Film Reviews by griggs

The opening is unforgettable: an iron mask nailed to a witch’s face, its spikes piercing skin as blood seeps through. For a moment you think you’re in for the full nightmare Mario Bava’s reputation suggests. But Black Sunday never quite sustains that ferocity. Instead it drifts into gothic fog and crumbling castles, with wandering doctors who seem more lost than the audience. The film looks gorgeous—shadows curling across Barbara Steele’s wide, haunted eyes—but beauty doesn’t always translate into drive.

It is sometimes mislabelled the first giallo, but the claim doesn’t stand. Can a black-and-white gothic, steeped in atmosphere rather than spectacle, really count? If anything it’s proto-giallo, though even that feels like a stretch. In truth this is gothic horror in the classic mould: execution masks, haunted ruins, candlelit corridors. And yet, within those trappings, you catch glimmers of what Bava would later unleash in vivid colour—lurid style, violence staged like theatre, horror as art direction.

For all its striking images, I found myself drifting with it rather than pulled along. The mask may scar the memory, but the rest of the film settles into faint impressions—a striking prologue to a career, rather than the full statement.

Argento's second feature knots itself into a whodunnit that's equal parts pulp thriller and grisly sideshow. The Cat O'Nine Tails the essentials: vivid suspects, inventive murders, and a slinky Morricone score that keeps the tension taut. The oddball pairing of a blind crossword designer and his precocious niece brings warmth, though their sleuthing never gets the space it deserves.

When Argento stages a set piece, he’s at his best—the train station killing early on is a stylish standout, and the later deaths each find their own lurid flourish. A streak of dark humour flickers through, a sly reminder that style is as much the point as suspense. Yet the mystery sprawls, stretching longer than it needs to. Not Argento at his peak, but a blood-streaked stepping stone that shows how quickly he was finding his signature.

Once overlooked, now rightly celebrated, this isn’t a stylish gem of 1960s Italian cinema set to the pulse of a pop soundtrack. I Knew Her Well follows Adriana, a young woman chasing glamour and celebrity without the armour to survive them. She drifts through parties, auditions, and fleeting affairs with wide-eyed charm, but beneath the sparkle lies a vulnerability she never recognises until it’s too late.

Antonio Pietrangeli directs with deceptive lightness, letting the music and fashion dazzle while exposing how fragile the surface is. The satire of fame and the indifference of men cut deep, yet what endures is Adriana herself—unguarded, uncertain, heartbreakingly human. By th trimester the story reaches its inevitable close, foreknowledge only sharpens the impact. The film doesn’t just sting, it leaves a bruise, lingering long after the last song fades.

Stylish, savage, and brazenly modern for the mid-60s. Blood and Black Lace doesn’t bother with the story so much as the spectacle, and spectacle struts down the runway. Mario Bava paints murder in neon—saturated reds, queasy greens, icy blues—each killing staged like twisted fashion photography.

The story is simple: models stalked in a haute-couture house of horrors. What matters is the look—the mannequins, the masks, the camera gliding like a voyeur through velvet shadows. It’s giallo in full colour and proto-slasher too, defining the grammar of stalk-and-slice long before the genre had a name.

It often veers into camp, its elegance slipping into melodrama, but that’s part of the charm. The shocks still land, the images dazzle, and the sheer audacity feels startingly modern. This isn’t just horror—it’s murder as high fashion.

Some directors burst onto the scene with fireworks; others with a quiet shuffle of cards across a Reno table. Hard Eight does the latter, and it’s all the more impressive for its restraint. Philip Baker Hall anchors the film with a granite performance, turning minimal gestures into riveting presence, while John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and a twitchy Samuel L. Jackson orbit him with unexpected warmth and menace.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut already shows the instincts of a master—lingering on silences, glances, and the weight of conversation rather than empty theatrics. The dialogue snaps with wit and edge, often more compelling than the gambler’s tale beneath it, and the characters give the film its pulse. Even if the story is spare, the craft and performances make it sing. Not a jackpot, but a winning hand that announced Anderson was here to stay.

It’s hard to imagine a duller ode to triumph that so neatly betrays its subject. Stand or Fall: The Remarkable Rise of Brighton and Hove Albion tries to be a rousing chronicle but reads more like a club press release with extra archive. The documentary not only fails cinematically; it sport washes a team built on the spoils of gambling and that has, in recent years, been more adept at courting corporate respectability than cherishing a messy, local soul.

Where a great sporting film should excavate passion and conflict, this one polishes away discomfort: safe interviews, anodyne montage, and an insistence that every boardroom decision was inevitable genius. The club’s identity here is sanitized into a marketable myth — all strategy slides and sponsor logos, none of the grit that makes football mean anything.

Call it what it is: the worst sporting documentary I’ve seen — pure rubbish that flatters a club more interested in growth charts than grit.

Basements are built for storage, not salvation. The Man in My Basement proves it—an eerie psychodrama where racism and capitalism seep through the walls like damp. Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) inherits not just an eight-generation Long Island house but its rot: debts, ghosts, and the weight of history. Nadia Latif’s debut traps him in the 1990s, as the TV mutters about the Rwandan genocide while he barters his late mother’s West African masks to keep the bank away.

