Film Reviews by Steve

Cheerful Halloween (1978) ripoff which takes the usual slasher genre signifiers and makes them more suspenseful than horrifying. There is no nudity or big jump-scares or even any extreme gore; just some funny gags, a likeable cast and a little style. It even quotes TS Eliot! And there's a really outstanding premise...

A schizo-serial killer is murdering seniors at a US High School; but only those with sexually experience. So in order to save themselves the teenagers must lose it before they are next. Naturally, Cherry Falls is a small town in Virginia! So it reverses the standard genre dictum which rules the promiscuous kids die first.

Brittany Murphy plays a popular good-girl who is dating but not yet gone all the way. And then is dumped at exactly the wrong moment. There's a convivial support cast of brats, babes, bitches and the usual suspects who mostly look about 10 years too old. Plus a few ex-faces among the parents and teachers.

It all unravels in the denouement, which often happens in this sort of film. I'd rather warmed to the deranged psycho before the mask slips, which I suppose is the point. This is unexpectedly imaginative and quite thrilling, with a few laughs. I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but it's my pick as the best slasher film I've seen.

Eccentric campus comedy which seems to divide opinion, but is at least as far from gross-out slapstick it's possible to get. This is a charming and intelligent diversion about a trio of college girls who aim to bring contentment, cleanliness and maybe even a little sophistication, into the lives of clueless frat jocks.

This is all talk and essentially plotless, yet a lovely escape into a quirky otherworld of wit and literary allusions where characters momentarily explore random offbeat ideas, and read Penguin Classics! There's a quotable script of bone-dry humour, plus the winsome performances of its young ensemble cast.

Greta Gerwig leads as a brittle scholarship student with a counterintuitive way of seeing everything. She and her humanist girlfriends (Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore) provide outreach for suicidal teenagers while a support cast of lovesick undergrads move in and out of their zone of influence.

Everyone gives borderline stoned performances, as if they got high on irony. This is Whit Stillman's best film and of course it flopped. But it has gathered a cult following. It is an unusual, maybe even unique comedy, with dialogue so good, I didn't want to miss a line. Which is a shame as the actors all mumble....

In 1991 this was massively controversial in the US for proposing a narrative counter to the official report on the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, 1963. It's an account of an investigation into possible alternative murder suspects by the District Attorney of New Orleans, presented as a conspiracy/paranoia thriller.

The original running time was 3 hours, and it's now considerable longer. But this is still a compelling political polemic, even if its credibility is questionable. The detailed examination of events is dense with dialogue; but writer-director Oliver Stone throws every technical gimmick at the screen to bring it to life.

And so it won Oscars for editing and cinematography; this is an audacious, hyperkinetic eyeful. The conspiracy narrative is well organised, though an interest in US politics is a must. Plus there a strong feel of the period. Kevin Costner gives a solid performance as  the District Attorney- surely channelling James Stewart! 

Any potential confusion due to the excess of minor characters is mitigated by casting familiar faces. Whether or not we accept the shooting of JFK went all the way to the Vice President, this is irresistable. Its message is to trust no-one. In response, the political media advised us not to trust Stone. But then, they would say that...

Superior sentimental romance in the tradition of the golden age of Hollywood studios. Saoirse Ronan gives her signature performance as a provincial Irish girl who moves to New York in the early 1950s, and prospers. Then she falls in love with a rather idealised Italian-American (Emory Cohen).

The complication is that when she returns to visit her mother, the left behind of her conservative hometown conspire to keep her there. Don't you do it! Fate also plays a hand when she meets a nice Irish boy. It's a slender, bittersweet rites-of-passage story adapted from a bestseller by Colm Tóibín.

This is hardly profound and there are no politics. Instead there is a surplus of relatable emotion. Plus the warm nostalgia for the period as the buttoned-up innocent leaves the austerity of her rural community among a wave of Irish immigration to the US on the cusp of an economic boom.

We get a little photogenic sadness and some gentle comedy led by Julie Walters as a meddlesome landlady. The approach may be too sweet for some, but it's that sort of picture: an upmarket Hallmark romance with a budget and a proper star; and the sort of tastefulness that gets Oscar nominations.

Violent prison drama which begins as a neorealist exposé of the poverty and futility of French penitentiaries, and then evolves into an origins story of an illiterate, malleable 19 year old French-Algerian (Tahar Rahim) who learns to survive in the shadows of this primitive, anarchic institution; and then prosper.

The novice gets an education which transforms him into a hoodlum able to control crime on the outside. And a new gang of Arab convicts coalesce around him to challenge the Corsican drug trade. Director Jacques Audiard adopts a documentary approach, but with some style and many hallucinatory inserts.

While the film comments on the horrific penal environment and the experience of French ethnic minorities, it's Rahim's epic performance that dominates. Niels Arestrup is a convincing heavy as the head of the Corsican mafia on the inside. And in the neorealist tradition, Audiard uses real life convicts in support roles.

Eventually, the young offender emerges as a folkloric figure; both as a criminal leader of his immigrant people and a more mythic visionary; which surely represents the psychopathic potential which was in him from the start... This is one of the best prison films ever made, and a masterpiece of social realism. 

