Film Reviews by Steve

What everyone seems to know about this low budget horror is that Peter Cushing named it his worst film... though he is too forgiving of The Devil's Men (1976). Maybe it wasn't a happy shoot, but actually this is reasonable hokum. It's not made by Hammer, but is in that style with the decent production design and photography.

And there's Cushing, not as might be expected playing the entomologist who means to create a mate for a female blood sucking killer moth- which transforms into a human, posing as his sexy daughter. This time, Robert Flemying is on mad scientist duty and Cushing is the pugnacious investigator of the blood-beast's corpses.

Wanda Ventham does her best as the metamorphic were-moth but cult favourite Vanessa Howard is wasted in an insipid romantic role. Obviously this is standard B horror schlock, but still fun with plenty of murky Victorian atmosphere and occult dread. And while the story is crazy and poorly told, the dialogue is quite relishable.

Mostly the budget is hidden in the shadows, until finally the awful human moth must be revealed! Well, this is B horror... though way ahead of most poverty row monster pictures, mainly due to the cast and the gothic atmos. And it delivers a few pleasurable chills, before the time comes to explain what the hell is going on!

Probably the masterpiece of the new Hollywood cinema of the 1970s. It features Robert De Niro's signature performance as a New York taxi driver gone psycho due to the crime and immoral scum on the streets. It captures something intuitive about urban America in crisis, after Watergate and Vietnam and adrift in a deep economic winter...

And it reflects the brittle state of mind of screenwriter Paul Schrader. Travis Bickle is an isolated war vet who drives his yellow metal box through the mean streets at night while the sins of the metropolitan trash unspool in the reflected neon of his windscreen. Until he can't take it anymore. Though there is no catharsis through violence...

Travis is irredeemable, despite the inspired final twist... But he makes a fascinating point of view for this journey through an urban inferno. Some details no longer stand up: the sleazy tv noir sax of the taxi driver theme was a cliché even then; and while Jody Foster is astonishing, her role as a 12 year old hooker now seems inexcusably neutral.

Still, it introduced De Niro as a new kind of method-plus star. And though the bigotry and stupidity of the streets is hard to endure, that's really the point! There's the poetic pessimism of neo-noir, but looks more like social realism. The grainy/dirty/lurid photography is a strength, so 4k isn't much of a bonus. It's my pick of Martin Scorsese films.

Simply gorgeous remake of Ernst Lubitsch's precode heartbreaker, Broken Lullaby. That was released in 1932, the golden age of romantic melodrama, yet François Ozon's version is just as good, and its b&w photography, even more beautiful. The two lead performances capture all the glamour of the early studio era.

And that's Pierre Niney as a French soldier who kills a German in the trenches at the end of WWI and is driven to confess and seek forgiveness from the dead man's family, in particular his sad but lovely fiancée, played by Paula Beer. They share an exquisite chemistry, although their complex emotions remain unspoken.

Meanwhile, his evasions bring solace to the grieving parents. Much of the romance is insinuated by the stars, and there is even a subtle gay subtext discernible in the imaginary flashbacks. It is directed by Ozon with a sensitivity and creativity which is too little encountered, and then deepened by the elegant piano score.

The production design evokes the period with supreme taste.... Yes, it's slow, but all the better for it. This is a supremely well crafted, sentimental fantasy, a kind of cinema which hardly exists any more and is sure to appeal to melodrama aficionados as well as anyone one who has ever been moved by unrequited love.

The best of a trilogy of films by Ken Loach in the late 1990s made outside the UK and Ireland- though he doesn't stray from his usual themes. It's a condemnation of the exploitation of Hispanic workers in Los Angeles; based on a real life fight for unionisation rights by office cleaners.

And it's about the experiences of the Central American diaspora, who do the low paid jobs no one else wants in the land of the free. Loach and writer Paul Laverty also rebuke the iniquities of corporate corruption and US healthcare. And weirdly, there's a scene satirising Hollywood liberals!

The move to LA gives Loach a palpable boost, with the bright sunshine and a lively cast of mostly amateur Mexican actors, led by Pilar Padilla as a feisty illegal immigrant not afraid to push back. And there's some effective humour too, which may indicate the use of improv....

We get real-deal star charisma from Adrien Brody as a union leader; one of only three actors in Loach films to go on to Oscars for Best Actor*! Sure, it's agitprop on behalf of the unions, suitable for open day teaching sessions. But it pushes the right buttons, and with considerable impact.

*Frances McDormand in Hidden Agenda (1990) and Cillian Murphy in The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006).

Many film makers draw on their own education for inspiration... but no one else has been able to tell a story as historically significant... This is a detailed, sensitive reflection on Louis Malle's experiences in a French Catholic boarding school for boys in 1944, during the German occupation.

Which is already intriguing... Yet this is mainly context for a real life scenario in which the school is used to hide Jewish children from the Nazis. Raphaël Fejto plays one of these... a loner who is bullied but develops a close friendship with one boy (Gaspard Manesse, in a fine juvenile cast).

