Film Reviews by Steve

In 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed- and protested against- a ruffian flogging his horse... and then went insane. Béla Tarr supposes what happened to the horse. The worker continues to abuse him, but at length we observe that the whole life of this poor rural farmer and his wretched daughter is a monotonous, eternal misery

This is made in the director's usual auteur style, with the long, slow tracking shots in high contrast b&w, usually of banal chores. There is very little dialogue. The audio is a mix of repetitive ambient sounds, the ceaseless wind and the deep melancholy of a string quartet. It is meticulously crafted, intensely personal and weirdly beautiful.

Maybe it owes a debt to Andrei Tarkovsky, and certainly evokes Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot... nothing happens, six times. János Derzsi and Erika Bók as the suffering peasants are cast for their faces, scrutinising the sterile landscape for relief or diversion. While this is historic, it's also a premonition of the end of humanity.

And it's the final statement from an innovative film maker and a summation of his unique craft. Béla Tarr said he is describing the weight of human existence, and that is very palpable. It is an extreme experience, and clearly not for everyone. But for those tuned into his frequency, this is the great Hungarian's ultimate masterpiece.

Clever, twisty thriller which is the screen debut as director by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet. So we get the familiar rhythm of his dialogue and deeper investment in the psychological insights than is usual in a Hollywood suspense picture.

The performances are numb and impassive, which is typical of Mamet who mainly wants us to listen to a line reading of his script, and that makes it harder to care and the situations more remote. It never feels like this is anything other than a filmed stage play.

Lindsay Crouse plays a buttoned up psychotherapist who gets a fast lesson in the long con from a charismatic hustler (Joe Mantegna). This is one of those conspiracy plots that turn out to be a sort of trick played on the audience... and this is its best feature.

Mamet doesn't direct with much visual style and the mise en scène and photography are rudimentary. It's all about the intellectual seductiveness of the script craft. There's a faint impression of neo-noir pessimism. But really this could be done as well on the stage.

Brain exhausting fantasy which features the diffuse philosophical diversions of a young man... who may have died in a road accident. The entire film represents his last eight minutes of brain activity after the body dies while he dreams of encounters with diverse thinkers and oddballs, real or imaginary, searching for answers to all the big questions.

So it's like Richard Linklater's indie debut, Slacker (1990). Only the live action is digitally rotoscoped to give the footage the look of animation, which overlays the far out dialogue with a surface of dreamy/psychedelic/wavy weirdness. Which is freakishly mesmeric. So Bradley Wiggins as the fading link character is painted over via computer software.

This was incredibly time consuming. But even without the enhanced visual component, it's so much better than Slacker, with more interesting and cohesive theories/conspiracies. Some of the same actors return, but we also get Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke briefly reprising their roles from Before Sunrise (1995), which gives it a touch of welcome class.

Linklater obviously expects his audience to switch on and concentrate; this is hundred minutes of dense, difficult dialogue. It makes demands... and flopped at the box office. But this cartoon version of the anxieties and daydreams of generation x in Austin, Texas explores a deeper, sadder consciousness, while the rotoscoping turns it into something new.

The title obviously refers to the first of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, A Study in Scarlet... but there is zero terror on show. It's a mid budget adventure which quite reasonably wonders what might have happened if the great detective had ever investigated the Whitechapel murders. Well, Holmes was contemporary with Jack the Ripper...

The intriguing premise isn't explored with much creativity. This is mid-budget, studio staged Victoriana, full of fog and period atmos, but short on thrills and virtuoso acts of deduction; director James Hill is more reliable than inspired. The narrative is commonplace, and there's a really odd music score which might be better suited to a Harry Palmer film.

The merit of any Sherlock Holmes story primarily rests on the quality of its intrepid twosome. John Neville is a decent Holmes though lacks charisma and is stiffed with lame deductions. But Donald Houston is fun as Dr. Watson, not quite a blundering fool, yet still comical... and loyal and bullish. And there are some authentic delights in the support cast...

