Film Reviews by Steve

The best sci-fi film ever made... Ridley Scott's fusion of Philip K. Dick and Metropolis (1927) is a visual/emotional/ intellectual triumph. No one now will ever create a better non-CGI futureworld on screen. And as well as the astonishing visuals, there is a story of thrilling moral complexity.

Harrison Ford plays the laconic, hardboiled gumshoe who must hunt down and 'retire' four androids... while his mission unexpectedly turns into an investigation into himself. On release it was the neo-noir atmos. and the state of the art production design which was so captivating. 

Plus Rutger Hauer's legendary oration in the rain. Now the the AI paranoia is in focus, and the urban dystopia of a used up/winding down planet. Arguably this is where tech-noir begins and that remains its core appeal, with the genre pessimism, set in a retro-futuristic Los Angeles...

While super wealthy tech bros live aloof from the chaos in skyscrapers! There is action but it's more of a head movie than cyberpunk, made accessible via Ford's beat-up charisma and Vangelis' glistening electronic score. Every version is worth seeing, but the Final Cut (2007) is definitive.

For his debut feature, Ridley Scott says he was influenced by Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), which is very evident, particularly the interiors. It's a similarly beautiful period drama but tells a much more compelling story which leaves the impression of a tall tale told in a Victorian gentlemen's club, with its themes of manly pursuits....

Though it's taken from an account by Joseph Conrad, loosely based on real life events. Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel play high ranking soldiers in Napoleon's army who for two decades fight a series of duels over spurious provocations, mainly driven by the more bumptious officer- Keitel- with a near infinite capacity to be offended. 

There is no etiquette for the more equitable -Carradine- to honourably decline! Maybe there's a problem apparent here, as neither of the two US actors is an obvious pick as a French Hussar, but the US production company insisted. It's a shame a couple of Frenchmen could not be found... Still, their sword fighting skills are exemplary,

And there's an impressive support cast of British thespians.The story leaves an impression of how the warrior and the pacifist must always live by the rules of the aggressor, which is a human tragedy. And with the gorgeous photography, the set design and costumes and the exquisite locations, this is such a knockout film to look at.

An opening title informs us the year is 1920, and yet this reflects the sort of feudalism which stretches back to the middle ages. Which is presumably a political position taken by Zhang Yimou, and a criticism of Chinese history which might have appealed to the Communist Party...

Instead, they banned it because they felt the unsympathetic patriarch might be assumed to represent the present day government! Which is crazy! Anyway, the malign elder (Wei Li) runs a successful dying business and purchases a beautiful young wife (Gong Li) to provide an heir.

Only he is cruel, and drives her into the arms of his nephew (Baotian Li). So who actually is the father of her little boy? This is romantic melodrama- with supernatural implications- and reminiscent of the postwar cinema of Kenji Mizoguchi... Except for the utterly gorgeous colour process.

Zhang Yimou was a graduate in cinematography and has an artistic feel for composition, plus the spectacular use of light and filters. While this will appeal to fans of melodrama or with an interest in Chinese social history, it's really the exquisite photography* which makes it a heartbreaker.

*please note the current dvd release looks like a transfer from a video cassette cropped for tv use. Plus the sound is poor. All Zhang's early films are overdue restoration and bluray release.

As much an upgrade as a sequel. Mel Gibson returns as the road warrior who patrols the lawless, dystopian highways of the post-apocalypse Australian outback. It adapts a standard western scenario, with Max assisting some broadly peaceful survivors against a feral tribe of badass killers in customised stock cars.

That's if the plot matters. This is more about the action and state of the art stunts. The final third is given over to a cartoonish, Wacky Races style car chase. Maybe this now looks dated, but that's some of the appeal. It hasn't the make-do Ozploitation vibe of Mad Max (1979) as there is money on board from Warner Brothers....

But it still feels distinctively Australian because of the desert locations and eccentric vernacular. The rock score is by Brian May, but it turns out he's an Aussie. The costumes today seem more glam than punk, though Gibson is reasonably iconic in his leathers, as a sort-of mythic man with no name. But called Max...