Eventually the strategy attracts the attention of the Gestapo, which is the deep emotional driver of the story. But Malle also explores the condition of male puberty, the impact of parental separation on child development, and key religious motivators like guilt and shame and denial.

The real life headteacher was a proper war hero. The kids were exposed to horrific, life defining events. But for the Jewish boys, so much worse. This is an overwhelming heartbreaker which argues for tolerance and humanitarianism; and is the final triumph of a great director.

Another visit to the strangeness of Aki Kaurismäki's Helsinki. This is a companion to his comedy-drama, The Man Without a Past (2002). Most significantly they both draw on classic Hollywood noir. Anyone who has seen Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949) is going to notice similarities.

The persona of the melancholy fall guy (Janne Hyytiäinen) who works as a security guard is so reminiscent of Burt Lancaster in his early crime melodramas. He's a kind of no-luck washout set up by a femme fatale (Maria Järvenhelmi) on behalf of some pragmatic Russian gangsters.

But of course this is Kaurismäki so it takes place within his usual idiosyncrasies- the minimalist acting, the incongruity, the ordinariness. There are recurring scenes carried over from The Man Without a Past: like the awkward dinner date, the tethered dog, the trio of violent thugs...

Only the mood is darker and sadder. The small, lonely lives are not redeemed and there are no consequences for the guilty. The comedy is muted... The director subverts the style, but this has all the standard pessimism of studio age noir. 

Hal Hartley's feature debut is proper independent cinema, self financed rather than rolled out by the subsidiary of a major. It feels like a superior graduate picture. It's a comedy without laughs, but the script is witty and the performances are likeable. The dayglo cinematography is ideal for this kind of hyper-irony.

This inevitably gets labelled 'quirky'; it's a Long Island romance between a paroled murderer and a teenage kook who is waiting for the bomb to fall, which mainly satirises small town life. It conveys the new ironic tone in '80s US cinema borrowed from David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch before it got tiresome in the '90s.

So the understated performances are about ironic detachment. The two leads are also on debut, with Robert John Burke as a saturnine mechanic who returns to his hometown after a long spell inside and picks up with a schoolgirl/model, played by Adrienne Shelly. In 1989 she was an instant pinup for cool indie kids...

While everyone else went for Melanie Griffith. Any response will depend on how much whimsy can be tolerated. But this is decent quality stuff and surprisingly entertaining because very little is happening. Nice to see those '80s haircuts and clothes again. Maybe the budget prohibited the usual jukebox soundtrack.

*RIP Ms. Shelly

No budget exploitation horror which fuses standard British grindhouse with Ken Loach-level social realism, creating a lowkey but thrilling parable about how the strong victimise the weak, even if only for the ephemeral, tawdry buzz of tribal prestige.

Hollywood action heroes often have a military backstory to explain their incredible gift for violent mayhem. Well Paddy Considine is ex-paras and capable of near supernatural stunts. He hasn't the usual wall of muscle, but it's a startlingly 4real performance.

And he brutally murders the idiot crew of sink estate drug dealers responsible for the death of his vulnerable younger brother (Toby Kebbell). This is a truly suspenseful revenge story, like High Plains Drifter (1973) set in the left behind villages of the Peak District.

Shane Meadows creates an authentic environment, whether the enervating poverty of the rural backwater, or the feeble lives of its criminal gang. And the overwhelming pity it inspires for their victim gives it a moral dimension. This is one of the great UK films.

Uneven Gen. X melodrama which still elicits a few minor chords. In the present era of social media, and since the Columbine Massacre, this seems unexpectedly prophetic... A teenage pirate radio shock-jock operating from his bedroom in suburban Arizona changes the climate at his ultra-Conservative High School.

This is surprisingly sincere and while the disillusioned kid’s diatribes are often artless, then that's part of his vulnerability and some of the more profound material goes straight to the heart. Maybe looking like Christian Slater (or his eventual companion, Samantha Mathis!) would alleviate many teenage problems.

But Slater plays up his social anxiety which is unusual for the period. He can't communicate, except via his broadcast, when he talks for everyone and offers an outlet for misfits who suffer alone. Obviously there's a soundtrack of punk and hiphop classics. Boomers get Leonard Cohen singing Everybody Knows.

It loses focus in the later scenes, and the reaction from the fascist headteacher (Annie Ross) is idiotic. Plus it borrows the climax from Smokey and the Bandit (1977)! Yet its seriousness sets it apart from other 80s/90s High School films, while making salient observations on how some colleges finagle good grades. 

The best of Jim Jarmusch's run of idiosyncratic arthouse curiosities which attracted a worldwide cult in the 1990s. He calls this a psychedelic western, which sort of implies it's a head movie, which it really is, so it might be enhanced by hallucinogens. And it's also a quirky comedy and a key star vehicle for Johnny Depp.

