Film Reviews by griggs

The first anxious days of school come rushing back in Playground, with all their dread, confusion, and whispered alliances. Nora’s-eye view—literally at her height—is a cracking device: corridors loom, classrooms intimidate, and every playground slight feels seismic. The child acting is superb, startlingly natural without ever tipping into stagey precocity.

The direction nails atmosphere, but the story is another matter. The ending is signposted so aggressively it may as well arrive with flashing lights and a marching band. By the halfway mark, you know exactly where you’ll be dumped off, and the final stretch becomes less suspense than waiting-room tedium. Seventy-two minutes feels like a blessing, not a constraint.

As a portrait of childhood unease, it stings. As a piece of storytelling, it plays its hand far too soon.

A donkey may not seem the likeliest guide to the sublime, yet Bresson makes him so. Au hasard Balthazar follows the animal as he’s handed from one owner to another—some cruel, some careless, a few briefly kind. Each passage feels more fable than plot, the donkey enduring human folly with a stubborn calm.

The allegory is clear—Balthazar as martyr—but the film never sermonises. Bresson pares life down to fragments: a hand’s twitch, a face half-lit, a bell echoing in the air. Out of this restraint comes a strange radiance. A cart across a field, or the donkey’s patient gaze, is enough to carry meaning.

What remains isn’t piety but recognition: that persistence itself, however battered, can illuminate the world.

A lazy Sunday at the lake, a picnic, a bit of flirting—on paper, not much to hang a film on. Yet People on Sunday carries the peculiar weight of history. Shot in 1929 with non-actors, it freezes a Berlin just before friends—it's playful in ways that still feel familiar. These aren't the Weimar years of smoky cabarets and Lisa Minnelli cosplay, but ordinary Berliners joking, lounging, and living.

What keeps it from feeling like a museum piece is the humour. A squabble over sandwiches, a bit of clowning in the lake, the gentle digs between friends—it's playful in ways that still feel familiar. These aren't the Weimar years of smoky cabarets and Liza Minnelli cosplay, but ordinary Berliners joking, lounging, and living.

It isn't gripping cinema, but as a time capsule—funny, fleeting, fragile—it's worth opening.

A parade of elephants, trapeze artists, and painted clowns—Cecil B. DeMille throws it all into the ring in The Greatest Show on Earth. What emerges isn’t a masterpiece so much as a stitched-together spectacle: romance under the big top, rivalry on the high wire, melodrama in the sawdust.

Nothing here truly soars. The acting does the job, the dialogue clunks along, the set pieces impress without dazzling. Yet taken together, the film trundles forward like its own circus train—gaudy, noisy, impossible to ignore. The much-touted train wreck is the peak of the show, though even that feels more contrived than cataclysmic.

What lingers isn’t artistry but overload: act upon act, until you surrender. Not the greatest by any stretch, but a reminder that sometimes DeMille’s showmanship was more about filling the tent than lifting the spirit.

A river barge drifts past, carrying with it a strange mix of poetry and grit. What makes L’Atalante so striking isn’t the story—newlyweds adjusting to married life afloat—but how Jean Vigo frames it. Every shot feels like it’s been breathed into existence: mist, water, movement, all in service of atmosphere rather than plot mechanics. Pere Jules, with his cluttered cabin of oddities and tattoos that seem to have their own personalities, steals scenes with anarchic charm, while the kittens scampering around the deck add a touch of scruffy magic.

It’s all the more heartbreaking knowing Vigo never saw his vision embraced—dead at 29, dismissed by critics, only to be rediscovered later as a minor miracle of cinema. You sense what he might have gone on to create. Direction is the real star here: lyrical, inventive, and playful even in its melancholy. Beauty lies in the drift, not the destination.

Rain, mud, coal buckets sliding endlessly across the skyline—Tarr’s world here is all entropy and erosion. The story of Karrer, a washed-up man clinging to an indifferent singer, feels less like a drama and more like a demonstration: long takes, slow repetition, and degradation staged with clinical precision. At times it plays like an exercise in film-making, a sketch for greater things to come.

