Film Reviews by Steve

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?

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. 

Australian cult favourite which flickers erratically between bad taste (almost gross-out) comedy and sentimental, life-affirming melodrama. The former is more successful with some wit and a few big laughs, though it often appears uncomfortably like we are expected to mock these characters for being ignorant, low class trash.

When the mood gets darker, it seems the plot is merely hitting the standard beats of a feelgood Hollywood narrative arc. It's manipulative, contrived and a bit corny, but what the hell. It surely means well and there is some amusing satirical comedy. And it's carried by an iconic performance from Toni Collette in the title role.

Muriel begins as a dim bulb fantasist who obsessively plans for the Big Day but without much realism; not so much because she isn't conventionally pretty as she is a borderline psychopath with no self esteem. She packs her taped copy of Abba's Greatest Hits and leaves behind her unsophisticated provincial home and awful family.

Then in Sydney, after some comical misadventures and a few disappointments, she learns crucial life lessons and becomes a bit more normal. Writer-director PJ Hogan spins his own experiences into a conventional coming of age redemption story, though the Aussie locations and cultural observations make it feel more personal.

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.