Welcome to GI's film reviews page. GI has written 1555 reviews and rated 2152 films.
This is still one of the best teenage rebellion movies. A British social drama loosely based around The Who's rock opera and with a soundtrack from that iconic album. Set in 1965 it follows the life of disaffected youth Jimmy (Phil Daniels), who lives with his parents in run down London, he has a dead end job and only finds any zest for life in a gang of 'Mods', riding their adorned scooters, popping pills, and fighting with their rivals, the Rockers. This is a story of growing up, of heartbreak, sex, and realising the buzz found in violence and drugs is superficial. The big set piece of the film is the infamous battle between the Mods and Rockers on Brighton beach recreated really brilliantly and where Jimmy feels he has finally found his place in life after sex with the girl of his dreams Steph (Leslie Ash) but it's a hollow dream and he is brought back to reality very quickly. Ultimately a film about disillusionment. The film boasts an ambiguous ending and a cast from young British talent many of whom went onto bigger careers mostly in television including Timothy Spall, Phil Davis and Ray Winstone. Music stars Toyah Wilcox and Sting also have roles. This is a great British film and it's something of a cult favourite and certainly a film that worth seeking out if you've not seen it.
Tarantino's second film is often cited by fans as their favourite of his films to date and with repeated viewings you can see why. Following his debut, Reservoir Dogs (1992) which I think is a clever and very innovative film it takes nothing away from this second feature as it too is very innovative and has been immensely influential. Pulp Fiction has many features of what has since become known as 'Tarantinoesque' not least his ability to show extreme violence but actually make you laugh as you watch it. The obvious scenes here include the shooting of Marvin (Phil LaMarr) and the resuscitation scene of Mia (Uma Thurman) - watch Eric Stoltz in this section he's hilariously brilliant. The main innovation that hit home when this first came to our screens was the clever use of timelines and the fluidity of the story even though it jumps around in time while following the diverse characters. They are of course all truly cinematic characters, Tarantino writes cinema about cinema meaning his films are concerned solely with cinematic vision and language. Every character is cartoonish in a way even when they are indulging in the most depraved acts, which include heroin and cocaine use, casual murder for money, torture, rape and armed robbery. Just in case you are one of the very few who has not seen this film it follows one morning in Los Angeles where two hitmen, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) are sent by their boss, Marcellus (Ving Rhames) to recover a briefcase. They end up getting into some scrapes which includes having to get rid of a body and being robbed but mixed up is the story of a boxer, Butch (Bruce Willis) and his relationship and betrayal of Marcellus. It all sounds a little complex and the structure of the film is convoluted but actually each episode and event is fairly plotless in a sense, the result is the film becomes even more entertaining. This is certainly a must see film and definitely worth repeated viewings because there's lots going on you might have missed (including hints of the supernatural!). For example I can tell you that it was Butch who keyed Vincent's car. Great cast too including Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Harvey Keitel, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken and blink and you'll miss him Steve Buscemi.
This gonzo horror/thriller is a sort of black version of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) but without the sheer anarchic climax of that film. Bizarrely, as you watch this, it's a film that you may think would be a very interesting one without the horror element as a period crime thriller with the Delta Blues theme as a narrative driving force. But what you have here is still an entertaining and fun horror in an interesting setting, the Deep South Mississippi in 1932. Two twin brothers, Elijah and Elias (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown after years of being away, they have a pocket full of cash and apparently have been working in the underworld of Chicago. They decide to open a 'juke joint' for the locals and to make money and recruit their young cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), to play blues there. He's a renowned singer and player much to the consternation of his preacher father who warns him that the music will lure the devil! And on opening night, as the party gets going, the music indeed lures an ancient vampire (Jack O'Connell) who wants Sammie and anyone else he can get his fangs into. There's plenty of gore and vampire film tropes and the whole thing is of course played for laughs for the most part. The music is simply great and despite the crazy machismo of the final third of the film this keeps you wanting to watch. There's a homage scene to The Thing (1982) that in quite funny. Delroy Lindo, Haillee Steinfeld and even legendary bluesman Buddy Guy costar.