He plays a frontier accountant- maybe Jarmusch read Viz!- who is shot and then swept up in diverse episodic adventures in the old west, while he slowly dies. He is loosely chaperoned through the rituals of death by a gnomic Native American played by Gary Farmer, who is intrigued by the white man's name: William Blake.

And the film overflows with allusions to the English Romantic, mainly his poetry. So this may appeal to literature buffs. Also there are myriad references to pop culture, as there usually are in Jarmusch pictures. This is made accessible by another of Depp's offbeat early roles; and he gives charisma to what is essentially a cypher.

He's supported by an offbeat cast, with a crossdressing Iggy Pop and a cameo from Robert Mitchum in his last film. There's a soundtrack of guitar atmos. by Neil Young and phenomenal b&w photography from Robby Müller. This may even be a shaggy dog story about the old west being a kind of hell. Well if so, it's a doozy.

My personal favourite from Hirokazu Koreeda's classical Japanese dramas which have accumulated global popularity in the new millennium. This one delivers a measure of gravitas with its themes of loss and time and the reflections on old age and mortality.

He is often compared to Yasujiro Ozu because of the similarities in technique... which makes this his own update of Tokyo Story (1953). Three generations of a middle class family gather each year to acknowledge the premature death of the elder son of a retired doctor and his wife.

And by day two, the barely discernible resentments climax into a muted spasm of passive aggression... and then they get out the dirty laundry. But this is understated and implied, in the Japanese way. It's an ensemble actors film with Kirin Kiki the standout as the stoical, conciliatory matriarch.

Though she eventually also reveals an edge. We get the expected tasteful piano score and long edits from a static camera. This may not be on the level of the postwar Japanese masters but it's still wistful and absorbing, especially considering there is little plot and much gnomic conversation. 

So-so big screen sitcom which might have been better done as a tv series, as these things normally are. Typically, all the characters are stereotypes, 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 indifferent wife (Patricia Arquette), a sexy, available research student (Téa Leoni) and his new baby boy... but the adoption agency have their data scrambled so they encounter various diverse dead ends, leading to unsubtle, door-slamming farce.

These are familiar situations, like the frustrated dad bumping 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.

Austere social realism about a Russian immigrant (Dina Korzun) and her feisty 10 year old son (Artyom Strelnikov) who claim asylum in the UK, and then get entangled in bureaucracy and the miseries of a left behind southern seaside town. 

It's a compassionate look at her predicament and- made in 2000-  approaches the situation without most of the toxicity which has since poisoned public opinion. She is let down by an arranged marriage, but assisted by a local jack the lad.

Paddy Considine is fine in this early role, but it's Korzun as the vulnerable refugee frustrated by officialdom who makes an impact. Margate is shot vérité style by writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski on debut with a considerable eye for detail...

And this recalls the British Free Cinema movement of the '50s. It's as much a commentary on the derelict, impoverished location as a sympathetic, early rendition of an ongoing controversy. It belongs among the classics of UK social realism.

Number five in the long running comedy series and the best of the 70s/80s sequels. It's the one where Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) escapes from a psychiatric hospital and commands the combined forces of international crime and espionage to murder Clouseau (Peter Sellers)...

It's busting with brilliant visual gags from the pre-credit sequence onwards, surely unequalled since the early films of Laurel and Hardy. Some are old favourites, like the anticipated assault from Kato (Burt Kwouk) but there are many new wild slapstick set pieces.

My personal favourite is Dreyfuss blowing up Clouseau's rooms while the immortal detective hovers outside, held aloft by a helium balloon... This is all crazy, cartoonish stuff, inspired by the serendipitous alliance between Sellers and writer/director Blake Edwards.

Credit is probably also due to Sellers' stunt double... The star's screen combo with Lom is sublime. Leslie-Anne Down brings considerable glamour to the later scenes. The solitary downer is Henry Mancini's legendary theme music is only heard over the credits. 

Passionate and fiercely intelligent polemic on the '80s political revolution, and the economic Darwinism left in the wake of the Reagan government in the US. And then the UK. Set in an office of desperate sales reps, this is my generation's Death of a Salesman.

Sure it's a photographed stage play, but with a once in a lifetime ensemble cast performing an actors masterclass. My pick is Jack Lemmon as the corporate also-ran, operating way beyond his breaking point. Actors must kill to grab material as good as this.

In adapting his own 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner, David Mamet sharpens the barbs and adds a satirical set piece of immortal corporate bull**** courtesy of Alec Baldwin's cutthroat sales tutorial. It's shot in the style of '80s tv noir, with the rain and the saxophone solos....

And that's what dates it- the drama is bang on the money; more than ever. These men are sleazy con artists, and it's easy to draw a line from their endemic American hucksterism to the bank crash of '08 and then Trump. No solidarity, just the lure of the buck.