Film Reviews by griggs

This isn’t a cradle-to-legend biopic. It’s a close-up study of depression — the day-to-day drag, the small humiliations, the way it shrinks your world even when your name is on the posters. The irony is brutal: he’s one of the most successful musicians alive, a genuine guitar great, and none of that makes the mornings easier.

What lands is the collateral mess. The work slows, then stalls. Relationships tighten into knots. He isn’t only failing to manage the illness; he can’t say what’s happening in a way anyone around him can grasp, so people fill the gaps with guesses and platitudes.

Jeremy Allen White is excellent at keeping it human. He doesn’t play “icon”. He plays a man trying to function while something invisible keeps leaning on his chest, and the restraint feels earned.

I did struggle with Jeremy Strong, though. In Trump I mostly saw Kendall Roy in a different tie; here I couldn’t unsee Roy Cohn, and it pulled me out of key scenes. Still, when the film sits with the cost of unspoken suffering, it hits.

This one landed like a late-night caffeine hit: I was wide awake, slightly on edge, and weirdly moved. Hong Kong feels like the third lead — neon gorgeous, tightly packed, and absolutely not here to comfort anyone. It just carries on.

Intimacy is basically trespass. People get close by sneaking into each other’s flats, shops, routines. The agent (Michelle Reis) is obsessed with the hitman (Leon Lai), and he barely clocks her, which makes it sting. And then Takeshi Kaneshiro shows up as a lonely chaos gremlin, breaking into businesses at night and “running” them like he’s trying to rehearse a normal life.

The fish-eye lenses and that stuttery, jumpy motion make everything feel slightly warped. Connection here is a bus ride: a few shared stops, then someone’s gone. If Chungking Express is the pop mixtape, Fallen Angels is the 3am text you should delete — but don’t.

About ten minutes in, my brain stopped trying to “follow the plot” and just held on tight. This is Bergman doing suspense like a vice: sudden violence, shifting rules, and that constant sense the ground under you is about to move again. It’s weirdly action-packed for him, and it stays gripping because the nightmare keeps evolving instead of camping in one miserable room.

Max von Sydow is extraordinary, starting as a nervous, twitchy artist and hardening into something darker — not with a big switch, but with tiny compromises that add up. Liv Ullmann is magnificent in his orbit, and her second-half change is even quieter: less panic, more ice. It’s subtle, and it lands.

The capture-and-interrogation stretch is genuinely upsetting because it’s so matter-of-fact. And the images linger: a couple reduced to “survive or die” in a conflict too vast to understand, where loyalties slide around until even you don’t trust your own instincts.

Some films use childhood as a warm blanket. This one uses it as a Geiger counter — quietly ticking away while the adults insist everything's "fine".

Cría cuervos sits close to the The Spirit of the Beehive (Ana Torrent, still quietly devastating) and The Devil's Backbone: children as witnesses, the home as a haunted political space, and ghosts as the after-image of violence. Del Toro sets his story in 1939, at the end of the Civil War, with Franco's shadow about to stretch for decades. Cría comes later, in 1975 — the regime wobbling, but the habits it bred still ruling the room.

Ana feels like an actual kid, not a symbol with a bow on it: quiet, stubborn, always noticing the gap between what adults say and what they mean. The "poison" idea isn't treated as a twist; it lands like a child's way of naming fear so it can be understood.

And the house isn't haunted in the boo-hiss sense. It's haunted in the way families get haunted: by secrets, power games, and things everyone agrees not to mention. The film stays ambiguous without getting precious, and it hits hard — like pressing a finger on an old bruise and realising it never really went away.

Two days of a couple having a strop, going to bed angry, then waking up and deciding, yep, let’s keep this argument running. It’s a great little setup. The best gag is how Angela and Émile “talk” by grabbing books off the shelf and letting the covers do the shouting — “Monster”, “Get stuffed”, “Sardine”… childish, daft, and weirdly bang on. It calms them down, but it doesn’t actually solve anything.

Godard can’t leave it alone, though. He keeps giving you a nudge: you know this is a film, right? The music stops and starts on cue, people bow to the camera, Belmondo wanders in and casually name-drops Breathless, and Jeanne Moreau turns up as Jeanne Moreau. I get the point — it’s playful, it’s self-aware — but sometimes it interrupts the simple, funny rom-com that’s trying to get on with its life.

Anna Karina is the real hook: charming, spiky, and suddenly vulnerable when the joke stops being funny. Jean-Claude Brialy’s got that breezy warmth that keeps things from turning nasty.

The tricolour look is gorgeous, and the final “infâme / femme” wink lands. Not a masterpiece for me — but I had a very good time. 

This is one of those classic screwballs that just goes down easy: a familiar setup, plenty of fizz, and hardly any slack. I enjoyed it from the off.

The real treat is the long final-act run. Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche trade rapid-fire one-upmanship, and it stays funny because it keeps escalating. John Barrymore plays her elegant secret weapon, Mary Astor watches with dry scepticism, and Francis Lederer looks genuinely lost. Mitchell Leisen’s direction can feel a bit too tidy for a script this sharp — you can sense Brackett and Wilder pushing for something wilder — but that set piece is the reason to watch.

