Film Reviews by griggs

Most samurai epics arrive with plenty of noise — battles, speeches, the whole lot. What caught me off guard about Kagemusha is how quiet and watchful it feels instead. The setup is simple: a petty thief who happens to look exactly like a powerful warlord. But the film quickly becomes less about politics and more about the strange feeling of someone slowly slipping into a role that isn’t really theirs.

I found the court scenes oddly tense. The stand-in barely speaks — one wrong word could ruin everything — so most of the drama plays out in posture, silence and sideways glances. Kurosawa stages these moments almost like theatre: still figures, careful gestures, everyone politely acting as if the performance is real.

There’s a tiny moment early on that really stuck with me. The thief instinctively sits like the warlord he’s imitating — upright, chin raised, gaze steady — and the room seems to pause.

From there, the film becomes less about spectacle and more about the eerie pull of a role that starts to feel a little too real.

For something wrapped in 1940 gloss, this is shockingly upfront about men treating women onstage like scenery. It doesn’t just depict the gaze — it calls out the entitlement behind it, and it’s even more striking knowing it’s coming from a woman filmmaker of the era.

Maureen O’Hara’s late-film speech is the detonation: angry, direct, and brave enough to feel contemporary. Lucille Ball is right there with her, weaponising timing and wit when the script gets a bit wobbly.

The weak link is Hayward’s romantic detour, which feels bolted on and far too time-hungry. But whenever the film stays with the women — rivalry, ambition, frustration — it crackles. Uneven, yes. Still, it lands with real force.

Some films juggle tones; this one runs them all at once and doesn’t drop a thing. Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues throws comedy, thriller pressure, action, and big feelings into the same spinning plate routine — and it stays easy to follow.

The direction is pure control-freak joy: busy frames that never turn to mush, crisp staging, and pacing with the confidence of someone who could choreograph a bar fight in a phone box. The script is quick on its feet too. Even when it gets loud and frantic, I always knew what everyone wanted, who was bluffing, and who was quietly getting crushed by the power games.

A couple of gender-related moments land a bit wincey now, but there’s also a real interest in identity as costume — something you can wear for swagger, disguise, or survival. And the three leads aren’t just “types”: they’re funny, sharp, and unexpectedly tender when it counts. Tsui, in full command of the chaos.

This one really got under my skin. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu isn’t short on black comedy, but the humanity keeps barging in and stealing the scene. By the end, it felt less like I’d watched a film and more like I’d been stuck in the corridor with everyone else, waiting for someone to care properly.

The laughs are there, but they’re the sort you feel slightly bad about. Nobody comes off as a cartoon villain. It’s a bunch of tired, flawed people doing a brutal job inside a brutal system, and one man slowly slipping from “patient” into “problem”. The small stuff wrecked me: the realisation he won’t go back to his flat, his worry about the cats, and that horrible “he’s probably just drunk” shrug that keeps getting in the way of seeing what’s actually happening.

And then the night turns into a pressure cooker. A road accident clogs the place up, egos collide, people start snapping, and you can feel attention drifting from him to careers, pride, and sheer survival. It’s bleak, but not cynical — more like a hard stare at how dignity can get lost in the paperwork.

Nearly four hours about stone tablets and plagues shouldn’t be this easy to sit through. I’d geared up for a noble trudge; instead, it moves with the confidence of a film that knows exactly how to hold a crowd.

Yes, parts of the script creak. And yes, some of the performances look like the cast had a hearty breakfast of scenery. But that’s half the fun. DeMille stages everything on a “go big or go home” scale, with colour and production design doing heavy lifting in the best way. When the sea parts, it’s not an effect you politely admire — it’s a full-on cinema moment.

Cecil B. DeMille doesn’t do understatement. He does commandment-sized storytelling, with a straight face and a raised eyebrow. The Ten Commandments is old-school Hollywood at full volume: excessive, sincere, and oddly comforting — like a lavish Sunday roast: too much, a bit old-fashioned, and somehow exactly what you wanted.

I still haven’t hit a dud in Val Lewton’s run, and this might be my favourite yet. It’s eerie and oddly moving in the same breath, and that final scene lands like a cold hand on the back of your neck.

It’s not flawless. A bit of the acting can feel slightly wooden, and it really only stumbles twice: an unnecessary romantic detour, and a late speech that starts wagging its finger when it should be sharpening the dread.

The title says The Seventh Victim—but the real casualty is your sleep.

It’s been a while since we got an L.A. crime thriller this glossy without it feeling empty. The set-pieces are properly tidy, the story keeps moving, and the film knows how to capture the city: sun, long shadows, money and poverty, urban sprawl and squalor with that faint sense that something’s about to go wrong.

The Heat DNA is obvious, but Crime 101 wears it well. It feels more like a nod than a nick, and it keeps looping back to the daily grind — people clocking in, cutting deals, trying to climb a rung without slipping. Nick Nolte and Jennifer Jason Leigh popping up in supporting roles is a nice little angle too.