Then comes Anniston Bennet: Willem Dafoe—because only he could turn a rented cellar into purgatory. He arrives with cash and strange luggage, grinning like the devil at a bargain. Supplicant on paper, tormentor in practice, he needles Charles with reminders that ownership itself is built on violence. Their roles flip and warp, yet never settle. The allegory tightens, the nightmare coils, and even waking feels like a bad dream.

Uneven, but its darkness lingers—less a story than a reminder of what’s buried beneath the floorboards.

By the mid-80s, Argento was throwing everything at the wall, and Phenomena is the proof. The story makes almost no sense—a daft meandering mess with characters who sound like they’re reading from a mistranslated microwave instruction manual. Jennifer Connelly, in her debut, already looks like she’d rather be dancing with David Bowie in Labyrinth than swatting giant insects, while Donald Pleasence gamely keep it afloat.

Yet for all its tedium, there’s a delirious charm. Argento douses the film in unholy shades of blue and purple, cranks up the wind machine until it’s practically a character, and slams Goblin’s prog against Iron Maiden and Motörhead. The result is chaotic, ridiculous, and oddly hypnotic.

The first two acts may test your patience, but the third goes gloriously off the rails—a lunatic finale that makes you forget how much he’s recycling from his own tricks. Forget greatness: this is Argento at his most unhinged, and somehow that’s the charm.

It’s always a treat to stumble across a post-war British gem like Code of Scotland Yard (also known as The Shop at Sly Corner). The story is a bit paint-by-numbers and sometimes strays, but it’s never dull. Oscar Homolka is the reason: as the roguish antique dealer, he steals your heart even while scheming in the shadows.

There’s the thrill of spotting Diana Dors in her screen debut—blink and you’ll miss her, but the trivia sparkle lingers. The supporting cast pull their weight, the mood is richly post-war, and even when the plot drifts, it stays engaging.

Not a lost classic, but a superb example of mid-century British cinema balancing crime, charm, and character. It deserves a bigger audience.

Companion is a film that ambitiously attempts to explore weighty themes, but perhaps takes on more than it can fully develop. On the surface, it engages with AI and robotic ethics, but its real substance lies in its poignant examination of domestic abuse, coercion, control, and the morally murky intersection of self-defence and violence. These elements add depth and a sense of empathy, but the film’s tight 90-minute runtime doesn’t give them the space they deserve. Despite its ambition and moments of genuine tension, the trailer completely undermined my enjoyment, which inexplicably spoils the film’s major twist. Who thought that was a good idea? Keeping the reveal for the film itself would have made for a far more potent experience. In the end, Companion is an entertaining but frustrating watch, not a failure of technology or storytelling, but of poor marketing and bad decisions, made by humans.

While Speak No Evil fails to keep you on the edge of your seat, no other performance this year will scare you as much or beat the dramatic performance of James McAvoy's unexpected transformation into the Incredible Hulk.

Speak No Evil is the prime example of why you shouldn't keep in touch with people you meet on holiday. No Christmas cards, no emails, no messages, nothing. The lesson here is clear: the next time you come across a charming family, enjoy your trip and leave it at that!

The first half of Tenet had me hooked (once I put the subtitles on). The setup was intriguing, the time inversion concept was clever, and it felt like it was building to something big. But then it collapsed under its own weight. What started as an intelligent thriller turned into a cold, overcomplicated spectacle, where endless exposition and massive action scenes replaced any real tension. The second half might work for you if you think explosions alone make a great film. Otherwise, it is a slog.

As usual with Nolan, the female characters get the short end of the stick. Elizabeth Debicki’s role is almost entirely about being a mother. At the same time, the rest of the film is packed with men in suits explaining things and shooting guns.

The idea of time inversion in warfare had real potential, and some of the action sequences were impressive. But in the end, it felt more like a technical showcase than a film with real heart or meaning.

Conclave is a solid film that nearly matches its intriguing premise but falls short in critical areas. The set-up promises claustrophobia, but the tension never fully translates to the audience. While rules are broken with abandon, there’s little sense of jeopardy. What saves the film is its stellar cast. Ralph Fiennes is magnetic, delivering layers of quiet authority and veiled emotion, while Stanley Tucci balances wit and weariness perfectly. Isabella Rossellini adds a touch of elegance and mystery.

It’s an Oscar darling in the making, with nominations almost guaranteed—deserved or not. And with its potential to seriously challenge for Best Adapted Screenplay, Conclave is a film that keeps you hopeful and excited. It's a mixed bag, but the performances make it worthwhile.

Gladiator II, a polished echo of the original, is a testament to Ridley Scott's cinematic powers. It follows his hit-and-miss Napoleon biopic last year, which was rather miss than hit. The sequel captures the original's essence while introducing elements, making it a worthy successor.

Paul Mescal in the lead role - inherited from the ever-growling Russel Crowe, who was at the top of his career in the original - holds his ground against Denzel Washington, whose charisma cleaves through the screen as effortlessly as his character's sword.

Ridley Scott admits he was prompted to revisit Gladiator by the acclaim he received from those too young to have seen the original on the big screen. His mission to lure Gen Z away from their streaming devices may help to save cinema, ushering in a new era of appreciation for the big screen. But for the love of Jupiter, I hope they quickly learn that it isn't just a big iPad with comfy chairs. No pausing, swiping, mid-film selfies, dashes to the bar, or running commentary required. Screen four at your local cinema isn't the Colosseum but a place where the magic of film of this scale truly comes alive, offering a unique and immersive experience that can't be replicated at home.