Film Reviews by TE

The barren orange-coloured outback makes for a great backdrop to this story of honest policing versus big business crime.

It's very much an old style western movie transferred to a different frontier.

Ludicrous narrative with no explanation for the behaviour of any of the characters.

There's good weirdness in films and there's bad weirdness, this is just plain awful!

If there is some commentary going on about race relations its buried under a rubble of student level writing and directing.

A genuinely suspenseful film highlighting a period of history that deserves to be better known in the west.

The acting is really strong and the cinematography is excellent.

The character study of the central figure is blended expertly with a good old school tale of espionage and rebellion.

On the truly positive side, the Mexican settings are wonderful. Maybe Jodorowsky should have made landscape documentaries.

There are also many moments of inspired, stoned humour and surreal imagery.

On the cheesy but amusing side there's lots of very fake gore and absurd jump cutting. Also a tinny and bombastic soundtrack that ramps up the melodrama.

On the negative side, there is an overwhelming sense of an egomaniac at work, a man with a Jesus complex spilling his half-baked ideas in a self-indulgent rampage. And the sexual politics are embarrassingly dated.

Vagabond is a fascinating film in every way. The direction, the narrative and the acting all combine to produce a timeless work of art.

It is interesting to imagine how this tale of a young female drifter would play out today, and to speculate how much has changed over the last 30+ years since Varda made the movie. It was made when society was moving towards a harsher time, with the new dominance of neoliberal capitalism. The film shows elements of a kinder, more tolerant world along with the nastier developments.

Mona's character and presence is an important moment for feminism in art. She challenges many of the people she encounters, and she challenges us as well. Her fate (which we know from the start) kept reminding me of the Richard Thompson song "Beeswing": "...maybe that's the price you pay for the chains that you refuse".

Well worth watching the extras too: the short film about the soundtrack music; and the wonderful little piece about the old lady.

There's plenty to enjoy in The Fencer, particularly the careful set-up in the first half of the film.

The atmosphere of the school is very well created, with its mixture of Stalinist repression and glimpses of possible changes just around the corner.

Much of the film's promise is lost, however, in a determinedly 'feel good' finale at the tournament in Leningrad. It all becomes a bit too sentimental and predictable.

A fascinating insight into village life in a nation (Nepal) where forces of superstitious tradition and modern life are on a collision course.

There is humour in some of the ways in which the resourceful children seek to get by in life, but mostly it is a hard-scrabble world governed by violence and the weight of the caste system.

This is a powerful film that deserves a wide audience.

This film is fairly tightly divided into 3 sections. These are interlinked but in the end it feels a bit too much of a formula.

The first section is excellent, the narrative and the cinematography combining to magnificent effect. It is so good, in fact, that the second section comes as something of an unwelcome deflation. A whole new group of characters is introduced and much of the impetus is lost.

By the end of this second section the momentum and the interest has been successfully built up again, but then we are pitched into an over-detailed study of the medical processes that unite the two strands of the story.

Ultimately it is a moving tale with some fine acting and excellent photography, but it could have been better with a less clunky structure.

The strength of this BBC film lies in the brilliantly created Dutch interiors. This captures the feel of the Dutch Masters' paintings, and provides a suitably claustrophobic and uptight atmosphere.

The dialogue is sparse but looks speak volumes at every turn.

A clever adaptation of a Sheridan LeFanu classic.

Cleverly paced narrative exploring the disintegration of a haunted man. This central character is brilliantly played. From the outset there is a hint of inner turmoil, despite the beautiful island setting.

One of the film's triumphs is that we are still able to feel sympathy for the tortured hero, a man completely out of synch with both the native islanders and the rich wasters who descend on the beaches in the summer. His pathetic attempt at redemption through an impossible desire is both tragic and inevitable.

Excellent story very well told.

Great cast...some good one-liners...pacey...but ultimately a tad disappointing. There is a disjointed feel to the way it bounces from one violent encounter to another, almost as if too much is packed in. It's more of a cartoon than the sort of film that such a talented cast might have produced.

This is a fine depiction of the lives of a group of black (and blue collar white) children. There is a pervasive sense of abandonment and a wait for something to happen. When a tragic "something" does happen there is a very realistic retreat into despair on the one hand and wild fantasy on the other.

The film doesn't dictate emotions, it presents a story and leaves it to us to draw conclusions. A very assured and absorbing film.

A really strong cast is assembled to no good effect in this numbingly violent tale of macho pride and family allegiance.

The only interesting aspect is the depiction of the rust-belt background, with some good cinematography of both urban and rural wastelands.

This is an excellent compilation of rare footage, complemented by a brilliant soundtrack.

Watching this gives you as much insight into human tragedy and comedy as seeing the whole of Shakespeare! All human folly and sense of weird fun is here.

Be warned, the scenes involving animals are hideous. And there are some awful sequences involving children.

However, all those scenes are truthful human history, and this film is a brilliant compression of the extremes of behaviour.

A fine entry in the tradition of hard-boiled crime tales. The b/w print is excellent and the narrative is taut, even in the long near-silent robbery scene.

Rififi is more of a 'grown-ups' film than many US and British equivalents. The belt whipping of the lead female character is challenging, as is the dangerous position the small child is put in. However, most of the violence is not visually explicit.

"Rififi" has to be one of the great movie titles: the meaning of the word is hinted at in a slinky nightclub song, but we are left to sweep the whole plot and the journey of the characters into that one word.