Film Reviews by griggs

The bored middle-aged man has an affair subgenre has been mined to death, so it’s a pleasant surprise that Tuesday, After Christmas still finds a few nerves to hit. It skips big twists and leans into small, everyday details, letting the fallout creep up slowly rather than crash in with melodrama.

Radu Muntean takes the boilerplate setup – husband, younger lover, unsuspecting wife – and quietly complicates it by making the mistress the couple’s daughter’s orthodontist. It all unfolds in ordinary Bucharest spaces: banks, clinics, cramped flats, lit like real life and blessedly free of nudging music. The film lives in long, unbroken scenes where nothing happens on paper, but everything shifts in the pauses: a glance held too long in a consulting room, a Christmas shopping trip that suddenly feels like a hostage situation.

The late, near-real-time confession to the wife is excruciating, held so long you almost want to leave the room yourself. It’s quiet, slow and stubbornly ordinary, which is both its strength and its limitation. I admired it more consistently than I loved it, but it’s one of the few infidelity dramas that feels like it might be happening in the flat downstairs.

It’s hard to watch Tom Jones now without mentally slotting it next to Barry Lyndon and wondering how on earth this was the one that hoovered up Oscars. Back in ’63 the winking to camera, speeded-up chases and bawdy asides must’ve felt anarchic; these days a lot of it plays like a smug BBC Three costume romp for teenagers.

The comedy’s a mixed bag: some of the innuendo still raises a smile, some of it just feels tired, and a few gags land squarely in the “oh, we don’t do that anymore” category. What keeps it watchable is the energy – the jumpy camerawork, the chaotic cutting, and Albert Finney charging through the countryside like he owns the decade.

There’s also no pretending the camera isn’t half in love with him: the film knows exactly how good Finney looks and keeps catching him in flattering close-ups and soft focus. As a film, it’s more historical curiosity than buried treasure, but it’s not a bad way to spend an evening.

Penny Serenade feels like something you find halfway through on Talking Pictures TV, realise Cary Grant is about to cry, and decide to stick with out of curiosity. The famous judge’s-office meltdown is the big draw and, fair play, he goes for it. The problem is the rest of the film keeps waving a hankie in your face, desperate for the same reaction.

The Japan prologue is an odd highlight, complete with an earthquake sequence that looks like it’s wandered in from a different, more interesting picture. Then we’re back home with the records, flashbacks and a very firm sermon about babies as the one true route to fulfilment. Every now and then it half-admits life doesn’t work like that, then promptly forgets.

It’s sentimental, lopsided, and not nearly as profound as it thinks it is. But as an afternoon melodrama – Grant crying, the needle dropping, emotions pushed to eleven – it’s… fine. You watch it, you feel a bit, you move on.

Some dramas arrive in crisp shirts and good manners, then quietly take your legs out from under you. Atonement is one of those: all starched linen, library books and clipped conversations, staged with such confidence it’s hard not to wish Joe Wright’s later films had matched this level. The Dunkirk long take and the typewriter clatter in the score are very showy, but here the flourishes serve the story rather than smother it.

Having worked on the Balham disaster memorial, I’d always been wary of this, braced for that particular horror to be turned into set dressing. To its credit, the film handles the Tube sequence with care and folds it into the love story, which feels adult even as war and class grind it down.

What really lingers is Briony: first as a child who misreads a moment and blows several lives apart, then as a woman trying to rewrite the damage. The final turn lands like a quiet punch. By the end, the title feels earned, even if forgiveness doesn’t.

There’s something faintly maddening about being talked down to by a film in top hat and tails. Watching Gigi, you can see why it swept awards season. The opening narration plays like a lesson on love and Paris for people who’ve never met either, queer-coded asides and all. Maurice Chevalier drifts into his big number, twinkly as ever, though the lyrics now sit somewhere between dated and queasy.