Robert Morley is a dream come true as Mycroft! You can almost smell the paint on the sets, but they're hidden in the pea-soupers of 19th century London or the smoke from gentlemen's cigars, as cheerful East End sex workers sing the classics of the Victorian music hall in the boozer, or are murdered. It's pure make-believe, but the old formula still sparks.

Clever arthouse parable faithfully adapted from Paul Auster's 1990 modernist novel, which is unapologetically highbrow, but still accessible. This is Philip Haas' debut as director and he exclusively made films from the sort of modern classics that win literary prizes; it's a shame there wasn't much of an audience for them.

It features James Spader's signature performance in a showcase role as a loud, unsophisticated card shark who is bankrolled by a more level headed stalwart (Mandy Patinkin) in a high-stakes poker game with a pair of eccentric millionaires (Charles Durning and Joel Gray). And that's already an intriguingly offbeat cast.

When the challengers recklessly lose, they agree to pay off the debt by building a huge, pointless wall in the grounds of the wealthy duo's mansion with the stones from a medieval castle- while the winners go to Europe. And we also get M. Emmet Walsh as the obsequious/insidious go-between who manages the futile project.

So it's a surreal allegory for the iniquities of capitalism... deepened by the unique imagination of the author and the eerie, dreamlike ambience of Haas' staging until it generates a considerable emotional charge. And we may begin to empathise with the two schmucks. It's a head movie, but more involving than that implies.

Surely if anyone remembers this at all, it's for the gimmicky 30 second 'werewolf break' in which the audience is encouraged to identify which of the six weekend guests at the country estate of a big game hunter is a shapeshifting canine. Though it would have to be a guess as really there's no logical means of working this out...

It blends plot features from The Most Dangerous Game (1932) with And Then There Were None (1945). But with a werewolf... which is disappointingly played by a large dog. It's a low budget thriller, and the horror barely registers. There is some curiosity- for 1974- in the hunter being portrayed by a black actor (Calvin Lockhart).

This presumably explains why the music score is the sort of urban funk more typical of US blaxploitation, even though this is shot at a mansion in Surrey. The concept of the werewolf hunt is viable, except the director usually made tv costume dramas and doesn't create any suspense or big fright moments and the script is dull.

The last horror ever from Amicus studio is a disappointment. There's no atmosphere, it's over-lit and the cast can't generate any intrigue or danger from their underdeveloped roles. Peter Cushing- as a Swedish expert in lycanthropy- gives the worst performance of a 60 year career. I didn't even guess right during the werewolf break.

This deluxe French adaptation of one of DH Lawrence's alternate versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover is a big deal in its home country where it won five César awards, including for Best Film, with a particularly well deserved accolade for Marina Hands in the once infamous title role.

She dominates with a heartfelt portrayal, from her elevated status within the class system of rural Britain after WWI to an impression of her eventual sexual and social liberation. There's impassive support from Jean-Louis Coulloc'h as a gamekeeper more in harmony with nature.

These are exposing roles, including the lengthy scenes of nudity. And there's a superior production, shot in central France which adequately represents Edwardian Nottinghamshire. The photography, costumes and set design are immersive. But this isn't shallow heritage cinema.

The frame is heavy with skilfully evoked detail of the environment, the human heart and the emancipation of the Edwardian lady. Director Pascale Ferran tells the long, leisurely, bucolic tale with considerable feel for the visual narrative. This is simply the best of Lawrence on screen.

It's natural for new directors to explore their influences. On the disc extras Scott McGehee and David Siegel acknowledge a debt to '60s Japanese sci-fi and the script actually lifts a long speech from Double Indemnity (1944). The story is classic noir, with a wealthy man accused of murder who plots the fiery death of a lookalike, then disappears...

So it's arthouse but also draws on old Hollywood. The patsy (Dennis Haybert) is pulled out of the car wreckage with amnesia. As he recovers, the plastic surgeon and psychoanalyst try to modify him into the person they presume he is- which is the murderer (Michael Harris). Which is a doozy of a plot twist, but once again, has been done before.