Damnation narrows its gaze to personal decay. Karrer’s obsession rots from within, leaving him humiliated, barking into the void. By contrast, Werckmeister Harmonies widens the scope to a whole community unravelling—society collapsing rather than just one man. Seen in that light, this film feels like a practice run toward the later masterpiece.

Still, there’s a hypnotic pull in Tarr’s bleak vision. Life seems to be rotting before our eyes, and the rain never stops. You endure the gloom, half-admiring the method, half-waiting for the payoff Tarr would soon deliver.

It’s easy to forget that David Lean, master of sweeping epics, could also turn his hand to comedy. Hobson’s Choice proves it, a slyly funny and surprisingly warm tale of stubborn fathers, ambitious daughters, and unexpected romance.

Charles Laughton gives a performance for the ages, a masterclass in physical comedy. From his staggering gait to his blustering outbursts, he makes Hobson both grotesque and oddly sympathetic. Against him, John Mills quietly steals the show: starting as a timid bootmaker, he blossoms into someone capable of standing his ground, his growth as satisfying as any epic character arc Lean ever staged.

What makes the film linger isn’t just its humour, but the way it balances satire with tenderness. For all the bluster and belly laughs, there’s real affection here, both for its characters and for the working-class world it portrays. An unsung triumph, and Lean in a playful mood.

Winning the Palme d’Or might make you expect a soaring tale of inspiration, but The Class is anything but your typical classroom drama. There’s no saintly teacher conjuring miracles from “problem kids,” no redemption arc that ties everything with a bow.

Instead, it’s a film about survival. François Bégaudeau, who also wrote the book, plays a version of himself as a teacher navigating a modern Paris classroom. His performance feels unvarnished, never heroic, often uncertain—exactly as teaching is. Around him, the students (played by non-professionals) are remarkable: argumentative, funny, cruel, bright, and inconsistent, sometimes all in the same scene. Their naturalism gives the film its charge.

Laurent Cantet’s direction deserves praise too. Shot in a documentary-like style, the camera rarely leaves the classroom, catching glances, tensions, and flare-ups that feel as if they weren’t staged at all. The result is immersive, occasionally exhausting, and entirely convincing. What emerges is a portrait not of redemption, but of the stamina it takes for teachers—an underrated profession if ever there was one—to simply endure.

Time has been kinder to Showgirls than the critics who first skewered it. What once seemed lurid trash now plays as sly, strange, and oddly compelling. It’s still a mess, but one with purpose, ambition, and a glittering visual confidence.

Paul Verhoeven directs with satirical bite, stripping Vegas to sequins and sleaze. Elizabeth Berkley’s Nomi—raw nerves and wild swings—seems unhinged at first, until you realise it’s exactly the right register for the world she inhabits. The excess—sex, dance, violence—pushes so far past taste it doubles back into a kind of artistry.

For all its bravado, the ending stumbles. After the spectacle, the final beat lands flat, as if the film couldn’t quite follow through. Still, reappraised, Showgirls is more than a camp curio: brash, uneven, unforgettable, and deserving of the cult it has earned.

For such a cult film, I expected more—more chaos, more gross-outs, more laughs. What’s here is a romp with flashes of fun, but it never quite reaches the delirium its reputation suggests.

John Belushi, of course, is the engine—his Bluto a whirlwind of pratfalls, food fights, and anarchic energy. Around him, though, the film feels thin: most characters are sketches built to service gags rather than a story. The result is a patchwork of set pieces. The second act drags, stretching hijinks without escalation.

Still, it’s easy to see why Animal House left its mark. It bottled a spirit of campus rebellion that felt both juvenile and oddly liberating, and it paved the way for countless imitators—though first doesn’t always mean best. Taken on its own, it’s more wry than wild, more shrug than shock: a film that sparked a genre but doesn’t quite blow the roof off anymore.

Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow is a striking debut feature, a film both intimate and political. Set in Lagos in 1993, it follows two young brothers briefly reunited with their father, a man who has been more myth than presence in their lives. Over the course of a single day, they encounter not only his warmth but also the messiness of his history.