Halle Berry and Mark Ruffalo give it some warmth, with Ruffalo especially running on stubbornness and caffeine. Chris Hemsworth looks the part but as usual doesn’t quite fill the centre with much life. The ending ties a few knots a bit too neatly, but honestly? It’s a daftish title on a seriously satisfying thriller. More of these, please.

Halfway through, I caught myself checking the runtime — not from boredom, but because the handheld camerawork and direct-to-camera asides make every squabble feel like it’s happening on your sofa. It’s classic Allen: you can spot the emotional lane changes early, yet the barbed chatter stays funny and sore. The middle wanders, then the ending slams the door. And Judy Davis? A full-body panic attack, performed with terrifying precision.

Uncomfortably watchable.

I got a kick out of the fact that a Marxist, atheist, openly queer filmmaker made one of the most convincing Gospel films on screen. Pasolini doesn’t try to spruce Matthew up or “modernise” it. He just puts it there, straight, and somehow it feels more radical because of that. Same story, different temperature.

The words stay close to scripture, but they’re spoken by real, dusty faces in poor crowds. You can feel the suspicion of institutions, and the tenderness for people living on the edge of the frame. The politics come through as urgency, not slogans; the lack of belief as a serious respect for the sacred, minus the treacle.

Tonino Delli Colli’s stark black-and-white makes it look like neorealism has wandered into the New Testament, and Enrique Irazoqui’s intense, unsmiling Jesus keeps it taut. The middle softens a bit, but the ending lands with proper weight.

Hard to add to this.

Tender, funny, a bit eerie.

 Grey Gardens is a sad little vaudeville—mesmerising, but not quite love.

You can almost smell the dust and sweat. For a while this plays like a desert road movie with a rave heartbeat — all thump, glare, and decisions made at 3am. Sirât has the kind of opening that properly promises trouble in the best way.

The vibe is Noé’s sensory assault filtered through Östlund’s deadpan cruelty, all the while being egged on by Guy Maddin. Postcards land from Zabriskie Point, gears grind from Wages of Fear, and dust flies in the wake of Mad Max’s chassis. Then it swerves. A sudden, ugly escalation lands, and the story can’t quite absorb the shock; scenes start feeling less like choices and more like evasions.

Sergei López does what he can to anchor the chaos, and I’ll grant the film its nerve. But the final stretch reaches for “mind-blowing” but mostly just blows the film apart. Bold, yes. Coherent, no.

Autumnal Vermont is postcard-pretty here — every leaf looks like its been touched up — and Hitchcock uses the scenery to smuggle in a.very odd little comedy. A body turns up in the fictional hamlet of Highwater and the locals react like they’ve found a damp patch: awkward, solvable, best handled quietly.

The film keep circling one daft question — what do you do with Harry? — and answers it by burying him, digging him up, and burying him again, mostly to keep the authorities from poking around. The humour is dark, but never mean. Everyone’s eccentric, but politely so.

Shirley MacLaine’s debut is a treat: bright, bread, properly funny, like she’s always belonged in this sideways world. Sunny Hitchcock, still with teeth,

I am a bit torn on Frozen. On the one hand, Disney actually showed up with two well-drawn female leads and a story that doesn’t treat romance as the main-event. Anna and Elsa have their own drive, and the sister-first angle still feels surprisingly bold for a family blockbuster.

On the other hand, the humour is pretty basic — broad, loud beats that feel focus-tested. The plot also moves at a sprint, rarely pausing long enough for the relationships to sink in. A little more breathing room would’ve made the emotional turns land with less “next scene, please” energy.

Visually, though? Fair play. The CGI is slick, the lighting is gorgeous, and the whole thing has a crisp, colourful winter gloss.

So yes, I admire what it’s trying to do. I liked spending time with Anna and Elsa, and I’m glad it became such a phenomenon. It just doesn’t quite have the wit or space to match its own aims.

I like to think I’ve got a decent stomach for war films. Then this one puts you in Warsaw on 25 September 1944 and turns “escape” into a nasty little word. A battered Home Army unit heads for the sewers, and the further they go, the less “out” feels like a real direction.

Wajda makes the underground a grim second world — part escape route, part confessional, all labyrinth. The camera crowds in, the sound is drip, breath, and panic, and the moments that sting aren’t speeches but scraps: a joke that lands with a thud, a tenderness that can’t do the job, a dawning sense that maps are just wishful thinking.

It’s devastating, but never showy. The Cannes prize in 1957 makes sense. Kanal respects courage — and refuses to pretend it comes with a guarantee.

It doesn’t feel like you watch this so much as you get pinned in place by it. No melodrama, no rescue — just Bresson showing how a kid gets worn down by a thousand small cruelties.

Mouchette isn’t destroyed by one single incident. It’s the whole setup: poverty treated like a character flaw, constant judgement from adults and peers, meanness dressed up as “discipline”, and any “help” served with a side of superiority. Even when she lashes out, it’s survival — that’s what a cornered child looks like when she’s had enough of being measured and found wanting.

Nadine Nortier is terrific: all glare, stiffness, and exhausted pride. Bresson’s style is spare but never empty — it keeps you close, and it keeps you honest. By the end, you’re not debating her decisions. You’re furious at how many people decided she didn’t matter.