What's new is the gimmick of casting black and white actors as the two similar looking men. This opens up some subtext about race, but really doesn't squeeze the possibilities all that hard. It's mainly a curiosity, which draws the ambience into the zone of modernist writers, most ostentatiously like Paul Auster. Maybe this sounds pretentious...

But for genre enthusiasts, it's a whole lot of fun. Of course, it's in b&w, but more like '60s arthouse sci-fi/horror than classic noir; there's a buzzy, shadowless pallor which evokes those films which represent the antiseptic whiteness of hospitals as sinister, like Eyes Without a Face (1960). It's a low budget paranoia thriller with a loyal cult following.

Wild, fanciful but ultra-tense psycho-drama from a novel by Georges Simenon, who is probably responsible for the weird right wing subtext about the concept of a Nietzschian Übermensch! Plus the author was no stranger to his own extreme marital disharmony....

Well anyway, it's a crime thriller. Jean-Pierre Darroussin stars as a bad tempered middle aged wage slave stuck in a rut who intuits his upwardly mobile, professional wife (Carole Bouquet) is having an affair and feels her antagonism is enfeebling his masculinity.

On a long drive across country he asserts his macho individualism by drinking whisky like a dipsomaniac... until she decides to take the train... and then disappears. Ultimately the antagonistic husband redeems himself via a coincidence so massive, it's staggering!

What we're here for is the awesome final twist which gives the unhappy couple another last chance, which works so well because director Cédric Kahn unravels it with some subtlety. Warning- don't turn this into a drinking game, as you'll need a stomach pump.

This is the second of seven anthology horror films made by Amicus between 1965-74, and the first to adapt the stories of sci-fi/horror legend Robert Bloch. However they don't choose a strong selection from his vast bibliography. They are all slight variations on a classic scenario, but not as good as the first time around.

So when Beverly Adams cuts in on her ditzy flatmate's dinner date with a film producer, I was expecting the ironic twist to be that the toxic alpha males of the studio system are cannibals who intend to dine on the unlucky starlet, whoever she is. But the reveal is... disappointing. And that's the best of the four weird tales.

A couple of other stories are decent, including Michael Bryant as a sociopath tormented by the diabolical cat left by his dead uncle. (Maurice Denham) The showpiece is Peter Cushing and Jack Palance as collectors quarrelling over Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts. The only dud has John Stander playing a possessive piano...

It's a typical Amicus horror omnibus, offering a few days work to many stalwart actors during the decline of the UK film industry. And they make it fun. But the standout is the crazy/ridiculous frame story, not because it's original, but mainly for the comical, scenery chewing performance by Burgess Meredith as the *spoiler*!

If this political drama has been Hollywoodised, then maybe that's understandable as the real events were so horrifying. It’s the true story of one man’s response to the murder of 500000+ Tutsis by the Hutu uprising during the Rwandan civil war. Plus there’s a history lesson and some editorial content.

Don Cheadle is outstanding as a hotel manager who saves over a thousand Tutsis by giving sanctuary within the luxury rooms usually occupied by western visitors. The accuracy has been challenged, but the film brought the genocide to the attention of many who may not follow international news.

It conveys the terror of the barbarity mostly from a distance. But then an ultra-realistic approach might not attract a mainstream audience. Purely as a drama, perhaps there is an excess of cliffhangers and the musical score becomes too intrusive. There isn't much political detail; this is the story of a hero.

However it does make a case for humanitarian intervention and justifies the support of refugees from conflict zones, which are virtues at risk of being lost. It's a persuasive and angry polemic... an inspirational and humbling account of an act of moral defiance which indicts us all for our indifference.

So-so big screen sitcom which might have been better done as a tv series, as these things normally are. All the characters are comedy stalwarts, with Ben Stiller as a neurotic Jewish father who goes on the road to find his real parents, having been adopted at birth.

