff who are just following orders.  Édith Scob's sad-face mask is a horror icon, but there's so much more...

This is only a loose adaptation of Jack London's classic adventure story, but there is some attempt to enter into the spirit of the text. The viewpoint character isn't the feral wolfhound; this is a Disney film about a boy and his dog. However, it is less anthropomorphic than usual; nature is red in tooth and claw.

The content about the survival of the fittest in the wilderness of the Yukon still endures. More modern concerns about ecology are not much explored. Ethan Hawke plays the inexperienced juvenile who pitches up in Alaska to exploit the gold rush, and is mentored by an old hand played by Klaus Maria Brandauer. 

Not much of that is from the book! Still, this is more about the animal performances, with Jed in the title role, and an awesome cameo from Bart as a brown bear who fancies the boy for dinner. The narrative gets more conventional towards the climax with some standard baddies. Though, they are at least from the book...

The bloody animal fights are a weakness, but of course, no CGI. The set design and authentic locations add some grim period realism. This is easily the best version of the novel and any changes are to make it more convivial for a family audience; it's an exciting adventure for kids which should crossover to grownups.

Some pre-knowledge of the works of French polymath Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) would be useful! And that notion at least sends a warning about the kind of concentration that will be necessary. This is the third in Éric Rohmer's series of Six Moral Tales and as usual, he expects his audience to be well read....

OK, my exposure to Pascal goes no further than his triangle, but close attention is rewarded. This is about  the philosophy of chance and how it is playfully utilised by Rohmer's intellectual characters to explain their potential to find a partner for marriage. And to discuss at length the validity of these theories...

Like all of Rohmer's films, this is dense with dialogue but without much plot. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an engineer who does complex arithmetic for relaxation. His pal is a professor of philosophy (Antoine Vitez), and together they visit Maud, a medical doctor (Françoise Fabian). They talk while interesting connections emerge.

These long, cerebral conversations are demanding, but personal and captivating. Surely this influenced Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, except this is intellectual rather than romantic. I'd expect its appeal would only extend to a small cult, but it was nominated for two Oscars, so who knows? 

Some pre-knowledge of the works of French polymath Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) would be useful! And that notion at least sends a warning about the kind of concentration that will be necessary. This is the third in Éric Rohmer's series of Six Moral Tales and as usual, he expects his audience to be well read....

OK, my exposure to Pascal goes no further than his triangle, but close attention is rewarded. This is about  the philosophy of chance and how it is playfully utilised by Rohmer's intellectual characters to explain their potential to find a partner for marriage. And to discuss at length the validity of these theories...

Like all of Rohmer's films, this is dense with dialogue but without much plot. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an engineer who does complex arithmetic for relaxation. His pal is a professor of philosophy (Antoine Vitez), and together they visit Maud, a medical doctor (Françoise Fabian). They talk while interesting connections emerge.

These long, cerebral conversations are demanding, but personal and captivating. Surely this influenced Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, except this is intellectual rather than romantic. I'd expect its appeal would only extend to a small cult, but it was nominated for two Oscars, so who knows?

Crazy low budget Universal monster picture with a gallery of genre oddballs played by a deep cast of B-picture stalwarts. Ralph Morgan is a quadriplegic who holds his highly respected physicians responsible for his extreme deformity. He invites the doctors to his spooky old estate, only for someone to murder them!

It can’t be the host- obviously- as he has no arms or legs… The denouement is completely wild! But fun. Bela Lugosi as the creepy butler and Lionel Atwill as a bumptious medic are only there for name recognition and hardly figure…

In a uniformly relishable cast, the standouts are Irene Hervey as a straight-arrow psychiatrist, Fay Helm as the neurotic relative scared out of her mind and Nils Asther as an unorthodox mystic. There’s a memorable scene where he teleports a skeleton via arcane, yogic ritual!

This is all astonishingly overstated. Ford Beebe is a minor director of serials, but he creates plenty of foggy/shadowy atmosphere from his studio backlot swamp and secret passages. It’s a ludicrous mishmash of melancholy, hokum and weirdness- yet irresistible.

This is the forgotten production in the creative big bang of Universal horror; an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's influential locked room mystery set in mid-19th Century Paris. Not much Poe remains, but we do get the ape! Bela Lugosi is a carnival showman immersed in a maniacal scheme to crossbreed his simian sideshow attraction with a sweet, beautiful young lady.

Sidney Fox (she's a girl!) gets top billing, maybe because she was dating the head of the studio. But Lugosi dominates as Dr. Mirakle, the carny with a sideline in cutting edge evolutionary biology. He trains the ape to scale an apartment building and kidnap her for his experiments. Which are pretty sordid, even for precode.

It's a bit slow and creaky like all early Universal horrors. Critics claim it borrows from German silent, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), especially the climax as the primate drags his victim over jagged rooftops. This isn't of similar stature, but it's a fair comparison. And the painted, expressionist city is memorable.