At first the reunion has the giddy energy of novelty, a childlike joy in simply being seen. But as the day progresses, their father’s world is revealed—his ideals, his failings, and the scars left by a Nigeria under military rule. Through whispered conversations, sidelong glances, and moments that slip between tenderness and discomfort, the boys begin to see him as he truly is: flawed, compromised, yet still deserving of their love.

What gives the film its weight is how deftly it balances personal revelation with political backdrop. Lagos is alive on screen: restless, uncertain, full of both danger and possibility. Some stretches drag and a few beats feel overstated, but the honesty holds firm. My Father’s Shadow is a rich, heartfelt, and rewarding coming-of-age story, one that lingers precisely because it insists that love is clearest when illusions fall away.

The title promises cosmic camp, and the film fires up its boosters right away. With a planet called Clitopolis and villains known as the Straight White Maliens, it’s clear this galaxy has no time for subtlety. The animation is bright, cheeky, and knowingly queer, full of gags that feel as familiar as cats on the sofa or flannel on a Sunday.

The jokes are relentless—sometimes light-years faster than the story. You sense more effort went into the puns than the plot—not something to complain about. Still, the script circles its own orbit, looping like an old ex who keeps reappearing at the same café. Funny, yes, but a little thin on propulsion.

And yet, there’s no denying the charm. Lesbian Space Princess may not conquer the galaxy, but it twinkles with warmth and camp invention. It is, without doubt, the best animated film about a lesbian space princess—complete with riffs on thespian lesbians—that I have ever seen. Not boldly going so much as second-date U-Hauling through the stars, it’s a constellation of winks that leaves you smiling.

The story follows Ángela, a deaf woman expecting her first child, and her fear of missing the milestones most parents take for granted. What emerges is an intimate drama about love, language, and the quiet weight of anticipation.

Miriam Garlo gives Ángela a strength edged with fragility, while Álvaro Cervantes is affecting as her partner Héctor—well-meaning, caring, yet often out of his depth. Eva Libertad’s direction is restrained, keeping hands and expressions in full view, with a camera that favours closeness over gloss. Sound design does the rest, shifting from silence to noise to mirror Ángela’s world.

At one point the soundtrack drops away, immersing us in muffled calm before jolting into shrill distortion when she straps on the hearing aids she hates. It’s a simple device but devastatingly effective: empathy delivered through form.

The film also captures the contradictions of new motherhood—moments of joy pierced by fear, anxiety, and doubt. A few scenes overstate their point, but its honesty carries it. Deaf is often heartbreaking, especially in showing Ángela’s dread of missing her child’s “firsts.” It’s less a message film than a portrait of communication under strain—awkward, moving, and deeply human.

Some comedies land in the moment and vanish; others lodge in the culture until quoting them becomes second nature. This one is firmly in the latter camp. “Turn it up to eleven” isn’t just a line anymore—it’s shorthand for excess itself.

What Rob Reiner and his cast pulled off still crackles with invention. By playing it straight, they made parody sharper than broad satire ever manages. The band is absurd, but never reduced to a punchline. They’re ridiculous and, somehow, heartbreakingly real. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer walk the fine line between self-delusion and sincerity, which is why the jokes feel fresher than many of the rock anthems they skewer.

The mockumentary form has been copied endlessly since, but few match the precision here. This Is Spinal Tap is both a send-up and a love letter to rock pomp, a film as clever as it is silly. It might just be the funniest rock film ever to take itself seriously.

Some sequels arrive decades later with the weight of myth. This one ambles in with a grin, a few fresh riffs, and the confidence that a reunion is reason enough. It’s a good, funny film—just not the kind that will be quoted to death or stitched onto T-shirts.

The band is older, slower, and still magnificently ridiculous. The humour leans more on nostalgia than invention, but it works often enough to keep the amps buzzing. Cameos pop up like surprise solos, adding sparkle even when the jokes themselves don’t quite reach eleven.

What’s missing is that anarchic sense of discovery the original nailed—mockumentary as revelation. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues doesn’t reinvent the form; it feels less mockumentary than traditional comedy, it plays the hits, slightly out of tune but still toe-tapping. For fans, that’s enough: not legendary, but a warm encore.