So he takes along his shrewish wife (Patricia Arquette), a sexy, available research student (Téa Leoni) and his new baby boy... but the adoption agency has its data scrambled so they encounter various diverse dead ends, leading to unsubtle, door-slamming farce.

Naturally, the frantic, sexually frustrated dad bumps into the psych-grad in her lingerie... still... she is pretty hot. The entourage even picks up some gay cops. The cast is so stoked, it seems possible the camera will pull back and reveal we're watching am-dram...

The old-time stars are best on show, with George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore as the highly strung adopters and especially Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin as the ultra-liberal biological parents. But if ever it pushed boundaries, now it's only the stereotypes which may offend.

Among the best of a small wave of films influenced by Richard Linklater's Before trilogy- he gets a 'thank you' in the credits. So there's a walking conversation set in a touristic location, in this case Los Angeles, artfully photographed in b&w.

It's an odd couple/will they-won't they encounter between 20-something slackers. Scoot McNairy plays a jilted wannabe writer and Sara Simmonds is a spiky actor for whom the call never came, and so considering a return to Austin, Texas.

They are brought together by a dating site, to walk/talk in the streets of LA so they are not alone at midnight on New Year. First impressions are unfavourable, but we slowly begin to care, and the unstarry actors have some scruffy charisma.

There's more plot than the 'Before' films, and it's less philosophical. This couple is a little sleazy. It's a funny, sweet and sour indie date picture, with poetic observations on urban loneliness, the fear of missing out, and the LA dream going cold.

Arthouse genre mashup which is simultaneously horrific and hallucinogenic: it’s a head-movie; a high-school romance; a black comedy and primarily, a neo-noir. As if the Hardy Boys strolled off the page into an alternate fiction of psychedelic criminal grotesques. Which feels uneasy, rather than pure escapism.

It exposed the multiplexes to the idiosyncratic vision of David Lynch, which is a fantasy of small town America, a zone of conflicting juxtapositions: between the ideal and the dystopian; the facade and the concealed truth; the ultra-normal and the theatrical; the sentimental and the brutal. The Lynchian world.

The approach is self-referential. The performances are brave, but cartoonish. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern play teenagers who investigate a mystery luring them into Dennis Hopper's criminal insanity and Isabella Rossellini's masochism. Though it's uneven and after the introductions, the story loses momentum.

So we find diversion in the auteurism. The dreamy atmosphere. The famous tracking shots. There are antecedents in the studio era, including The Night of the Hunter (1955) and The Naked Kiss (1964), but currently the signature belongs to David Lynch. His personal style and ironic tone now sustains a lasting cult.

*there is a scene featuring an extreme sexual assault.

This adaptation of Edith Wharton's candidate for the great American novel may seem a huge diversion for the director of Goodfellas (1990). Yet it's another New York story about the etiquette of an influential clique who transfer their questionable values intact from Europe; in this case England rather than Sicily. Except anyone who breaks the code in late 19th century Manhattan will be ruthlessly cut out of society rather than dumped in the East River.

Presumably these similarities drew Martin Scorsese to the book. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as an eligible bachelor inside the elite who intends to marry a pure, wealthy blue-blood (Winona Ryder) but is sidetracked by the return from Paris of her cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer) a beautiful Countess separated from an aristocratic husband. But the story is really about what goes on beneath the surface, the conspiracies and unwritten rules that stabilise the class system.

So long extracts from the novel are read out by Joanne Woodward, who has the largest speaking part in the film. Some will say this is not cinematic, though it's the epigrams and sustained ironic tone which most immerses the audience into the morality- and hypocrisy- of the period. Eventually, the devious manipulations briefly expose the New World elite as monsters, but then the surface closes over again as they bury their normal desires in conformity.

There is a really beautiful and lavish production design with the Oscar winning costumes a standout. The lead performances are effective though there is more to relish in the many stalwart Brits in the support cast. Maybe the visual style is at times too flashy for a costume drama and like many of Marty's films, it sprawls into epic proportions. There's a lot of conversation, but the dialogue is full of intrigue. It's not typical, but it's my favourite Scorsese picture.