Once the story settles, we’re watching a girl methodically groomed into a “proper” companion for Gaston. Her grandmother and aunt coach her in cigars, small talk and compliance, while Gaston drifts from mistress to mistress, sizing up alternatives and discreetly buying people out of their arrangements so affairs end on cue. Even suicide is treated as a lightly comic flourish rather than a cry of despair, which didn’t exactly warm me to the romance. The Belle Époque gloss is pretty, but the gender politics are a museum piece.

There’s MGM sheen, a couple of sturdy tunes and the odd flash of wit. Mostly, though, I felt like a guest at a lavish party, impressed by the budget but counting the minutes until I could sneak off to something stranger and less pleased with itself.

I partly blame Quentin Tarantino for this one. His enthusiasm finally nudged me towards Spielberg’s West Side Story, and I’m grudgingly glad it did. Those opening sweeps across a half-demolished West Side can’t quite top the original’s helicopter ballet, but they come impressively close, folding in the social history of a neighbourhood about to be scrubbed out for Lincoln Center. The film actually remembers that the Jets and Sharks are fighting over streets that will soon be prime real estate, not just bruised pride.

The trouble is, the cast can’t always keep up with the camera. The leads are solid but rarely electric, which leaves Riff and Anita hauling most of the film on their shoulders, even more so than in the ’61 version. Whenever Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose are on screen, the thing crackles; when they’re not, you feel the energy dip. The big gym dance is where it all comes together – bold colours, sharp choreography, Spielberg finally trusting the musical to strut a bit.

Too often, though, he seems slightly embarrassed by the genre, chasing “realism” when the material wants heightened artifice and bravado. The numbers are meticulously staged but sometimes weirdly cautious, as if he’s worried about being caught enjoying himself. Now and then it feels like a dry run for The Fabelmans rather than a gang-rumbles-and-snap-dancing musical. I wanted to hate it and couldn’t; instead I ended up mildly dazzled, mildly underwhelmed, and oddly grateful for two and a half hours hiding from reality.

The Holly and the Ivy looks, at first glance, like a cosy Christmas card from 1950s Britain: snow on the ground, carols on the soundtrack, a vicar in the house. Don’t be fooled. This is a quietly sharp little drama about how families use religion, duty, and good manners to avoid saying what’s actually wrong.

Ralph Richardson plays the vicar, kind but wilfully oblivious, presiding over adult children damaged by his saintly neglect. Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton are superb as daughters who’ve twisted themselves into shapes to keep the peace, and now find the cracks showing over the turkey.

Yes, it’s stagey, talky, and very much of its time. But if you stick with it, there’s a surprising amount of bite under the tinsel – a reminder that for many people, Christmas is less about joy to the world and more about surviving the relatives.

There’s something oddly cheering about watching someone bet their entire love life on a typo, and A Tale of Winter leans into that with a straight face. Félicie is convinced that one wrong address hasn’t doomed her romance forever — and thanks to Charlotte Véry’s serene, slightly bewildered charm, you almost admire the audacity. I kept thinking, “Anyone else would’ve moved on, but alright, let’s see where this goes.”

Rohmer shuttles her between Paris and a quietly unhurried provincial town, each offering a different version of the life she might settle for. Loïc is bookish, gentle, and looks like he alphabetises his pantry. Maxence is friendly chaos with hairdressing scissors. Both give her something, but neither melts the emotional frost she’s carrying around like a season of her own.

What makes the film so lovely is Rohmer’s wry patience with her. He never mocks her certainty; he just watches it, curious, amused, and quietly rooting for her. And when the universe finally throws her a bone, it lands with a small, satisfying thud — the kind that makes you smile more than you expect.

Teenage me would’ve put Lloyd Dobler on a poster; middle-aged me wants him to try therapy, do his laundry, and grow some boundaries. For a film so enshrined in teen-movie lore, Say Anything… is surprisingly small-scale — no wink, no safety net, just a teenager with a trench coat, a boombox, and more confidence in grand gestures than in basic life skills.