Spain is an ideal country to customise the post-millennial popularity of Nordic noir as they can draw on the dark and relatively recent history of fascism... But what to do about all that sunshine! This turns the problem into a virtue by setting the story in the alien, cheerless southern marshlands.

The colours are muted and the director (Alberto Rodríguez) shoots on gloomy days. With the flat, ominous landscape, the low, brooding sky auspiciously captured in ultra widescreen... plus the gloomy score; the atmosphere is the best part of this understated serial killer story set in the years after Franco.

Javier Gutiérrez and Raúl Arévalo create a nice contrast as the dour, laconic metropolitan cops who arrive in a poor, rural backwater to inquire into the deaths of local teenage girls... But the mismatched duo investigate each other too... because the divisions caused by 40 years of fascism are everywhere.

Maybe the plot could have better organised, but it's still a compelling- and grim- mystery. And anyway, most of the interest is in what lies beneath the surface. This is a nasty, pessimistic neo-noir with political implications which struck a nerve in its own country... and which has a way of lingering in the memory. 

Alan Clarke won a reputation as a director of violent, uncompromising television dramas. After his Play for Today original was shelved by the BBC, he and writer Roy Minton created an even more extreme version for cinemas. It is a sensational exposure of the British borstal system. These prisons for boys were actually shut down between the two editions.

A couple of tough offenders fight for the supremacy of their corner of the organisation; to be the 'daddy'. Ray Winstone is formidable as the new kid who takes over the block and there's a strong support cast of UK stalwarts. Mick Ford also makes a deep impression in a difficult role as a more thoughtful iconoclast who articulates most of the editorial content.

The borstal socialises the kids to conform with the prevailing culture; but the values they assimilate, are utterly insane. No one survives. The institution and the sentences are incidental to the true savagery of the experience; the prisoners brutalise each other. The rape and subsequent suicide of one of the more vulnerable boys is incredibly harrowing.

Though the reality was quite probably worse, certainly in regards to sexual abuse. The low budget actually enhances the feel of chilly brutality; all is grim, and hostile, and malign. And yet the episodic story is absolutely spellbinding, even before the shocking climax. This landmark cult classic is the best prison drama ever made in the UK... Maybe any country.

Influential High School comedy which spoofs the dumbed down rich kids of the Los Angeles suburbs. There is some satisfaction to be had from how faithful the narrative stays to Jane Austen's Emma. And there are similar weaknesses, like how far can we go to forgive its entitled, foolish protagonist?

Viewers with a switched on moral radar may find some of this repellant, but it mostly gets by on the charm of Alicia Silverstone's performance as Cher, the beautiful, hubristic airhead who can't help meddling in the affairs of others; until she experiences humility, and other life lessons. She also finds true love...

Though the romantic resolution is unsatisfactory; she's going to date her stepbrother? Yew... as if. And Cher is too manipulative to make her last minute change of heart credible. Among the support cast, Brittany Murphy stands out as the perky slacker the queen bee tries to makeover into a clone of herself.

There are the usual genre signifiers, with the teenage fashions (the elite dress like Sunset hookers on limitless credit), the jukebox soundtrack, the school class system; the delineation of tribal subcultures maps the territory for its many imitators. Much of this is astute, but Cher is too hard to like for a romcom.

The last- and least regarded- of the Day-Hudson comedies is also a change in direction. Pillow Talk (1959 ) and Lover Come Back (1961) are metropolitan romances which end in true love. This is a conservative, suburban sitcom about a happy marriage under the pressure of farcical complications.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson are a middle class, middle aged married couple. He drives a gas-guzzler and commutes to work (with Tony Randall). She runs the home, goes shopping and plays golf. They visit the country club together. What used to swing has settled into midlife contentment; they are squares.

Doris' wardrobe is frumpy. Rock is still buff, but receding. He is a hypochondriac who thinks he has weeks to live while she imagines this is a cover for an affair! Now, it's a time capsule and any enjoyment depends on tolerance of its gender politics: she's the dumb housewife and her husband makes the decisions.

So consequently he attempts to find her a new husband for after he dies. It's amusing, but not hilarious. The title sequence has Day singing a Bacharach and David beat number over some animation, which is cool. And most of what's worthwhile about this fun but unremarkable farce is the retro-60s vibe.

This sequel to Guy Ritchie's action-adventure Sherlock Holmes (2009), is marginally the better of the two. The Holmes-Watson combo has always been a resiliant formula and here they adapt pretty well to the Hollywood blockbuster. There is a lavish production with elaborate period detail and A list stars.

Robert Downey is debonaire and just a little camp as Sherlock Holmes, and Jude Law probably the most competent Dr. Watson ever. Crucially they share an abundance of screen chemistry. The consulting detective isn't exactly made-over into a superhero whose special skill is deduction. Though there's some of that...

But there is more brawling than deduction. This version of Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal duo must spend considerable time in the gym. The plot is uninspired, with little of the outré whimsy of the stories. Though the scriptwriters clearly know their way around the canon and even include some authentic dialogue.

