Film Reviews by griggs

There’s a fine film hiding inside Something Wicked This Way Comes — you just have to peer through the smoke and carnival lights to find it. Ray Bradbury’s small-town nightmare of temptation and lost innocence should be a perfect fit for Disney’s early-1980s flirtation with darker material, but the tone wobbles between spooky fairytale and Sunday-school sermon. Disney’s nervous re-editing makes it uneven, but the atmosphere still casts a spell.

Still, the mood is rich. Jonathan Pryce makes a marvellously sinister Mr Dark, all snake-oil charm and velvet menace, and the autumnal setting drips with nostalgia and dread in equal measure. When they work, the carousel sequences feel like childhood dreams curdling into nightmares.

It doesn’t quite earn its goosebumps, but there’s a strange warmth to the chill. Imperfect though it is, it still captures something rare: that moment when growing up starts to feel like a kind of loss.

For a film about schools colliding, this one spends remarkably little time in the classroom. The Happiest Days of Your Life sets up a great premise — an all-boys and an all-girls school accidentally forced to share a building — but never quite makes the most of it. Adapted from a stage play, it feels more like staff-room satire than schoolyard chaos, with the teachers getting the laughs while the pupils fade into the background.

Still, as a comic showcase for Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford, it’s hard to beat. Their duelling egos and impeccable timing turn even the smallest squabble into farce. The script is surprisingly cheeky for 1950, poking fun at propriety while never quite breaking it.

By the end, the energy dips and the farce turns muddled rather than madcap. Yet it remains a charming slice of postwar British chaos — all manners, mishaps, and just a hint of mischief.

For a film about ticket inspectors, Kontroll has remarkably little to do with fare dodging or enforcement. That might have made a decent documentary; this is something stranger — a battle between good and evil set in the bowels of the earth, the Budapest Metro standing in for it. The title itself comes from Hungarian slang for these inspectors — “kontrolls” — who roam the tunnels like fallen angels with clipboards. The whole thing plays out underground, where fluorescent lights flicker, tunnels echo, and reality feels one missed stop away from breaking down.

Nimród Antal keeps it moving at a steady pace, blending thriller, dark comedy, and myth without ever settling on one. Shot entirely after hours in the Budapest Metro, its greys and grime give everything a ghostly pallor, which only makes the terrible early-2000s fashion pop all the more — lending the film a weird, timeless edge.

Kontroll isn’t always coherent, but it’s moody, original, and oddly haunting — proof there’s more to the underground than just lost tickets and fluorescent strip lighting.

Revenge rarely looks this slick or feels this bleak. I Saw the Devil turns the cat-and-mouse thriller into something far more vicious — a looping nightmare where hunter and hunted trade places until there’s nothing left but pain. It’s part procedural, part horror show, all about how far a man can go before becoming the monster he’s chasing.

Kim Jee-woon directs with cold precision, staging the violence like choreography — brutal, elegant, and exhausting. Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik are magnetic opposites: one icy with control, the other revelling in chaos, both circling each other with grim fascination. The film’s graphic violence made it controversial in South Korea, yet that extremity serves a purpose — to strip away the glamour from vengeance and leave only its consequences.

It’s not an easy watch, nor should it be. Beneath the carnage beats a moral question that refuses to die: when revenge becomes routine, who’s left to call themselves human? I Saw the Devil sits comfortably within the Korean New Wave of revenge cinema — alongside Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance — and, like them, it stares back — unblinking.

It's always nice when a history film remembers that politics can actually be fun to watch, and Lincoln mostly pulls that off. Spielberg gives it his usual shine—great sets, warm light, and a script that trusts you to keep up. It's your classic awards-season biopic, but done with real care.

Daniel-Day Lewis is as meticulous as ever, though his Lincoln feels more gentle than gripping. The real spark comes from Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, tearing through Congress like a man allergic to nonesense. The rest of the cast is stacked and doesn''t waste a scene.

It moves a little slowly and stands a little too straight, but it's beautifully made and surprisingly sharp. Not everything hits, but when it doesn, it's proof that politics and Spielberg can still pull you in without the fireworks.