There is plenty of atmosphere, but zero logic. Which is fine in the woozy trance of early horror. It's Lugosi's gift to seem to belong in this opiated fantasy. His performance is ridiculous, but absolutely appropriate! Robert Florey doesn't create much suspense, or any scares, but it's still transgressive stuff, and he gets it all done in an hour.

If anyone knows anything about this minor Universal horror, it's that it triggered a prohibition on scare films in the UK which lasted for a decade, and a shorter pause in the US. Naturally, there's nothing shocking here. Now it looks like an irreverent, if transgressive romp. There's even a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe through the medium of interpretive dance!

It's a loose mishmash of plots which mostly involve Bela Lugosi as an infatuated doctor planning to murder the family of a beautiful woman (Irene Ware) he desires... while he deliberately botches cosmetic surgery on Boris Karloff to ensure he assists in these nefarious schemes...

The mad medic has a secret torture chamber with the freaky guillotine from The Pit and the Pendulum. But otherwise, there is little Poe here. It has that awkwardness many badly directed early talkies have. Like everyone is struggling to make conversation. But now it's 1935 so there is no excuse.

Still it's always fun to see the two stars engaged in diabolical conflict. Karloff sends up his role as Frankenstein's monster. And at barely a hour, there are few longueurs. Lugosi comes up with a new atrocity every ten minutes. But the main takeaway is that the censors/critics must have been crazier than Lugosi to ban this.

The outrage caused by this beating Raging Bull to Best Film at the 1981 Oscars always seemed phoney; this is a worthy winner, just... very different. It's a domestic drama set in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago where a respectable family suffers the aftershocks of a fatal accident while they get stuck in the stages of grief.

The favoured son dies in a boating accident while his introverted younger brother is rescued. There are intense ensemble performances with Donald Sutherland as the well-meaning dad who just wants to believe everything is ok and Mary Tyler Moore as the brittle trad-wife/mother who can't feel any love for the survivor...

The standout is Timothy Hutton; this comes alive when he is on screen as the schoolkid who can't live with the guilt and may be heading for another suicide attempt. His scenes with Judd Hirsch as a cranky psychotherapist cut deepest. Hutton won the Oscar for Supporting Actor on his feature debut, but he plays the central role.

Robert Redford also won an Oscar for a debut- as director. His use of music is excellent and the autumnal background brings some atmosphere, but he occasionally loses control of the emotional throttle. This is better as a rites-of-passage about teenage anxiety than a study of midlife bourgeois disappointment, but works either way.

How timely that in 2008, Mike Leigh should rediscover his alchemic ability to intuit change in British society; the year the financial crisis triggered austerity and way back when the internet began to amplify our divisions; this is a report from the pressure points of a disunited nation.

Poppy may be an optimist; but she is also resilient because otherwise her positivity will burn out, like a match. Sally Hawkins' virtuoso performance is among the greats of UK cinema. From a potentially irritating, dayglo romantic, she deepens and darkens into an unlikely hero.

Poppy is a funny, liberal primary school teacher, still living the single life while flatsharing in North London at 30.  The core of the film is her exposure to a furious, far-right driving instructor (Eddie Marsan). He is a vehicle for the sort of lunatic conspiracies which are now commonplace.

Today this feels incredibly prescient... It channels the anger and passive-aggressive anxiety which is the hum in the wires of the circuits of contemporary British life. While it divides the audience, as Leigh's films usually do, for me this is one of the standout pictures of its decade.

Incredibly gloomy Icelandic noir about a resolute detective (Ingvar Sigurdsson) who investigates a modern day murder with its roots hidden in the murky secrets of a rural backwater. Meanwhile he must come to terms with his own personal trauma. Naturally the chain smoking cop has a contrasting sidekick...

And if all that sounds very familiar, it is saved from stifling genre convention by an undercurrent of deadpan humour and surreal peculiarity which plays throughout. The police procedural plot is complex but more significant is the ambience of corruption and decay; this is all about the atmosphere, and the despair.

The flat, volcanic landscape is photographed under sombre, lowering skies in a muted colour palette that can best be described as phlegmy. Everybody is addicted in some way in a futile attempt to alleviate the existential darkness. The village is built on a malodorous swamp which threatens to reassert its domain!

Everyone is connected, either through blood or crime. The policeman's daughter is a sex worker... Even his takeaway is grotesque. This is the least glamorous film imaginable, yet like all the best noir, it moves us with its aura of sadness and doubt. A Hollywood remake is rumoured, but surely this is too pessimistic!

While the action-comedy is a fairly modern hybrid, this reaches way back into the screwball romances of the 1930s; especially It Happened One Night (1934). Both take place on the road with similar narrative arcs. It's a magic formula which few ever get right... Only this one is a bromance and the profanity is off the chart!

