Film Reviews by griggs

Power corrupts, and All the King’s Men shows it with unnerving relevance. Willie Stark begins as a fiery man of the people, railing against elites and promising to clean up government, only to become the very swamp he claimed to fight. It’s a pattern that feels eerily familiar today.

Like Stark, Trump weaponised grievance, thrived on spectacle, and turned “outsider” rage into power. The difference is that while Stark rose from nothing, Trump was never outside wealth, media, or influence — only outside formal politics. Both men fed on resentment, promised salvation, and ended up mired in their own corruption. Trump’s 2016 rise, his refusal to accept defeat in 2020, and his plotting for 2024 feel like the same tragic cycle replayed with new props.

As drama, it’s driven less by subtlety than force. Broderick Crawford makes Stark compellingly brutish — a man both magnetic and terrifying, whose blunt charisma can carry a rally or crush dissent in the same breath. Mercedes McCambridge and John Ireland add grit in the margins, while Robert Rossen’s direction keeps the mood taut, even when the story tips into melodrama. The film has the sweep of a political epic, but also the intimacy of a character study, catching how power corrupts not just leaders but everyone orbiting them.

In its way, All the King’s Men might as well carry the “No Kings” banner — a reminder that strongmen aren’t saviours, and that power built on populist anger collapses under its own weight.

The story feels a bit creaky—a teacher in 1930s Edinburgh who thinks she’s shaping the future while mostly meddling in the lives of her pupils. Maggie Smith stops it from sinking, and it’s obvious why she won the Oscar. Without her, the film would be hard to endure.

Her Jean Brodie is witty, bossy, and unsettling, striding about the classroom in her self-declared “prime” while openly admiring Mussolini. The performace is charismatic enough that you almost get swept along, until the reality of her politics lands with a thud. The rest of the cast orbit around her like satellites, but Smith keeps the screen alive.

The film itself struggles with weightier agents, treating politics and sex in a stiff, stagey way. Still, Smith’s presence is magnetic. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie may stumble as cinema, but as a showcase for one of the greatest screen performances, it’s unforgettable.

Clever camera tricks and the odd jump-scare aside, this American take on Ringu mostly drains the life from what made the original unsettling. Instead of leaning into Japanese horror’s quiet dread and cultural unease, it piles on the gloss, volume, and a desaturated blue-grey palette, as if atmosphere could be conjured from colour grading alone.

There are moments when the tension lands—the infamous TV crawl still packs a punch—but they’re too rare to lift the film above formula. At the time, The Ring made waves and even launched a mini-boom in J-horror remakes. Looking back, it feels more like a pale shadow: a studio product that mistakes slickness for scare. The curse it spreads is familiarity, not fear.

By the early ’80s, mismatched duos weren’t new, but 48 Hrs. showed how the formula could thrive in an action-crime setting. A cop and a convict, oil and water, forced to team up — it’s simple enough, but Walter Hill plays it hard and fast, toggling between grit and banter.

Eddie Murphy, in his film debut, is the live wire. He barrels in with such comic timing that Nick Nolte’s world-weary scowl becomes the perfect foil. Their chemistry isn’t always smooth — sometimes hilarious, sometimes just noisy — but the sparks are undeniable.

The tone can wobble, swinging from nasty violence to knockabout humour, and some of the rougher edges haven’t aged well. Still, you can see why it stuck. This is the blueprint for the buddy action-comedy boom to come: bickering partners, bar-room showdowns, and grudging respect forged in a hail of bullets. Not flawless, but influential all the same.

Broken Blossoms sits in the awkward corner of Griffith’s career. Not the open white supremacy of Birth of a Nation, but a syrupy “plea for tolerance” built on the same old stereotypes. Richard Barthelmess, in yellowface, plays the stock “tragic Oriental”: emasculated, saintly, and defined entirely by his devotion to a fragile white girl.