Lloyd’s an affable underachiever who falls for star pupil Diane Court, bright, sheltered, and stuck with a dad whose love language is control. The film clearly adores Lloyd’s boundary-blind persistence, and it only half-questions the father’s behaviour, never quite willing to puncture the fairy tale.

What keeps it watchable is the cast. John Cusack sells the trench coat, kickboxing philosophy and rambling speeches, while Ione Skye gives Diane a cautious warmth that softens the script’s more heroic tendencies. In the end, it’s good company rather than a life-changer: a mixtape romance I’m happy to rewind to, not one I built my personality around.

A Tale of Springtime is one of those productions that seems to move lightly on the surface while doing something far more deliberate underneath. Rohmer isn’t concerned with plot mechanics or big reversals. He focuses instead on people talking — politely, cautiously — and on the small gaps between what they say and what they mean.

The premise is straightforward. A philosophy teacher, at loose ends after her living situation falls through, ends up spending time with a younger woman who seems oddly eager to slide her into her father’s life. There’s no villainy here and nothing approaching urgency; just conversations that slowly make everyone’s intentions clearer.

What makes it work is the precision. Rohmer builds the film from looks, pauses, and comments delivered a fraction off-beat, trusting the audience to connect the pieces. Some viewers will find the restraint maddening; others will be drawn in by the film’s quiet, careful intelligence. The drama is present — you just need to pay attention as it gathers.

The thing about Holiday Affair is how determined it is to behave itself. As Christmas romances go, it keeps everything tidy and polite, sticking close to the studio playbook. Janet Leigh starts off buying a toy train for “research,” and from that moment the film gently suggests you stop worrying about the details and enjoy the ride.

Robert Mitchum strolls through with an easy, unforced charm that makes you wonder why Hollywood didn’t let him do more of this. The tough-guy roles may have paid the bills, but he’s entirely at home playing someone open, steady, and quietly decent. Leigh handles the emotional beats, though the script does expect her to change direction rather abruptly — a familiar feature of these brisk holiday productions.

What won me over was the film’s tone. It’s warm without tipping into syrup, and self-aware enough to keep the sentiment in check. There’s a dry humour tucked into the corners, as if the film knows exactly what it can do and sticks to it. Holiday Affair may not be essential festive viewing, but it’s pleasant company — and far easier to live with than many of its louder seasonal neighbours.

I couldn’t quite remember watching Kes before, but Brian Glover’s booming voice on that football pitch rang loud enough to bring it all back — along with the pain of being forced to read the Barry Hines’ 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave at school. His scene, part comic and part cruel, was the fragment that lingered, flapping somewhere in memory until the rest of the film finally caught up.

Watching it again, properly this time, Loach’s portrait of Billy Casper feels painfully honest: a boy clinging to something pure in a world that barely notices him. There’s no sentimentality, just mud, hope, and the brief lift of wings before reality drags it all down.

It moves slowly, but that’s part of its truth — life doesn’t soar, it stumbles. Kes remains quietly devastating: a film that finds grace in small corners and reminds you what it feels like to dream, even when the world won’t let you.

There’s a particular kind of existential dread that comes from realising life doesn’t pause, even when the world feels one bad decision away from oblivion. Growing up in the late ’70s, I often wondered how my parents got on with the business of living while the threat of nuclear annihilation lingered in the background. Then again, my mum was born in the middle of the Second World War — conceived while her father grabbed a brief leave from the army, London still under night-time bombardment. Humanity has a habit of pushing forward, whether through resilience or sheer stubbornness.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is usually held up as the closest we came to nuclear war. It’s not an unreasonable claim — it was a genuine standoff with documented near-launch moments — but no one can say with total certainty that it was the closest. Plenty of incidents, from the 1983 Soviet false alarm to various hardware failures, suggest we’ve stumbled to the brink more than once. And with the Doomsday Clock now set at 90 seconds to midnight (not 89), the tightest margin in its history, the sense of fragility hasn’t eased. As the Bulletin’s scientists have warned, even a one-second shift is meant to signal “extreme danger” and the rising risk of global catastrophe.

Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe channels that anxiety with unnerving clarity. It’s lazily framed as the “serious” alternative to Dr. Strangelove, but that flattens both films. Kubrick lampoons the absurdity of deterrence; Lumet shows what happens when all the satire drains away and only fate — cold, procedural, merciless — remains.

Like 12 Angry Men, the film thrives in claustrophobic rooms where powerful men make catastrophic choices shaped not by pure ideology but by prejudice, arrogance, and blind faith in technology. A simple malfunction snowballs into a crisis that rational minds seem increasingly powerless to contain. Every attempted correction digs the hole deeper.

As the story reaches its shattering final movement, we get freeze-frames of ordinary New Yorkers — families in the park, shoppers, office workers — entirely unaware they’re seconds from annihilation. They’re images we’ve seen a thousand times in films, but here the familiarity makes them unbearable. There’s no heroic pilot, no clever hack, no last-minute reprieve. Just inevitability.

The ending refuses spectacle. No blast. No mushroom cloud. Only silence — a void where a city used to be. Then comes the title card: the U.S. government insists the events portrayed “could not occur.” Factually, that reassurance mirrors statements made during the film’s release. Emotionally, it lands closer to a dare than a comfort. Are you certain?

Watching Fail Safe now, with AI and automated systems increasingly integrated into military decision-making, its warnings feel freshly sharpened. It’s tempting to fear the machine — the misfiring algorithm or rogue model — but Lumet points the blame squarely back at us. Systems break because people do: through overconfidence, bias, or misplaced faith in procedure. Technology may accelerate the consequences, but human fallibility remains the decisive factor.

That’s the sting in Fail Safe. It denies easy answers, denies absolution, and leaves you with that quiet, unsettling sense that we may have skirted disaster more often than we’d like to admit — and may do so again.

And beneath all the policy talk and protocol diagrams sits a simpler truth: the film is about human failure as much as technological collapse. People trust the wrong voices, cling to rules when compassion is required, and sacrifice reason for the illusion of control.

If only Henry Fonda really were President.

I’ve always admired how Wong Kar-wai turns longing into something you can almost touch, so Days of Being Wild feels like leafing through his early sketchbook. The familiar elements are all there — the drifting nights, the clipped romances, the waiting that goes nowhere — just in a rougher, more impulsive form.

Leslie Cheung’s Yuddy is a study in beautiful failure: a man practising charm while coming apart at the seams. Maggie Cheung’s Su Lizhen carries the bruises that later echo into In the Mood for Love, and Andy Lau steps in with a quiet steadiness that makes everyone else look even more adrift.

Christopher Doyle is already nudging the film toward the look that defines Wong’s later work. The humid, green-tinged nights in Hong Kong and Manila give the whole thing a feverish charge, even when the plot wanders off for a smoke break.

It may drift and circle itself, but as the first stirrings of Wong’s long romance with yearning, it’s oddly gripping — the moment a distinctive style realises it’s about to exist.

I must have seen A Charlie Brown Christmas as a kid, because half of it felt like déjà vu: the drooping little tree, the jazzy piano, that odd mix of sulkiness and sincerity. Coming back to it now, it’s striking how small and low-key it is. No spectacle, no sugar rush – just a gloomy eight-year-old wandering around asking what the point of any of this is.

Charlie Brown mopes, Lucy monetises, Snoopy decorates like he’s auditioning for Vegas, and somewhere in the middle the special admits that Christmas can feel hollow even when you’re doing it “right”. The moment when the kids quietly rally round the world’s most pathetic tree still works.

The Bible reading may feel heavy-handed if you’re allergic to that sort of thing, but there’s a real gentleness in how it’s done. What lingers now isn’t the sermon anyway; it’s the mood. Simple drawings, melancholy jazz, and the comforting thought that feeling out of step with enforced cheer is pretty universal.