Film Reviews by griggs

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.

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.