Film Reviews by griggs

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.

Some films span continents to show off; this one does it to prove a point. Babel is about communication—or, more often, the painful lack of it. Language, culture, distance, grief: every barrier is a chance for wires to cross and lives to unravel.

Alejandro González Iñárritu weaves together stories from Morocco, Mexico, Japan, and the US, and while the film sometimes shows the strain of ambition, it mostly dazzles. The editing makes the world feel both vast and claustrophobic, while the cinematography finds beauty in desolation.

The cast is uniformly strong—Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Adriana Barraza stand out—but it's Rinko Kikuchi who leaves the deepest mark, her role a raw portrayal of teenage isolation.

Subtle it isn't—but neither are the things that divide us. Babel works best as a grand lament for the missed connections that shape our lives a reminder that being heard is as vital as being alive.

Women in Love may wear Edwardian costumes, but Ken Russell films it as a society in ruins. His characters behave as if the ruling elite, bloodied by war, had to turned to pleasure to mask decline. The mood is then filtered through the free-for-all of the 1960s, where consumer freedom and countercultural style gave the illusion of change. Russell’s direction is fearless, shifting from painterly beauty to operatic hysteria, and the cast meet him: Glenda Jackson crackles as Gudrun, Oliver Reed radiates power in decline as Gerald, Alan Bates makes Birkin a restless intellectual, and Jennie Linden steadies Ursula with quiet resolve. Together, they become a portrait of a class order splitting apart.

Gerald, the industrial baron, is capital made flesh—money, patriarchy, machinery. He is not toppled by revolt, but undone by his own contradictions. Birkin, the intellectual, dreams of star-shaped harmony of love and friendship. But it is a fantasy of the bourgeois mind, promising escape while leave the world untouched. The wrestling scene says it best: class and desire knotted together, the new middle class grappling with the old elite, neither side victorious.

Russell’s message to his generation is blunt: liberation intoxicates, but collapse does not guarantee renewal. Gerald’s end is no revolution—it it’s the blaze of a dying order that could burn everyone standing too close.

High school has rarely looked this grim. Massacre at Central High may dress itself up as a proto-slasher, but it’s really exploring the mechanics of violence rather than the body count. Yes, the acting is wooden and the production cheap, but the stripped-down world is oddly gripping: no adults, barely a soundtrack, just kids circling each other in a vacuum where power matters more than algebra.

That sparseness works. Knock off one tyrant and another pops up to take the crown — authoritarianism 101, acted out in lockers and corridors. With the school sealed off from any outside help, it plays like a petri dish left to rot, clumsy in parts but surprisingly effective. More importantly, the lesson isn’t just that bullies are bad, but that the system itself — the structures of power — regenerates as quickly as it’s torn down. A sharp allegory for wider society.

It’s not fun in the glossy sense — no slick thrills here — but that roughness gives it a hypnotic pull. Imagine a high-school morality play that stumbled into the slasher aisle. Not a masterpiece, but more than a trashy footnote: sharp, strange, and unsettlingly relevant.

Benjamin Button is pleasant enough while it plays, but leaves you wondering what exactly you’ve taken from it. The conceit of a man ageing backwards is ripe for insight, yet the film seems more impressed with its own trick than with what it says about life or love.

David Fincher directs with a steady hand, and the visual sleight that carries Brad Pitt through the decades still holds up. Cate Blanchett brings warmth to the middle stretch, their relationship forming the heart of the film, though the sentiment often tips into syrup.

It’s handsome, wistful, and big in scope, but the aftertaste is oddly thin. Not a disaster, just a film that drifts by — polished on the surface, hollow underneath — and gone from the mind as quickly as the hours we’ll never get back.

La Ronde is basically a game of romantic pass-the-parcel, except everyone unwraps each other. Anton Walbrook plays the ringmaster, slipping in and out with a smirk, keeping the whole contraption spinning while reminding us it’s all artifice.

Ophüls directs with his trademark elegance: the camera glides through bedrooms, ballrooms and boudoirs with such grace it’s as if seduced by the material itself. The cast deliver what’s needed — charming, witty, sometimes sly — but it’s the staging that lingers, not the faces.

And that’s my sticking point. I admire the elegance, the irony, even the bite, but I never felt swept up in the whirl. La Ronde is powered by lust and fuelled by hypocrisy — stylish, slyly sharp, endlessly in motion. I was left outside peering through the glass, which, come to think of it, may be exactly the point.