There’s something endearingly buttoned-up about this British caper—the sort of film where the planning takes twice as long as the crime. The League of Gentlemen assembles a crew of ex-army chancers for one last pay-day, all spiffingly organised with military precision. It’s more about logistics than lawbreaking, and you half expect someone to complete a risk-assessment before cracking a safe.

Basil Dearden keeps its brisk, and the cast is a sharp mix of familiar faces—Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, and Roger Livesy—with a young Ollie Reed thrown in for a split second uncredited cameo for good measure. The tone treads the line between comedy and crime, never quite settling on either.

It's good fun in that Sunday-afternoon way—smartly written, well-mannered, and thoroughly British—but it never quite catches fire. You can see its fingerprints on later heist films, particularly Reservoir Dogs, even if it feels more rehearsal than robbery.

Director Don Coscarelli is best known for the Phantasm series and Bubba Ho-Tep. Phantasm was weird, eerie, and oddly cohesive—the kind of madness that made sense on its own terms. Bubba Ho-Tep, though was nonsense, and not nearly half as funny as it thought it was. John Dies at the End takes that same chaotic energy and doubles down, sprinting into full-blown absurdity.

Based on David Wong's cult novel, throws everything at the wall—time travel, psychic drugs, talking meat, parallel worlds—and then shrugs as none of it sticks. It wants to be clever, but mostly feels like chaos in search of a punchline. The tone staggers between horror, comedy, and cosmic gibberish, never settling anywhere for long.

There's imagination here, sure, but it's buried under its own noise. If Phantasm was weird in a way that lingered, this weird in a way that makes you wish you'd changed the changed the channel ten minutes in.

There’s plenty to enjoy in this sea-sprayed slice of studio sincerity, even if it sometimes drifts when it should sail. Captains Courageous tells of a pampered brat who takes an unplanned dip and resurfaces as a better human being—thanks to a crew of saintly Massachusetts fishermen who seem to moonlight as moral philosophers. It’s part adventure, part sermon, and pure 1930s gloss.

Spencer Tracy is all heart as Manuel, the kindly fisherman with an accent that drifts somewhere between Lisbon and Little Italy. It’s less Portuguese, more “Chico Marx goes nautical.” Still, he and young Freddie Bartholomew keep the film afloat through sheer earnestness.

It’s a bit slow, a bit syrupy, and very much a product of its time, but there’s a strange sincerity beneath all that varnish. Captains Courageous means every word of its salty sermon—and somehow, that’s what keeps it from sinking.

Haunting, suspenseful, and heartbreakingly tender, this is the rare fantasy that makes reality look scarier. Tigers Are Not Afraid blends the grit of City of God with the dark wonder of Pan’s Labyrinth, following a group of children left behind by Mexico’s drug wars, building their own fragile mythology to survive.

The film moves like a ghost story told in daylight — brutal and beautiful in equal measure. Its touches of the supernatural never distract from reality’s horror; they simply give it shape. The child actors are astonishing, grounding the magic in raw, lived-in emotion.

Issa López crafts something both intimate and universal — a fable about innocence clawing its way through violence. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s an unforgettable one: a story where fear prowls the streets, but courage still roars.

There’s something deliciously ironic about Martin Scorsese, master of mob mayhem, making a film about emotional restraint. The Age of Innocence swaps bullets for etiquette, yet the cruelty lands just as hard. Its world of hushed gossip and unspoken heartbreak feels both exquisite and suffocating — a velvet glove concealing a slow twist of the knife.

The narration can feel overbearing and the camera moves with restless elegance, but beneath that flourish beats a devastatingly human story. Love and duty wrestle in silence, and the real violence happens in the pauses between words. Whenever Winona Ryder is on screen, the film glows; she understands repression better than anyone.

Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing is pure sorcery, shaping glances into emotional detonations. It’s painfully romantic, stunningly tragic, and shows that Scorsese can wound just as deeply with a look as with a gun

Only Ealing could dream up something this absurd and make it feel entirely plausible. When a London neighbourhood uncovers an ancient charter declaring its independence from Britain, Passport to Pimlico turns bureaucracy into comedy gold and postwar gloom into a celebration of spirit. The idea’s so ridiculous it could only have come from Britain — and only from Ealing.

Stanley Holloway anchors the chaos with the warmth of a man who just wants life fair and proper, even when borders get blurry. Margaret Rutherford steals every scene as the gleefully eccentric historian who legitimises the madness, her voice quivering with patriotic pride and mild anarchy.

It’s sharp, funny, and quietly defiant — proof that rebellion can wear a cardigan and carry a shopping bag. Beneath the whimsy beats the best of British resilience: polite, inventive, and just a little bit bonkers.

There’s a special thrill when a mockumentary horror earns its format, and Noroi: The Curse does — at least for a while. It starts like standard shaky-cam fare, all jumpy framing and nervous chatter, but gradually builds a creeping unease that feels closer to J-horror than Hollywood hysteria. The atmosphere thickens; the dread seeps in, and suddenly you’re not watching actors — you’re watching something you shouldn’t.

The final 40 minutes are where it really comes alive, twisting from curiosity to full-blown panic. A few moments chilled me in that old-fashioned way — the kind that leaves you staring into dark corners long after.

It’s not flawless — the genre clichés still poke through — but it’s a welcome reminder that found footage can still unsettle when it trades noise for nuance. Sometimes all you need is a camera, a ghost, and the nerve to keep filming.

Catching the newly restored 4K version of Sholay was like seeing a legend scrubbed clean of dust — and finally breathing again. The restoration gleams, the colours blaze, and the ending, long buried by censorship, lands with far more weight than the version audiences knew for years.

You can feel the DNA of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in its bromance and banter, and the echoes of Leone and Corbucci in every wide shot and showdown. Yet Sholay makes these influences its own, turning the Western into something unmistakably Indian — grand, funny, tragic, and mythic all at once.

For all its swagger, what lingers isn’t the gunfire but the friendship, the moral code, and that dusty sense of fate closing in. It knows exactly what it’s doing — and does it better than almost anyone else.

There’s something charmingly morbid about Hammer’s late-period habit of turning legend into horror, and Countess Dracula fits that mould — just not snugly. Ingrid Pitt gives it her all as the ageing noblewoman who draws on virgins’ blood to stay young, but even her commitment can’t quite lift the film out of its gothic stupor.

It looks the part: candlelight, corsets, and cobwebs aplenty, with a stately pace that’s more courtly than creepy. The story should be wild, but the execution feels oddly polite — as if everyone’s too busy admiring the drapes to notice the corpses piling up.

There’s a good idea here about vanity, power, and the rot beneath refinement, but it never quite sinks its teeth in. Countess Dracula has atmosphere to spare; passion, though, is in short supply — a film that wants to be immortal yet ends up merely preserved.

The Wailing (Goksung, 2016) is a supernatural horror by Na Hong-jin that blurs the line between faith, superstition, and fear. It begins as a rural murder mystery — strange deaths, a nasty rash, a dazed killer — then spirals into something biblical, steeped in old Korean spirituality. The pace is slow but deliberate, letting unease seep in like damp through stone. By the time you realise what’s happening, the ground has already shifted under you.

What makes it so unsettling isn’t the violence, but the uncertainty. Every explanation feels half-right: shamanic ritual, Christian redemption, gossip, paranoia. Evil hides behind doubt, and Na’s control of tone — part folk horror, part spiritual crisis — keeps you suspended between belief and disbelief. The film’s craftsmanship is remarkable: precise editing, meticulous compositions, and sound design that creeps under your skin.

Its moral complexity lingers long after the screams fade. Is the stranger a demon or a scapegoat? Is the shaman saving souls or selling them? The film never says — and that restraint is its strength. Possession here is both spiritual and psychological, horror as human weakness made flesh. It’s dense, disorienting, and quietly gripping. I’m certainly going to have to watch it again, if only to be sure what I actually saw wasn’t a trick of the light.