Jared Harris stands out in the support cast as an excellent Professor Moriarty  But- as ever- it's the eternal alliance between the great detective and his ever loyal sidekick which makes this most worth seeing. Whatever situation or period they are coerced into, they endure; the most durable bromance in fiction.

Offbeat- and extraordinarily compelling- missing child thriller, with a gimmick that really pays off. When a teenage girl suddenly disappears, the father searches for her online through her activity on social media. So it takes place on a cinema screen which represents a computer screen.

And much of the investigation is in audio. John Cho plays a Chinese-American widower who realises his daughter is no longer the sweet musical prodigy of his memory after she stops taking his calls and vanishes. An extremely empathetic and hard working cop (Debra Messing) picks up the case.

And dad starts to unravel. While implausibility is a factor, as a work of suspense this is a triumph. Maybe that's because the news and social media footage is so authentic. The actual plot is just standard for the genre, but the screen activity is really well animated as the 24 hour news cycle takes up the story.

And dad gets a short lesson in what teenagers do online. There is dark satirical humour and an overdose of anxiety. The final twist is a minor disappointment... though anyone interested might rewatch, because there is another- more sensational- media story going on in the margins of the news sites!

Experimental absurdism from peak-period Werner Herzog. Naturally, this description will turn off many viewers, which is fair enough as this is a slow, psychedelic allegory rather than accessible arthouse. But like all his German films, it is unique, personal and eccentric. So, a must-see for hardcore fans of the director.

At face value this is a hallucinatory fantasy about an 18th century Bavarian village shocked by the sudden death of an artisan who takes the secret of their distinctive local glass to the grave. So how will the left behind survive without the formula? This is the basis for some visionary subtext on the end of society...

Famously, Herzog placed his actors under hypnosis to create an impression of group hysteria. This inevitably makes it feel soporific. But then, it's this which makes it so totally Herzog. The prog-rock soundtrack and far-out digressions of the voiceover also convey a pungent blast of mid-70s/late-hippie ambience...

Which isn't ever cool, but the reflections on a post-industrial apocalypse seem quite relevant now, when some (like anti-vaxxers) are turning away from science, and experts. It's an oddity, and I'm not sure I'd take my date to see Heart of Glass 2, but it's certainly a highlight in the career of a capricious maverick.

This is Michael Haneke's most accessible film because it is the least emotionally austere and intellectually aloof. And also because the thriller format generates suspense... But there's still some of his usual detachment and virtuosity.

It's an arthouse conundrum about a couple of bourgeois, middle aged parents- played by Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche- who lose the insulation of privilege when they receive videotapes which intrude into their personal privacy...

This prompts the husband to reluctantly exhume his own deep, suppressed past, while the director reflects on various issues including class and surveillance. Most significant is the allegorical subtext on the guilty legacy of French imperialism

While it plays out like a multi-layered, violent thriller, this is mostly a cerebral exercise. Some viewers are dismayed by the lack of a resolution- one of a few similarities with Blow-Up (1966)- but there's a clue in the long final shot. See IMDB for details...

*Note- a live animal is killed.

The pitch for this lesser Mann-Stewart western may as well have been, 'let's shoot yet another western, but set it in Alaska'- because it's just made up of standard genre situations, from cattle drive to gold rush. The duo collaborated on something similar- but better- a couple of year earlier with Bend of the River.

As usual with the Anthony Mann westerns, there's a rugged location shoot- though they only got as far north as Canada. James Stewart again plays a cynic with a past and an edge. He's the sort of surly individualist who often inhabits frontier melodrama, but at the darker, more mercenary end of the spectrum.

He's strictly looking after number one... until he isn't and finally accepts his responsibility to the community in time for the shootout. There's a capable cast of genre stalwarts in support, including Walter Brennan. Stewart gets to dally with a two contrasting female leads: Ruth Roman for glamour; Corinne Calvet for comedy.

But, there's not much here for either. The real spark come from the anti-hero's feud with a corrupt frontier politician played with odious false geniality by John McIntire. There's a decent script and it's well directed and if all else fails- though it never gets quite that bad- there's the gorgeous Technicolor photography.

While this is scrupulously faithful to the narrative of of John Steinbeck's classroom classic, its main weakness is to promote tastefulness ahead of the political content. There is far less socialism here than the still definitive 1939 version. But there is gorgeous colour photography shot in beautiful rural locations.

And Mark Isham's musical score takes authentic Americana and grinds it into down into muzak. The golden sunlight is heartbreakingly lovely and the period look is impressive, but you could show this to a roomful of schoolkids and probably have to field few inquiries about the misery of the rural poor in the depression.

Gary Sinise (also director/producer) as George yields the spotlight to John Malkovich's Lenny, the brain damaged giant who loves like a child, without understanding or limits. In their ill-fated nomadic quest for work and dignity, the eternal duo leave a trail of mayhem across the farmland of '30s California.

Ray Walston stands out in the support cast as a disabled odd jobber who feels the ominous encroachment of old age in a time of unregulated capitalism. The themes will always matter but this production seems much more motivated by period authenticity and the opportunity to portray a pair of literary legends.