Viewed today it may seem very surprising that this was such a popular film when it was widely released. Even in the USA, a country that is notorious for its censorship of sex in mainstream cinema, this gained an uncut release mostly because it had been reportedly popular in Europe with women viewers. In 1974 there was no doubt that this was viewed as erotic cinema making the crossover from pornography and curiosity fuelled its box office success because this is a rather ridiculous, quite dull and somewhat childish film. It's not a film that goes anywhere near what porn was doing in the 70s (watch 1997s Boogie Nights for that). Emmanuelle is a French film that uses soft focus, an exotic location and oodles of female nudity in order to masquerade as something sincere. It's not, it's a poorly scripted idea of what the director, Just Jaeckin, seems to think women are all searching for. The narrative is simple, a beautiful and naive young women, Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) joins her husband in Bangkok. He's all for letting her have her sexual freedom mainly because he wants his, but when she takes it he's not too pleased. Emmanuelle has indulged herself mostly with other women and hubby sends her off to Mario (Alain Cuny), a much older man, to teach her all about eroticism which involves the most unerotic sex you'll ever see! As a film that is supposedly about a woman's journey of sexual discovery this is nothing more than a postcard of Thailand with lots of breasts. It has its place in film history and it spawned a whole series but it can be dismissed today as a tasteless experiment.
AKA The Cursed. An atmospheric pagan horror that is essentially a werewolf narrative utilising a Scandinavian mythology although the film is set in France in the 19th century. The film has an interesting prologue during a First World War western front battle. Then we begin the main story where a ruthless land owner massacres a small group of gypies who have a legitimate claim to part of his land. An old Roma woman curses him and soon the locals begin to have strange nightmares. A local boy is found dead and another goes missing. A pathologist (Boyd Holbrook) arrives and warns that there is an ancient evil now lurking in the woods. We have a cold, bleak, fogbound landscape creating the mysterious and shadowy atmosphere in what really is a creature feature. The film is a bit too long and begins to drag a bit and the creature is glimpsed but ultimately disappointing. There's gore galore including an autopsy scene that I'm guessing has been influenced by The Thing (1982) and Kelly Reilly as the landowner's wife although she's not given much to do here, sadly. This is a reasonably entertaining horror film with added mystery.
This is a weird, surrealist thriller from director Luc Besson that is utterly ludicrous but strangely compelling. Much of the film's draw is from the enigmatic central performance from Caleb Landry Jones. He plays Dougie who is arrested, wounded and dressed in drag and with a motorhome full of dogs. A psychiatrist, Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs) is brought in by the police to find out what she can about what has happened to him. In interviews Dougie recounts his story of violent abuse at the hands of his father and brother who keep him in the kennel with the family dogs, his eventual rescue by the authorities and his success as a drag artist all the time living with his pack of dogs with whom he claims he can communicate and that do his bidding. The film has the European arthouse look and feel that Besson used in his earlier successes although the story is set in the US. There's a couple of interesting set pieces and Landry Jones manages to convince as the bizarre Dougie. It's an oddity as a film but I couldn't help being hooked.
A somewhat weird, slightly unpleasant but thoroughly ridiculous dystopian thriller that tries hard with ideas but actually none of them are very original and the whole idea is just silly. Set in an unspecified future where cloning has been effectively achieved with laws surrounding their use. Sarah (Karen Gillan) is diagnosed with a terminal illness and to save her family and boyfriend too much grief she commissions a clone to replace her. But first she has to train the double to become her. Then surprise surprise Sarah recovers and the clone is no longer needed but now her boyfriend and her mother seem to prefer the double over the real Sarah. The law says they must fight a televised duel to the death to decide who remains alive. None of this works at all. The set up is that society has become more emotionless but scientific advances are growing yet a sort of Gilead type society is also prevalent. Sarah is advised by her lawyer to hire a combat trainer to get her through the duel! There are so many plot holes and the film drags on as it can't make its mind up whether to be a violent dystopian thriller or a meditative narrative on what it means to be alive. And we are denied a satisfactory climax.
Any of Michael Mann's films are worth your time. He has a unique style and this period crime drama is no exception. Thematically it follows other Mann films like Heat (1995) in its study of two men on opposite sides of a moral divide although Public Enemies concentrates on recreating historical incidents even though many have been fictionalised for the film. This also boasts Mann's distinctive editing and use of hand held cameras with low and oblique angle close ups. Essentially this is a gangster film set in 1933/4 during the Great Depression and follows the exploits of arch bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) who becomes Public Enemy No1 and sort after by the FBI whose boss, J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) wants caught to boost his plan to get more funding. He appoints Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to head up the Chicago office to catch or kill Dillinger. There are some stunningly filmed and very well executed action set pieces of bank robberies and prison escapes and intermixed is a romantic sub plot between Dillinger and Billie (Marion Cotillard) who is a little underused in the film. But the cast is impressive including Jason Clarke and Stephen Graham doing another of his psycho criminal routines as Baby Face Nelson. There's also cameos from Carey Mulligan and Channing Tatum too. The film has a highly detailed authenticity to the times and Depp is fantastic in the role of Dillinger. Mann has chosen to use digital cameras which is a bold choice for a period film but it gives the film a modern resonance and immerses the viewer in the action. The criminal as romantic anti-hero has been a well worn character trope throughout American cinema but here Mann has taken the cinematic and interwoven it into an historical crime drama. A first class modern crime film that is definitely a film to really enjoy and to indulge in it's detail and style. A slightly flawed masterpiece.