 What actually sticks isn’t the story but the craft. Lillian Gish is astonishing, especially in the closet scene, her fear trembling through every gesture. Griffith knows exactly how to shoot it — soft-focus light, tight close-ups, foggy Limehouse sets. The melodrama sings, even if the tune is sour. It’s all in service of a racial fantasy: Chinatown exoticised, working-class brutality treated as normal.

The artistry is undeniable, the ideas poisonous. The result is both haunting and queasy — a film that sells prejudice not with burning crosses, but with soft lighting and a love story.

On the surface, it looks like a coming-of-age tale about a young girl in suburban Australia. But scratch it and you hit something darker — the peculiar blend of menace and politics critics like to badge as “Australian Gothic.” Think Picnic at Hanging Rock’s mystery, Razorback’s feral threat, or The Last Wave’s ominous soundscape — Celia belongs in that uneasy company.

What’s striking is the slippage between dream and reality: one minute playground spats, the next unsettling visions, all underscored by an atmosphere that won’t leave you alone. It’s scrappy, sometimes uneven, but then Act 3 detonates with a brutal twist that makes you sit up straight and rethink what you’ve been watching.

No, it’s not as polished as the better-known Australian classics, but it’s a strange, prickly piece that lingers in the mind — unsettling in ways you can’t quite shake.

As concert films go, this one is both electrifying and elusive. The music is astonishing, the performances untouchable—Prince on stage with a presence that feels almost superhuman. On that level, it’s irresistible.

As cinema, though, it falters. The film feels less like a shaped experience than a chain of music videos, joined by the thinnest thread of story. Put it beside Stop Making Sense: Jonathan Demme builds rhythm and momentum without a word of dialogue, a feature director shaping a concert into narrative. Prince, directing himself, dazzles in bursts but never finds the same flow.

None of which finishes what’s here. The sound, her spectacular, the sheer charisma are staggering. As a film it’s flawed; as performant, it’s unforgettable.

Some films have to fight their way into existence. Margaret was shot in 2005, mired in years of disputes and edits, and finally slipped out in 2011 with barely a release. That it found an audience at all is thanks to word of mouth, and once seen, it’s not forgotten.

The film is sprawling and unruly, but in a way that suits it. Kenneth Lonergan builds a portrait of New York alive with stray conversations and unresolved tensions. At its centre, Anna Paquin gives a remarkable performance as Lisa, a teenager thrown into guilt and grief after a sudden accident.

Different cuts exist, but the effect is the same: raw, humane, and quietly overwhelming. Margaret is a flawed masterpiece—yet too powerful to dismiss. It rewards patience and lingers long after it ends.

Some films feel as though the book had been sitting around, waiting for the cameras to show up. David Lean’s Great Expectations is one of them. This isn’t just adaptation, it’s transposition—the sets, the atmosphere, even the fog on the marshes seem pulled straight from Dickens’ imagination. Watching it feels like stepping into the pages of the novel.

The casting is almost flawless, with one obvious wrinkle. John Mills is a fine actor, but as a supposed 21-year-old Pop he's pushing it—two years shy of 40, he's less wide-eyed appentice and more seasoned gentleman playing dress-up. Still, Marita Hunt's imperious Miss Havisham and Finlay Currie's thunderous Magwitch give the film the weight it needs.

Lean directs with painterly precision and stagecraft control, giving the whole production a richness that feels both theatrical and cinematic. This is Dickens brought to life with elegance, grit, and just the right touch of menance.

Olivier’s Hamlet isn’t concerned with ticking off Shakespeare line by line. It works instead through shadow and suggestion, with surreal touches slipping in almost unnoticed: dissolves like half-remembered dreams, corridors that stretch into infinity, Elsinore less a castle than a state of mind.

As Hamlet, Olivier broods convincingly, though his performance carries a sheen of self-display — you sense him playing Olivier as much as the prince. The supporting cast provide steadier notes, and the gothic sets and lighting give the film its brooding power.

This may not be the most complete or literal Hamlet, but as a moody, dream-soaked interpretation it lingers. Strange, stylish, and unsettling, it feels less like a faithful record of Shakespeare’s text than a fevered imagining of it — and that’s what makes it memorable.