Most of the violence of the original has been toned down, though the worst is regrettably at the expense of women. Maybe the lack of a decent story is a drag for those not much into grindhouse. This is bubblegum escapism mainly aimed at blokes who like motors, and as far from Hanging Rock as is conceivable.

This fictionalised biopic of Billy the Kid is buffeted between two contrasting influences. It comes at the end of the Hollywood studio system which is evident in the old fashioned country ballad which plays over the opening titles. But there are also indications of the revisionist US westerns to come.

Arthur Penn's debut feature gives us premonitions of the new Hollywood of the '60s, including a brief slo-mo of an outlaw's death. And while the actors are not grizzled, neither do they iron their shirts like Randolph Scott. Plus there's one grotesque closeup that might be from a Spaghetti Western...

James Dean was due to star when he died and it's easy to place this in the mixed-up-teens wave of the '50s; the legendary gunman was killed aged 21. He's played by Paul Newman, aged 33, who is raw but there's curiosity in his awkward method approach. And those eyes make an impact, even in b&w.

It's ultimately just another western about the Lincoln County War- from Gore Vidal's 1955 tv play. There is too much idiotic horseplay and too little iconography or style; while it may have looked cutting edge in '58, its reputation doesn't compare well to what Sergio Leone was soon to do with the genre.

This photogenic WWII biopic takes some time getting Lucie Aubrac into focus, and longer to fully capture the attention. The name belongs to a member of the French Resistance in Lyon and the main events build to her role in rescuing her husband- one of their leaders- from the Gestapo.

And the climax is thrilling. But this was made with Lucie Aubrac's blessing and it suffers from being more of a soft focus hagiography of a hero, rather than digging up some real history. It looks lovely and is sometimes spectacular with its widescreen pictorial of France under occupation. And it is beautifully lit...

But there isn't much about the political schisms within the Partisans, which is crucial to her legacy. Realism is not a priority and at times it feels like it might have been made for Hallmark. The support cast is bloodless and Daniel Auteuil makes little impact as the husband. The Nazi's are 2D sadistic goons...

Or worse... idiots. Still, Carole Bouquet is effective in the title role and the occupation is such an extraordinary time of incredible heroism and heartbreaking betrayal. Eventually it engages, with the escape and her astonishing sangfroid. But it leaves an impression that her courage really deserves a better film.

There's an old ruse that if asked in an interview what is your main weakness, you reply 'I care too much'. Well for the telephone operator in an emergency call centre in this impressive Danish thriller, that flaw is 4real! The harder he tries to help, the further he bends the guidelines, the deeper the hole he's in... And he won't stop digging!

It's a one man show which might easily be done on the radio. Jakob Cedergren plays the demoted police officer who speaks at length to a traumatised mother who appears to have been kidnapped by her violent ex-husband, leaving their two young children unsupervised. The cop has phone-tracking and his law enforcement skills to guide him.

We hear voice actors on the other phones, but Cedergren must absorb our onscreen attention. And this is incredibly suspenseful as the emergency situation gets ever more complex. And the late final twist is devastating, even if- for me at least- it's ultimately disappointing the writers draw on far right conspiracy theories about two tier policing.

But there are other insights, including how impossible is the job and how dedicated and put-upon are the staff. And who doesn't panic over the lack of privacy!? Despite the film being set entirely within two rooms, there's a profound impression of the iniquities of urban life and the horror which settles on those who must deal with the consequences.

This is the John Hughes picture which broke out of the multiplexes to more widely enter the culture. It's another teenage comedy, but has become a very quotable cult film for political conservatives. Ferris is a sociopathic High School senior who bullies his depressed best pal into wrecking his dad's limited issue Ferrari, under the premise of living his 'best possible day'.

Matthew Broderick stars as the ultimate '80s bad guy- a rich kid easily as smug and solipsistic as Michael Douglas in Wall Street (1987). Cheer as Ferris owns the liberal losers, the joyless drones who run public services... and dupes his idiot parents, who are too warmhearted to be worthy of respect. So Ferris can mime to Twist and Shout and threaten working stiffs with the sack.