Probably Alfred Hitchcock's most famous film but compared to most of his films made during the 1950s and 60s it's actually a quite sparse film and shot in black and white due to Hitchcock wanting to make a more inexpensive and simple looking film. Despite this it is a really well constructed film, sharply edited (a master class in film editing really) and a very tight story. If by some chance you've never actually seen this classic then it is a masterpiece of cinema and a film you should immediately seek out. Despite it's age it is a tense, unsettling thriller and for it's time it's bloody and quite daring, not least due to the nudity. Janet Leigh plays Marion who is desperate for happiness with her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) but he won't marry her until he clears his debts from an earlier marriage. One afternoon Marion takes a desperate chance and steals a large sum of money from her boss and heads off to meet up with Sam who knows nothing of her crime. Fearful of getting caught and in the middle of a storm Marion stops off at a remote motel run by Norman (Anthony Perkins) where she disappears. Later Sam and Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) go in search of her, a search that leads them to the same motel. There are several very famous scenes in the film that are well known not least the infamous shower scene. The film boasts an interesting twist that even after you've seen the film several times fails to lessen the impact of the film as a whole. It's arguable which of Hitchcock's films is his best but this is certainly up there with the best of them and it is definitely a most intriguing and arguably groundbreaking one. A must see film.
Here is another viscerally immersive modern combat film that continues the trend to depict war in the most graphic way possible especially here the sheer volume of noise from gunfire, explosions and screams. Warfare is a recreation of a pointless battle in a pointless war where young men are faced with extreme violence without questioning why or indeed understanding why. This film is set during the Gulf war in 2006 and shows an episode during the battle of Ramada. A US Navy Seal team infiltrates a house and sets up an observation and sniper position to support other troops nearby. Detected by the local insurgents they find themselves under heavy attack. The film runtime almost coincides with the incidents timeline and as the wounded begin to occur we get to see and hear the awful reality of war. It's certainly a film that shocks the senses especially if you watch this in a cinema and the film does move at a fast pace after the build up of the boredom of the soldiers as they wait around. But unlike other films that have attempted to show war at it's most horrific like The Hurt Locker (2008), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Cross Of Iron (1977) and a host of others, there is no narrative here that grounds the film and hooks the viewer into the characters. For example the teams' leader Erik (Will Poulter) gets rattled and is unable to command effectively but we just have to accept this point without any attempt to grip his ordeal. Equally the Iraqi family whose house is taken over are mere bystanders and are hardly seen, nor are the 'enemy' who are reduced to computer images from drones. In this warfare is a somewhat empty experience and I have to say the decision to use credit pictures of the actors with the real participants renders the film as another flag waver.
A rather ridiculous title which I suspect was chosen as a sort of link to Charles Bronson's earlier and more successful, and interesting, film Death Wish (1974). Beyond the use of the word Death there are no other similarities. Indeed Death Hunt is more narratively linked to Bronson's 1972 film Chato's Land, another far more entertaining film. Based on a true story although this deviates from the real event in many ways, this is essentially a western although set in the far northwest of Canada in 1931. A trapper, Albert (Bronson), upsets some roughneck locals and in self defence kills one of them. This starts a manhunt led by local Mountie, Millen, a hard drinking, cynical and grizzled cop played by Lee Marvin. From this basic and much used scenario you have a series of stereotypical characters including the naive rookie who gets to learn a bit about life to the pointless female character, an underused Angie Dickinson. There's plenty of violence and bloodshed, a boring and somewhat cheesy script and a predictable ending. Effectively the same film emerged a year after this one and was far better. That was First Blood (1982) only the place and time is different. Death Hunt hasn't aged well, it's a B movie masquerading as a main feature.
