Film Reviews by griggs

Some films are messy in a charming way. Honey Don’t is just disjointed. The premise has a spark, but what follows feels like a rough cut that somehow made it to release. Scenes clunk together with editing that often feels uneven or undercooked, characters barely get a chance to develop, and the humour is a long way from the Coens at their best.

And that may be the real problem: it’s massively missing something—Joel Coen. As such it drifts into a parody of itself. There are flashes of the brothers’ trademark absurdity, but the rhythm is off and the punchlines fall flat. What’s absent is the wit and structure that once gave their chaos its edge.

What keeps it from collapsing entirely is its brevity. At 89 minutes, it zips by before you grow restless. Still, speed isn’t the same as sharpness, and this one leaves little to savour.

By now the Ed and Lorraine Warren saga is less a story than a séance table creaking under its own weight. Even setting aside that these films are “inspired” by the Warrens’ casebooks—figures widely accused of being charlatans—The Conjuring: Last Rites still can’t conjure much excitement.

The set-up promises fresh evil but delivers reheated leftovers: crucifixes rattling, shadows shifting, children staring down corridors. Every beat is predictable, and the film seems content with that. Instead of horror, it feels like homework—an obligation to finish what’s long since gone cold.

The problem isn’t polish but imagination. Horror works when the ordinary turns uncanny; here, the uncanny is flattened into cliché. Last Rites plays like a contractual finale, drained of dread, conviction, or purpose. The real rite being performed is the burial of a franchise that forgot how to scare.

Watching this just a day after If…. makes for a fascinating double bill. Both films take aim at the petty tyrannies of school life, but Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct does it with an anarchic joy that feels decades ahead of its time. Where Lindsay Anderson built slow fury, Vigo goes straight for playful rebellion, mixing slapstick with surrealism in a way that makes even its rough edges sparkle.

At barely forty minutes, it’s less a story than a series of set-pieces: dorm-room insurrections, grotesque authority figures, and finally that glorious pillow-fight parade, feathers drifting like snow in a dream. The energy feels raw, improvised, alive—almost punk before punk.

What’s striking is how humane it all is. Vigo isn’t just mocking teachers; he’s siding with children, seeing rebellion as not just justified but joyous. Zero for Conduct isn’t polished, but its spirit is untamed, and that’s what keeps it vital.

When it came out, I gave this one a wide berth—probably because I bought into the tabloid line that it was glamorising gun culture. Ashley Walters, fresh from So Solid Crew and a stretch in a Young Offenders Institute, seemed to fit the story too neatly. How wrong that was. Bullet Boy does the very opposite.

What it offers instead is a bleak portrait of a young man trying to break free of violence while the world around him keeps pulling him back in. Walters is quietly convincing, never playing for sympathy, just showing how hard it is to change course when your postcode and past won’t let you.

The film isn’t perfect. Its symbolism can feel heavy, and the narrative is more predictable than it wants to be. But its honesty lingers. This isn’t a glamour shoot; it’s a cautionary tale, stark and unpolished, about the cycles of violence that trap people long before they ever pull a trigger.

It’s no great surprise that this doesn’t feel like a departure for Sofia Coppola. But then, why should it? She has made a career out of crafting quiet, atmospheric films that sit somewhere between observation and dream. Somewhere fits neatly into that mould: gorgeous to look at, heavy on mood, light on words.

Stephen Dorff drifts convincingly as a washed-up actor stuck in the slipstream of his own fame. The film doesn’t so much tell his story as capture it, letting us watch him idle in hotel rooms, drive endless loops, and slowly reconnect with his daughter, played with unforced warmth by Elle Fanning.

Whether that’s enough depends on your appetite for Coppola’s signature style. There are stretches that feel indulgent, even vacant, but when the film clicks, it has a strange power. It shows how even lives padded with luxury can feel empty—and how fleeting moments of connection can fill the silence.

Thankfully Lola Montès has been restored to Ophüls’ original cut. The studio version, released after its disastrous 1955 Paris premiere, stripped out over twenty minutes, added narration, and reassembled the story into a flat, linear melodrama. The result flopped at the box office and ended Ophüls’ career. Only in 2008 was the film restored to something close to his vision.