Others can clear up the mess. As usual with high school comedies, the actors are a decade too old- except 18 year old Mia Sara who can't make much of her underwritten girlfriend role. Neither can Alan Ruch as the best friend. So most of the interest settles on Broderick vs. Jeffrey Jones' cartoonish portrayal of the killjoy who wants put the charismatic maverick in detention.

Which surely anticipates the broader slapstick of Hughes' 1990 smash hit, Home Alone. We see plenty of the tourist sights of Chicago, which Ferris exploits as if his own personal playground. This is a divisive film but broadly entertaining with the usual soundtrack of cool indie records. In the sequel, Bueller goes to college and starts up the first US branch of the Bullingdon Club.

Now this looks like fan fiction! Anyone watching Tom Stoppard's adaptation of his prodigiously clever stage play needs to come prepared. Some pre-knowledge of William Shakespeare's Hamlet is essential, even if just reading a synopsis. But the more immersed the viewer is in the immortal tragedy, the deeper the experience.

It's a mashup of Elizabethan tragedy and theatre of the absurd. The two incidental characters from Hamlet are the heroes of this story, occasionally becoming part of the main play, but more usually killing time, wondering who they are and why they have been summoned to Elsinore. While also playing whimsical games...

Or are the duo even R&G at all? They are not sure... and Hamlet doesn't recognise them. I like to imagine they are the eternal tramps from Waiting for Godot, centuries before they ever get to that country road, as imposters in the court of Denmark. Anyone who appreciates Shakespeare, and Beckett, should find this a lot of fun.

And there's a quality cast, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in the title roles and Richard Dreyfuss maybe even stealing the picture as the leader of the players. The set design and Stoppard's own direction are fine, but this is mainly a faithful adaptation of a stage classic; and the best chance most of us will ever have of seeing it.

This is one of those Hollywood romances that feature mental illnesses which are photogenic and tasteful and responsive to the needs of the plot. Which is to say it's fake, and maybe even offensive to those who suffer from such conditions... However, if you accept the rules of screen love affairs, then this is charming, and optimistic and blessed with likeable star performances. 

Mary Stuart Masterson portrays a teenage schizophrenic with a fondness for the tactile application of oil on canvas in a modernist style. This is mostly seen in a montage set to I'm Gonna Be 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. While irascible carers come and go, the possibility of love for her put-upon brother- a hunky, kindly mechanic played by Aidan Quinn- is passing him by.

What they need is a miracle! And that comes in the guise of Johnny Depp as a benevolent oddball whose life is a sort of visual tribute to the legendary comedians of the 1920s, mainly Chaplin and Keaton. This is from a period across the 1990s when Depp became a major star for several borderline magical performances outside the range of every other actor in Hollywood.

The cast are all appealing enough to carry the impossible premise.  But JD lifts it to another level, with his gift for making the extraordinary so relatable. And his virtuoso routine drawn from the silent comics is adorable. Maybe an eccentric Buster Keaton impersonator and a psychotic abstract impressionist don't have a realistic shot at happiness. But that's for the sequel...

Harrowing melodrama loosely based on the turbulent life of 1930s Hollywood starlet, Frances Farmer. This is most memorable for Jessica Lange's colossal portrayal of her epic story arc from small town nonconformist- to Paramount screen beauty- to victim of barbaric psychiatric institutions.

This isn't an objective account; it strips the real life of its politics, particularly how much of the ill treatment was due to her communism. And it certainly blanks out the fascist ideology behind the use of lobotomies. This concentrates more on Frances' toxic relationship with her ultra-conservative mother.

And she's straight out of American Gothic. Kim Stanley's scenes with the star have massive dramatic impact, but drift off into the mythic. Still, they demonstrate how much indoctrination and grotesque cruelty it takes to turn a liberal freethinker into a cookie-cutter patriotic conformist.

And they expose the horrifying revenge taken on those who don't submit. There's some interest in the early scenes set in the old Hollywood- presumably sanitised. But there are few famous names aside from Clifford Odets (Jeffrey DeMunn). The reason to watch is Lange's monumental star performance.