This surreal fantasy satire is both light hearted, often very funny yet riddled with dark menace and close to a psychological horror film. It's really a study of the dangers of instant social media fame, that alluring need to be someone but the frightening reality when it actually happens. Nicolas Cage, in one of his more 'out there' roles, plays Paul. He's a suburban married man and father who is a professor of biology at the local university. Outwardly he's a nerdy, boring man forever wearing an anorak and a complete frustration to his two daughters. But inwardly he's a frustrated and somewhat angry man due to his anonymity as he wants to be recognised for his academic work relating to animal behaviour. He's take aback when people, including family, friends, his students and random strangers report that Paul has been appearing in their dreams as a passive character simply watching whatever events are occurring. The fact he's an unimportant and in the background in these dreams is a source of frustration for him even as his celebrity grows due to the phenomenon occurring wider and wider around the country. Then he meets someone who reports Paul is an active participant in her dream and soon people are reporting their dreams involve Paul attacking and torturing them leading to him becoming a social pariah. The modern parable here is revealed when Paul tries to get a book deal and money based on these dreams of which he has no control. It's that scenario where one yearns for fame only to find its dark consequences. This is certainly an odd film although quite interesting for the most part. It's supposedly Cage's 100th film and one he has declared to be his last. We shall see as he's a prolific film actor.
A moderately entertaining espionage thriller that has the icing of a gritty Bourne/Mission Impossible style but the actual cake is tasteless and thoroughly implausible. The Amateur in question is nerdy CIA computer cryptologist, Heller (Rami Malek), who is bereft when his beloved wife is killed by terrorists (he does spend a lot of the film still hallucinating about her though!). Finding his boss, a stereotypical bully (Holt McCallany), won't do anything about it Heller effectively blackmails him (because he's found out about illegal black ops) to train him as a field agent so he can go on a revenge trip around Europe. Malek is unconvincing as the man who isn't a killer (this is emphasised a lot) but manages to do so in some imaginative ways as he globetrots with ease finding professional terrorists also very easily. The film helpfully tells you what city he moves to even giving very helpful longitude and latitudes references in case you want to look them up! There are a couple of interesting set pieces but really this is all far too daft for its own good and the finale is almost laughable as he confronts the big baddie (Michael Stuhlbarg). Laurence Fishburne costars as the tired, overweight CIA trainer eventually sent to stop the hero. I did spot Marthe Keller in a cameo which was a nice touch as she appeared in a 1981 version of this story and Jon Bernthal has a small, equally pointless role. Overall this is a film that fails to convince. The hero, despite apparently being totally out of his depth the field manages to succeed without much effort and all the intelligence agencies around the world can't seem to stop him. Unfortunately the action, what there is, fails to make up for it. Malek just doesn't convince I'm afraid even in the emotional moments when he has to remind himself, and us by the way, why he's killing people.
Brutal, violent, mystical and a damn good film. This is an absolute joy of a film set in 1880 in the Australian outback. Ray Winstone is the local Police Captain, Stanley, who finds himself desperate to end the reign of terror of the Burns gang led by Arthur (Danny Huston, mesmerisingly brilliant here) after a respectable family are massacred. Stanley captures two of the Burns brothers, 14 year old Mikey (Richard Wilson) and older brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) and makes a deal with Charlie that he will hang Mikey on Christmas Day unless Charlie kills his big brother Arthur. This plan goes awry for both men in a very neat plot, beautifully written by Nick cave, who also did the soundtrack. This film is a revenge story but it boasts some stunning cinematography of the Australian desert, the harshness and beauty of the land being a strong theme highlighting the plight of the aborigines and the futile attempts at white settlers to bring their social conventions into an unforgiving environment. Emily Watson as Mrs Stanley exemplifies the purity her husband is obsessed with trying to protect. The late, great John Hurt supports as an eccentric bounty hunter. You will not find a finer motion picture. It has some shocking scenes of violence but they fit the narrative perfectly. This is a modern masterpiece and a film to savour. If you've never seen this then I urge you to do so.
This is bittersweet romance drama that has a slightly nasty edge to it based on the initial narrative set up. It's a misogynistic tale set in San Francisco in 1963 where a group of young Marines on their last night before being shipped off to Vietnam have a party where they each are tasked with bringing the ugliest girl for a wager. They think it's an hilarious game and four friends indulge readily including Eddie (River Pheonix) who manages to persuade a young coffee waitress, Rose (Lili Taylor) to be his date. Rose is a gentle, music loving girl who is hurt when she discovers the real reason Eddie invited her. Eddie realises he's been very cruel and that he has enjoyed Rose' company so he sets out to make things right with her. Eddie's motives here can be read in a variety of ways including that he has started to fall in love with Rose. Or indeed that he feels such remorse for his actions that he pursues her out of guilt. He certainly lies to his friends about who he has spent the evening with. I did not buy the falling in love theory. Whichever way you read the text here the film ultimately goes for a predictable ending, one where, again, you can read it in different ways. I certainly do not see that Eddie is redeemed after combat and the PTSD he suffers at the end by seeking out Rose who he agreed to write to but never did. In my mind he makes a cowardly choice. This film has its admirers and arguably has gained more because of Pheonix but I didn't enjoy it.