At first it seems like a modest coming-of-age tale set in a provincial station during the war, but there’s more going on between the trains. Ordinary chatter slips into absurdity almost unnoticed — a bureaucrat’s pompous speech collapsing into parody, or a sexual mishap played with deadpan irony. The mix is funny, awkward, and quietly unsettling.

Jirí Menzel directs with restraint, letting satire seep into melancholy rather than forcing the contrast. The war hangs at the margins, a shadow that never disappears, while the heart of the story is a young man stumbling toward adulthood — sexually, morally, and ultimately, fatally.

Closely Watched Trains draws its strength from that balance: an intimate story rooted in station life, punctuated by surreal asides that reveal history as both absurd and brutally serious. Not just a Czech New Wave classic, but a sly reminder of how comedy and tragedy can share the same track.

This isn’t really about punk riffs or three-chord thrash; it’s about being thirteen, misunderstood, and desperate to carve out some space of your own. Three girls in Stockholm start a band not to impress but to vent, and that urgency is what makes the film hum.

The young cast are pitch-perfect, catching the awkwardness, bravado, and daft courage of adolescence with such ease it feels like you’re eavesdropping rather than watching a performance.

What follows has less to do with music than with escape: dodging gym, mocking authority, and turning frustration into glorious noise. Lukas Moodysson directs with humour and warmth, letting the friendships grow unforced, never tipping into sentimentality.

We Are the Best! is scrappy, heartfelt, and properly funny — proof that being loud and rough around the edges can sometimes be the truest kind of joy.

On the surface it looks like another buddy chase movie, but what you get is Robert De Niro’s sharpest comedy. Martin Brest takes the grit of a road thriller and layers in warmth, patience, and sly wit. Instead of racing from set piece to set piece, he slows down, finding gold in bus rides, diner stops, and the pauses between disasters.

De Niro and Charles Grodin are gloriously mismatched: one all twitchy intensity, the other deadpan needling. Their chemistry crackles because Brest trusts them to bicker like real people rather than fire off one-liners on cue.

Around them, the supporting cast add colour without hijacking the film, while Danny Elfman’s score keeps the pace lively without smoothing away the grit. Midnight Run isn’t really about the pursuit at all; it’s a road movie disguised as a thriller, a buddy story smuggled into a cops-and-robbers plot. The ride is so good you almost wish it never had to end.

On paper, it’s a coming-of-age tale about two oddballs: Momoko, a Rococo-obsessed Lolita fashionista, and Ichiko, a biker with more bluster than horsepower. They crash together in small-town Japan, held by a plot so flimsy it could blow away in the breeze. You don’t watch Kamikaze Girls for story — it’s tissue-thin.

What gives it life is the style. A sharp soundtrack, candy-coloured visuals, and Nakashima’s manic energy turn it into a pop-art firework display. The snag is cultural context: Lolita codes, biker rituals, and early-2000s subculture jokes that can leave outsiders smiling politely rather than laughing.

So you end up with a film that’s brash, playful, and just a bit exhausting — a sugar rush of colour and noise. Kamikaze Girls dazzles in bursts, but when the glitter settles, there isn’t much underneath.

Minnelli’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse remakes the 1921 silent epic, moving Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s novel into World War II. On paper it’s ambitious, but the execution never quite matches the scope. MGM’s Technicolor sheen is dazzling, yet the colour and gloss often swamp the story. What starts as a sprawling family drama soon lurches into overheated melodrama, the war itself oddly pushed to the sidelines.

Glenn Ford feels miscast as Julio, too stiff and middle-aged to carry the role’s charm or recklessness. Without a believable centre, the romance and politics wobble. Minnelli’s touch shows in the set design and battle staging—those sequences are handsome—but spectacle alone can’t plug the gaps. The ending tries for redemption, but it arrives too late to lift the sagging middle. A glossy production, fascinating in flashes, but less than the sum of its lavish parts.