Seen properly, it’s startlingly beautiful. Lola is paraded in the circus as a man-eater, punished for her past, but the flashbacks show a woman betrayed by love, drifting across Europe, struggling to preserve her dignity. Martine Carol lends her wounded poise, Peter Ustinov oozes cynicism as the ringmaster, while Anton Walbrook and Oskar Werner give depth in smaller roles.

Visually, the film is extraordinary. Ophüls’ camera glides through rich colours, elaborate circus tableaux, and Lola’s extravagant costumes. The German sequence drags, but elsewhere the pacing works. Lola Montès feels doubly rescued—from the studio’s scissors and from her own legend—moving from wreckage to restoration on both sides of the screen.

It’s hard not to be grateful for having skipped public school after watching this one. The rituals of conformity, the petty cruelties, the sheer hierarchy of it all—half a century on, it doesn’t feel all that dated. That’s part of the film’s bite: school as Britain in miniature, where power stratifies, injustice festers, and rebellion simmers until it finally erupts.

Malcolm McDowell is superb as Mick Travis, all insolent charm and suppressed fury. It’s easily the strongest of his outings as the character, and the role fits him like a blazer that’s just a touch too tight. The choice to shift between colour and black-and-white cinematography adds to the sense of disorientation, as if the walls of the school can’t quite contain what’s building inside.

If.... isn’t subtle, but that’s its strength. It hammers its themes home with ferocity, reminding you that repression doesn’t last forever. Sometimes, the only way to pass the test is to burn the exam paper.

The film’s reputation often rests on being the first Best Picture winner, but that undersells its real strengths. What keeps Wings airborne are the flying sequences: aerial stunts and combat scenes choreographed with precision and filmed with a clarity still striking today.

Around that spectacle, the film mixes melodrama, romance, and broad comedy. At its core are Richard Arlen and Charles Rogers as small-town youths turned celebrated airmen in France. Their relationship, played with tenderness and intensity, carries a homoerotic charge that makes it more than just another war buddy tale.

Clara Bow, Paramount’s biggest star, provides the sparkle—spirited, earthy, first glimpsed brushing aside a pair of knickers before reappearing in Paris as an ambulance driver, even in a brief nude scene. Yet for all her charisma, the true centre remains the bond between Arlen and Rogers. The melodrama shows its age, but the flying and the friendships still hold the film steady.

It begins with a premise that should be compelling: a freshman at a Catholic boys’ school stands up to authority, peer pressure, and a cult-like secret society by refusing to play along. That small act of defiance sets off a chain reaction, turning a simple fundraiser into a dark cautionary tale about freedom—and the cost of holding your ground.

The film nails the mood. The school feels airless and severe, and the secret society running things is a sharp portrait of how intimidation can rule more effectively than rules. Subtle it isn’t, but then neither is the cruelty of teenage power games.

Where The Chocolate War falters is in delivery. The story meanders, the tempo drags, and the characters often feel like outlines more than people. It wants to be Lord of the Flies in blazers, but ends up closer to a dour after-school special. Still, its bleak honesty lingers, even if the film itself never fully convinces.

The first thing that stands out is the style. The film is shot with a restless, hand-held urgency, very much of the time—fragmented, intimate, and at points difficult to follow. That approach can be frustrating, but it also brings immediacy, placing the viewer directly in the situation rather than at a safe remove.

What it documents is the demolition of homes and the impact on the people who live through it. Although filmed before the October 2022 terrorist atrocities, the underlying reality it shows remains unchanged: communities being disrupted, landscapes altered, and lives unsettled.

 No Other Land isn’t polished or easy to watch—it’s jagged, raw, and occasionally overwhelming—but that seems deliberate. By foregoing cinematic smoothness, it presents itself as testimony rather than spectacle. The result may be challenging, but it leaves a strong impression as a record of events unfolding in real time.

