Film Reviews by griggs

There’s a parcel waiting for Marie at the theatre on a rough dress-rehearsal day for Swan Lake, and inside is Henrik’s diary — thirteen years of “don’t think about it” suddenly back on the music stand. A few pages in, and she’s on a boat to the island where it all started, because the past has appalling manners and perfect timing.

The summer story isn’t a glossy montage romance. It’s slow, awkward, and properly human, building towards that quiet click of “oh… this actually matters.” Bergman lets the joy play out in full, then keeps its shadow just off-screen, so even the light moments have a faint ache.

Maj-Britt Nilsson is the quiet miracle: all straight-backed discipline, then the smallest softening as she reads. Birger Malmsten gives Henrik an earnest warmth, Georg Funkquist brings a twitchy edge, and Gruffman the dog steals scenes with shaggy authority.

This had been circled for ages: Wilder, Lemmon, MacLaine — a trio that usually doesn’t miss. If The Apartment is Wilder doing New York bite, Irma la Douce is him taking a holiday in a knowingly studio-built Paris, and it’s hard not to come along.

Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon are the glue. Their warm, unforced chemistry makes the bonkers setup feel oddly plausible. You stop auditing the plot and start enjoying the timing: the pauses, the reactions, the way a look lands the gag before the line does.

It’s also unapologetically long for a comedy, and that’s the only real gamble. The joke-to-groan ratio stays comfortably healthy — more hits than misses — and even the flatter moments drift by with a smile. It wobbles late on, but by then you’ve had plenty of fun, and you’ll forgive the scenic route.

Expected a frosty grief piece; got Emma Thompson in Fargo country, treating a scoped gun like standard kit. She’s heading to a Minnesota lake to scatter her husband’s ashes, takes a wrong turn, and finds blood on snow, a captive teenager, and a couple who make the air feel thinner. Judy Greer is gloriously vicious, Marc Menchaca pure menace, and Thompson’s decency turns the choice—drive on or intervene—into suspense. Cold enough to sting your teeth.

I’ve got a soft spot for films that treat failure as a full-time job, preferably with a decent punchline and a shred of grace. Broadway Danny Rose does it with warmth, bite, and zero snobbery.

The framing is the masterstroke: old comics at Carnegie Deli swapping stories that turn Danny into a folk hero of second-rate showbiz. It’s been widely borrowed, but rarely this clean. You can see the Curb Your Enthusiasm blueprint in the way tiny favours spiral into misunderstandings, embarrassment, and moral cornering.

Woody Allen plays Danny as optimism in a bad suit; Mia Farrow’s Tina is all sparkle and self-sabotage. Decency has never looked so funny — or so brave.

Some musicals flirt; this one strides onstage and grabs the mic. Funny Girl is, above all, a Streisand delivery system — and fair play, it delivers.

She's funny without mugging, vulnerable without begging, and she sings like she's turning nerves into rocket fuel. The film's central bargain is classic showbiz maths: how much of yourself can you spend on stage before there's nothing left of you to left to love?

Omar Sharif is absurdly handsome as Nick Arnstein, but the romance feels sketched, so the heartbreak lands right on schedule rather than as a shock. Still, when "Don't Rain on My Parade" hits, it's pure momentum. A bit baggy, hugely charismatic, and carried by one unstoppable voice.

I'd expected a tidy, rules-of-the-room whodunnit — a straight version of Clue: a body in the study and a lot more etiquette. Instead Sleuth mutates into a psychological cat-and-mouse game: theatrical, needling, and fizzing with an awkward, undeniable sexual charge.

The real pleasure is watching those two trade insults like they're serving canapés at a posh wake — sharp, petty, and strangely nourishing. You can see the DNA that Knives Out later remixed.

It's this close to perfect... except it commits the ultimate cowardice: after two hours stoking their sexual tension, it pulls out at the last second.

Some comfort films are just the cinematic equivalent of beige. This one’s a proper pick-me-up — warm-hearted, properly funny, and put together with real craft.

Cluny Brown is silly but never stupid. It glides along on farce fuel, then slips the blade in: class anxiety, good manners as a weapon, and those “polite” little cruelties that land harder because everyone keeps smiling. The characters feel observed rather than invented — nobody’s a cardboard cut-out, even when they’re posing like one.

Jennifer Jones gives Cluny a bright, stubborn spark, the kind you can’t politely pat out. Charles Boyer is deliciously dry as Belinski, dispensing charm like a quiet insult in a well-cut suit. Lubitsch treats society like a starched shirt: crisp, expensive, and begging to be creased. You leave lighter, and a bit more allergic to snobbery.

Some films want to tell you a story. This one wants to whip you into a frenzy, then quiz you afterwards.

The Testament of Ann Lee makes its Shaker founder both prophet and problem: a woman preaching gender and social equality while asking her flock to surrender to a vision. It plays like Suspiria spliced with Eggers’ The Witch — a folk-horror musical where devotion feels less like comfort than pressure. The images are bold, the gestures bigger than life, and the mood is thick enough to cut with a hymn book.

Amanda Seyfried goes fierce and unvarnished, and Thomasin McKenzie and Lewis Pullman help the community feel lived-in. But the connective tissue can be thin: scenes crest, then drift, and the film doesn’t always tighten its grip when it needs to. Gorgeous, fascinating… and just a little short on payoff.

One minute you’re watching a mild-mannered tax inspector count paperclips; the next, a disembodied narrator is calmly announcing his doom. That jump from banal to bizarre is the best thing Stranger Than Fiction has in its back pocket.