As a biopic of a music legend this is more for bebop aficionados than the casual viewer, though the dense weft of social history may interest both. This is the short life of Charlie 'Bird' Parker (1920-55) the saxophonist who revolutionised the sound of jazz, while destroying himself with booze and heroin.

Perhaps suitably for such a modernist way of playing, the script breaks up the timeline and drops in and out of the life, picking up the threads of romance, race, addiction and of course, the jazz. This only covers the peak years in any depth and there isn't much insight into Bird's own influences.

But we do hear plenty of the music. Parker's saxophone is isolated from historic- sometimes rare- recordings, and mixed into a new band assembled by director/fan Clint Eastwood, to better utilise modern stereo. So it's been polished but still offers an insight into why he's so revered and enduring. 

Forest Whitaker lacks charisma, but mimes effectively in some gorgeous recreations of '50s jazz clubs. For an outsider, the tragedy is the loss of such a cool scene to rock & roll, as much as Bird's ruined life. It's the period feel and the cool urban atmos- as well as the music- that make this worth seeing.

Erratic social realism which starts out as if it's going to be neo-noir then evolves into an offbeat melodrama about the ironies of fate. The earlier scenes are better, with a sullen ex-jailbird (Johannes Krisch) filling in as strong-arm at a brothel in Vienna who intends to rob a bank and then vanish with one of the prostitutes.

Irina Potapenko is appealing as the Ukrainian illegal immigrant who gets involved in the idiotic scheme, rather than spend a lifetime paying back fees to the scumbag who exploits her. When the plan goes awry- as it must- the deadbeat hired muscle hides out on a farm with his decrepit and equally morose elderly father.

The dramatic irony kicks in when the bank robber gets pregnant the wife (Ursula Strauss) of the infertile cop who thwarts the robbery! Okay that's a crazy story, but there's interest in the sympathetic portrayal of these hopeless small time stooges, especially the trafficked sex worker whose existence is a living hell.

Writer-director Götz Spielmann contributes some felicitous visual detail and keeps the excesses of the oddball plot as naturalistic as possible while exploring the thematic content. And gratifyingly, there's no music score telling us what to feel. Though the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film is a stretch!

Slight but clever experiment from Woody Allen and his technical crew- particular credit is due to cinematographer Gordon Willis. Leonard Zelig seeks to conform so absolutely that he takes on the physical characteristics of whoever is near him. It's a satire on celebrity and the dangers of wholesale public compliance.

Zelig (Allen) becomes briefly famous as the human chameleon, a novelty of the roaring '20s. Mia Farrow plays the nerdy psychiatrist seeking to restore his individuality. Eventually his life takes a darker turn when the need for anonymity among the acquiescent masses leads him to Nazi Germany in the '30s.

There is a dusting of funny gags, but this is more philosophical than hilarious. It scores with the visual effects; Woody and Mia are inserted into old photographs and newsreel of famous people like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Randolph Hurst. New scenes of are aged to blend into the historical b&w footage.

It feels like a long, ingenious sketch. The scene where Zelig spots his analyst in the crowd at Munich while onstage with Adolf Hitler, is stunning. No CGI back then! As a bonus there is a handful of gimmicky songs recorded in the swing style of the jazz age, composed by Dick Hyman. My favourite: Doin' the Chameleon.

Bittersweet anthology of tales rich in the usual idiosyncratic quirkiness of writer-director Jim Jarmusch. It feels like an exercise from a drama workshop with the quintet of short films about taxi rides in five very different cities at night: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki.

The locations were mostly chosen so Jarmusch could reconnect with past collaborators. And Helsinki, well so he could make an offbeat short in the style of Aki Kaurismäki; the best performance on show is from the legendary Finnish director's stalwart leading actor, Matti Pellonpää.

The diverse stories are about the nocturnal meetings of strangers, and the moods shift effectively between comedy and tragedy. Presumably Roberto Benigni improvised most of his bawdy monologue delivered to a dead priest... There's an alien eye view of the foibles of mankind.

And also the often overlooked magic of living on the surface of a rock spinning though space. The soundtrack by Tom Waits is another reason to visit, but again, is hardly mainstream. This is an unorthodox arthouse treat for Jarmusch fans, but unlikely to crossover beyond the cult.