It’s not hard to see why a film that flopped on release has since found itself a modest cult following. It’s eccentric, a little ragged, and wears its whimsy on its sleeve. The hook is irresistible: a wealthy man convinced he’s Sherlock Holmes, though the game is less about deduction than about delusion.

The clever conceit is that it isn’t about Holmes at all. Instead, it’s a story about belief, about finding purpose in the act of searching rather than the solution itself. George C. Scott plays it with a mix of gravitas and vulnerability, while Joanne Woodward’s Watson offers both foil and reluctant ally. Together they lend a real emotional pull to what might otherwise have been a curio.

And yet, for all its charm, They Might Be Giants is uneven. Some of the comedy drags, the pacing wanders, and not every quirk lands. Still, its oddball sincerity makes it easy to see why people have kept returning—looking not for Holmes, but for a bit of meaning hidden in the chase.

I went in eager for another Klaus Kinski turn after The Great Silence, but he’s more of a guest star than a driver here, drifting in and out with little to anchor him. Instead, the real story belongs to Chuncho, a romantic outlaw carried along by the Mexican Revolution, and Bill Tate, the cool gringo who joins his cause for motives of his own.

What could so easily have been another dusty shoot-’em-up instead reveals itself as a smart, quick-moving western with a conscience. Damiano Damiani blends action with politics without ever losing pace, making the revolution feel like more than just a backdrop.

And then there’s the chemistry. Bill and Chuncho’s bond is played with refreshing candour, a spark that’s both emotional and physical without hiding behind coy suggestion. A Bullet for the General is stylish, taut, and sharper than most of its spaghetti peers—proof that brains and bullets can share the same chamber.

The Initiation doesn’t waste time showing its hand. Within the first ten minutes there are nods to The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Omen and Halloween. A bold idea in theory, though less a clever homage than a patchwork pastiche. Still, for all its borrowed moves, it sets the stage for a passable campus slasher.

The set-up is fun enough: sorority pranks, creaky corridors, and the promise of something darker in the wings. But the kills are tame, the “students” look nearer 30 than 18, and most of the suspense comes from watching the characters inch towards a twist the audience clocked in the opening reel. Any hint of menace is dulled by sheer predictability.

And yet, there’s a certain charm in its mediocrity. The Initiation could have been a cheeky campus slasher with bite, but instead it’s a plodding reminder that not every horror relic deserves to be dug up. If you’ve a soft spot for mid-’80s horror curios, it scratches the itch. If not, it drifts by like a half-remembered nightmare.

It’s odd to watch a film where seemingly everyone pops up for a scene—Mark Hamill included, slotted neatly between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The cast list reads like a who’s who of early-’80s Britain, promising fireworks but delivering squibs.

The humour is the chief offender. Broad when it fancies itself sharp, laced with casual racism, it plays like a pretentious Carry On trying too hard to be clever. For satire, the laughs are thin, and as the last entry in Lindsay Anderson’s Mick Travis trilogy, it’s dispiriting to see Travis himself pushed to the margins.

And yet, the ambition is plain. The hospital is Britain in miniature—bureaucratic, hypocritical, perpetually malfunctioning. A fine conceit, but fumbled in execution, leaving the allegory sagging. Britannia Hospital sets out to diagnose the nation; instead, it loses the patient chart.

It begins with a meeting that feels almost fated: a quiet, sheltered young man, played with touching openness by Harry Melling, crosses paths with Alexander Skarsgård’s commanding biker. What unfolds is part escape, part initiation, as Melling’s character is swept into a world far beyond his own.

At first there’s a rush of exhilaration, a sense of discovery that carries him along. Yet the film resists easy reassurances. Consent isn’t foregrounded in any obvious way, leaving the relationship shaded by uncertainty. Skarsgård brings both allure and unease, his authority never entirely free of risk.

Hovering in the background is the figure of Melling’s mother, whose illness sharpens her intuition. She sees the dangers that her son, in his longing, cannot. Pillion is a striking, often beautiful film—challenging in places, tender in others—about the blurred lines between liberation and vulnerability, and how desire can both open doors and close them.