Who knew Robert De Niro could do comedy? He stars as a bounty hunter who has to take a former Mafia lawyer (Charles Grodin) across country from New York to Los Angeles to collect, while pursued by the Chicago mob and the FBI. The whole production is faultless, but it's their odd couple chemistry which sets it alight.

De Niro plays a resentful, crude, blue collar striver who just wants things to be how they used to be. And Grodin is an educated liberal professional. Their double act breaks along the pressure lines of modern US politics! Of course, they get to understand each other, just like in those New Deal Frank Capra comedies of the '30s!

It all comes together, like a watch: the script is funny and eventually sentimental, which leaves an agreeably sweet aftertaste; Danny Elfman's jazz-funk score is dated, but exactly right; the action scenes are of their time, but who cares? This now feels like a small miracle; why isn't more feel-good entertainment this good?

Offbeat civil war western/southern gothic hybrid starring Clint Eastwood at his box office peak. His status as a popular star among '70s women brings a touch of wry playfulness to the drama; he portrays a wounded Union soldier who is captured/nursed by the spinsters of a rural girls' school way down south in Mississippi.  

There's an impressive ensemble support cast of female actors as the numb, lonely maidens, with Geraldine Page as the sexually traumatised matron and Jo Ann Harris as a teenage nymphomaniac. Elizabeth Hartman is the standout as a brittle, repressed virgin who falls in love with their rugged, virile prisoner.

When the invalid consumes the various mushrooms on offer, the mutual exploitation drifts into the psychedelic. There's a little folk horror in the mix, though this is eerie and transgressive rather than scary; there is an implication the soldier may be possessed by the spirit of the male landowner who didn't return from the war.

Some critics claim all this is misogynistic, which may divide its audience... but then Don Siegel isn't remembered for the subtlety of any psycho-sexual subtext. Still, it's a change of direction for the Eastwood/Siegel combo, all hallucinatory atmosphere and '70s zoom shifts; more arthouse than a standard western.

This is the start of Mike Leigh's period as a big screen chronicler of British social and political divisions. About a decade into the Thatcher revolution and at back end of the me-decade, the writer-director mostly reflects on our lack of kindness. This is comic-realism set in the newly gentrified London around King Cross.

Now it is an '80s time capsule and younger viewers might need some annotation. But the theme of the erosion of working class values is still valid. Phil Davis and Ruth Sheen play a couple of thirty-something Marxists in low paid work at a time when socialism has lost its energy, or worse; seems irrelevant or cranky.

She wants a baby, but he has no faith in the future. There's a support cast of grotesque caricatures, with Dave Bamber and Lesley Manville as snooty neighbours from hell and Philip Jackson and Heather Tobias as vulgar consumerists who found no joy in the conservative ideals of small business and home ownership.

Most memorable is Edna Doré as Davis and Tobias' elderly mother who begins to lose her memory as the city changes beyond recognition. It's an actors film which is essentially a series of sketches, and more awkwardly sad than funny. But- as usual- Leigh captures the zeitgeist better than any of his contemporaries.

Philosophical rerun of that staple of US cinema; the freedom of the last summer before further education and the pursuit of an elusive, ideal girl. It's a rites of passage comedy-drama set in 1987 about the sort of landmark experiences which stay with us always.

Jesse Eisenberg stars as an inexperienced middle class stoner with a place in a New York graduate school but stuck in Pittsburgh for the holidays. He takes a low wage job in a corny, run down amusement park, falls in love with Kristen Stewart and learns life lessons.

There was a glut of similar films around the same time, like 500 Days of Summer (also 2009), or Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008). This is the best of them, with a witty script which admittedly includes more deliberations on growing up than genuine laughs.

Plus there the usual cool indie-rock soundtrack. Writer-director Greg Mottola draws effectively from personal experience, and has a knack for describing the moments when life gets serious. While the stars lack chemistry, this is a superior variation on a popular formula.

This starts out like the kind of comedy which seems awkward because it invites us to laugh at stupidity; a recurrent motif in Australian cinema. Yet after about 15 minutes who doesn't wish they were a little more like Darryl Kerrigan, a 'bogan' without much of a brain, but with a big heart, who has found happiness within the love of his family?

The production company comes from tv, and it has that sort of feel; cheap and quickly shot. The documentary style realism gives it fake authenticity. This wasn't made to last, but endures because of its extraordinarily quotable script and the all time great comic performances, led by Michael Caton as a crazily optimistic blue collar striver.

His family is cast to perfection, with Anne Tenney outstanding as the dim bulb other half. Darryl takes on big business on behalf of his clueless neighbours when he tries to stop the compulsory purchase of their homes. Okay, the QC who takes up the case is an outrageous deus ex machina, but he's played by Bud Tingwell, and how great is that?

I used to think this lost its way in the last third, but I now love it all. The jokes are still hilarious; it's one of the funniest films ever made; and surprisingly moving. There's even some political commentary about the corporatisation of government! Though, now it's a certified Aussie classic, maybe it's time to cut the shocking racist expletive?