Zach Helm’s script has a few fun, oddball touches, but it stays so sweet-natured that the existential dread barely gets a look-in. It’s a story about a story, yet it feels lighter than it would in Charlie Kaufman’s hands: fewer splinters, more rounded edges. Will Ferrell is likeable as Harold Crick, and Emma Thompson is game as novelist Karen Eiffel, typing him towards tragedy; Dustin Hoffman’s literature prof turns panic into a seminar with pleasing deadpan.

The romance with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s tax-resisting baker is charming on screen, professionally dodgy on paper — and the film never quite grapples with that. Smart idea, soft landing: it amuses, then fades.

Second time round, The Matrix clicked more for me — not in an “I’m joining the cult” way, but in a “fair play, that’s a well-oiled machine” way. The central choice still bites: comfort and obedience versus truth and responsibility. I just wish the film trusted that dilemma instead of padding it with faux-philosophical waffle in a long coat.

Keanu Reeves is perfectly blank as Neo (a feature, not a bug), Carrie-Anne Moss radiates cool competence, and Laurence Fishburne sells conviction like it comes with good tailoring. Hugo Weaving has the most fun as a suit-shaped nightmare.

The effects still look classy. Bullet time remains slick. The Nokia “Matrix phone”, though, now feels as archaeological as a floppy disk. Stylish and influential, but still not entirely my rabbit hole.

Brontë wasn’t on my GCSE reading list, and I’ve never rushed to fix that. Nor have I ever watched any other adaptations (though Buñuel’s and Andrea Arnold’s versions are still on the “one day” pile). So I came to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights with no baggage — just curiosity after a 50/50 run with her: Saltburn left me cold; Promising Young Woman didn’t.

I expected gothic delirium — moors, menace, and feelings big enough to count as weather. What I didn’t expect was it to play like a lavish period moodboard, with a nagging sense we’ve wandered onto some second-hand Poor Things sets: ornate, clever, and slightly too pleased with themselves.

Margot Robbie gives Cathy a brittle spark, and Jacob Elordi sells Heathcliff’s wounded pull, but the film keeps smoothing the mess that should make it hurt. Perfectly watchable. Not much of a haunting.

Some comedies feel like they’re being made up on the spot, and this is one of them. It’s full-tilt goofy: gags from every angle, little visual jokes hiding in the corners, and the film happily sprinting ahead without waiting for you to catch up.

The clever trick is the sci-fi wrapper. The “future” is mainly an excuse to take cheeky swings at the era it came from — political paranoia, moral panics, and all that self-important posturing.

It’s not perfectly even, though. The final stretch loosens up and starts to feel more skit-by-skit than sharply built. Still, there are laughs to spare, some properly old-school slapstick, and Diane Keaton bringing warmth and spark when it could’ve turned into pure silliness. Solid fun, just shy of top drawer.

Give Gaspard a beach, a guitar, and three smart women and he still manages to think he’s the main event. Rohmer lets his little social evasions pile up — the dithering, the self-excuses, the convenient misunderstandings — until his narrative about himself collapses under its own weight.

The film’s Brittany setting (Dinard and that breezy coastline) is so vivid you could treat it as a holiday postcard you can hear and smell. You could drift along on the atmosphere, but the story quietly tightens the screws.

Melvil Poupaud plays the frustrating romantic procrastinator with maddening accuracy, yet the real intelligence lives with Amanda Langlet and Gwenaëlle Simon: alert, funny, and several steps ahead of the man trying to turn them into footnotes. When the ego finally gets punctured, it’s sharp, clean, and deeply satisfying.

Graduation caps fly, and the soundtrack drops Gary Glitter — an instant wince. From there it’s glossy ’90s: Gap shifts, coffee-shop hangs, friends in the same room. I miss the clothes; I don’t miss the certainty.

It plays like an American cousin to This Life: chatty, aspirational, and quietly rattled. I'm Gen X at the tail end, so it never mirrored my twenties; it pitched them. The film also treats Vickie's sexual confidence like a hazard sign, capped off with an HIV scare that screams early-90s anxiety.

When it’s good, it nails the post-uni fog: job dread, relationship hedging, everyone auditioning for adulthood. Ryder makes Lelaina sharp and sincerely irritating, especially once her documentary gets bought and re-cut into someone else’s rhythm. Hawke’s Troy is charisma in a leather jacket — and still a thin bet, which makes the final swoon feel oddly forgiving.

A few minutes in, I caught myself thinking of Ozu’s A Story of Floating Weeds: a travelling kabuki troupe living on pride, pocket change, and keeping up appearances like it’s a second job. Ozu watches that world with a wry shrug. Mizoguchi watches it like he’s seen how the trick is done — and who gets hurt in the process.

Women and their suffering sit right at the centre, and the film refuses to call it “just how things are” with a straight face. Otoku (Kakuko Mori) is punished for honesty, rewarded with obligation, and slowly squeezed into whatever shape the family name requires. Kiku (Shotaro Hanayagi) gets the spotlight, but the cost is paid offstage. The patriarchy doesn’t even need to shout; it wins by being the default setting.

This is Mizoguchi in full glide: long takes, barely a close-up, the camera drifting through rooms and corridors until the building feels like an accomplice. The pace is patient because the work is patient — rehearsals, costume fussing, backstage labour, old routines repeated until they start to sound like fate.

By the end, the triumph lands, the damage lands harder, and the applause feels less like celebration than a warning shot wrapped in silk.