Some high-concept comedies hide behind the concept. Palm Springs just grins and admits it: yes, it’s a time-loop movie, but it mainly wants to watch two damaged people flirt at a wedding while the same day keeps snapping back like an elastic band.

It’s all too easy to compare it to Groundhog Day. The setup is basically begging for it. But where Groundhog Day aims its loop at social commentary and a proper moral makeover, this sits a happy beat above — more sunburnt romance and daft detours than spiritual boot camp.

The real win is the chemistry. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti bounce from snark to sincerity without making it feel like a switch has been flipped. J.K. Simmons barges in like a walking consequence, which stops the whole thing drifting into pure cosy vibes.

It doesn’t quite nail the time-loop logic in the last stretch, and the ending wraps things up a touch too neatly. Still, it’s a genuinely good time: funny, oddly tender, and just existential enough to linger after the credits.

I was braced for pure froth. Instead, this is a Depression-era pick-me-up with a real pulse — it wants to lift your mood, but it keeps nudging you back to the world outside the theatre.

The cast makes that mix click. Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahon bring the wisecracks and the “we’ll get by” grit, Ruby Keeler has the open-faced sweetness, and Dick Powell is human sunshine. Ginger Rogers only needs one number to grab you: “We’re in the Money” starts as sparkle, then her Pig Latin verse turns from cute to faintly unsettling.

I’m usually a bit meh on Busby Berkeley because the plot can feel like scaffolding between the big routines. Here, the film flips it: the numbers serve the point, and the story doesn’t feel like filler.

Then “Remember My Forgotten Man” lands and it’s sensational — jazz hands with a punch tucked in the glove. I finished it lighter and slightly winded.

This is the kind of thriller that makes you go quiet halfway through, like you don’t want to jinx it. No flashy tricks, no “clever” editing — just a calm, controlled walk towards something awful. I kept checking the time, not because I was bored, but because I was thinking, how much worse is this going to get?

The horror’s in the everyday texture. Bright daylight. Polite chats. Normal errands. And then this low, steady dread that starts early and never really leaves. And yes: that beard — not a villain costume, just another ordinary detail that somehow turns into a warning sign. Even his home life has a faint wrongness to it — the kind you can’t quite name, but you don’t forget.

The acting is doing a lot of damage, quietly. Johanna ter Steege brings warmth that makes the early scenes feel safe. Gene Bervoets makes Rex’s search feel like a slow self-erasure, obsession taking up all the space. And Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu is the real nightmare: mild, reasonable, almost reassuring — which is exactly why he’s terrifying.

Underneath the suspense, it’s an understated study of victimhood and the life-destroying fixation it can leave behind, plus a portrait of evil that’s small, patient, and horribly plausible. No flashy misdirection, no late rug-pull: it just states its case, then sits in your head like a bad thought you can’t shake.

It didn’t take me long to realise the rifle isn’t just a prop — it’s the film’s nasty little tour guide. Winchester ’73 looks cracking in that Anthony Mann way: big skies, hard light, and faces that seem permanently braced for trouble. It also seems to run on coffee; everyone’s always brewing it or gripping a mug like it’s keeping them upright.

The gun keeps changing hands, and each new owner brings a new flavour of greed, betrayal, and sudden violence. The film barely lets you get comfy with anyone before it moves on again, which is exactly why it stays so lively. Even when you can sense a bigger personal reckoning building in the background, the momentum does the heavy lifting.

Jimmy Stewart is lean and tightly wound, Shelley Winters adds real bite, and Tony Curtis turns up briefly and makes it count. Dan Duryea is wonderfully wired and dangerous, like he’s one bad sip away from snapping. Rock Hudson playing Young Bull is an ugly, indefensible stain. Still, this is a sharp, punchy western with a mean little streak.

It feels held together with hustle and cheek — and honestly, that’s half the fun. Set around a Harlem house party, it lives for the chatter and the chaos, and the songs have real swagger. But it’s more revue than story, so scenes can drift just when they’re starting to pop. Don’t Play Us Cheap is ragged in a lovable way… right up until it starts testing your patience.

There’s a sweet spot where farce stops being a racket and starts being satire. When this film finds it, it’s terrific: small-town respectability exposed, with just enough bite to feel genuinely improper for a censored 1940s comedy.

Preston Sturges has fun needling wartime virtue, moral panic, and the way a community can turn gossip into law. Betty Hutton plays Trudy like a lit fuse—exhausting, impressive, and sometimes both at once. Eddie Bracken is perfectly cast as Norval, the decent sap trying to keep a straight face while his life collapses. William Demarest turns fatherly outrage into an art form.

The rhythm is the snag. When it hits those Ealing Comedy beats of polite chaos and social embarrassment, it sings. When it shifts into pure slapstick, it starts to clatter. A messy miracle: clever, uneven, and still oddly charming.

It takes guts to make a film about a story everyone is primed to accept. It begins with a hurt child’s muddled story, then watches adult certainty shape it into a “truth” that can’t be unsaid.

Vinterberg flips the “kids are pure” cliché into something harder. The children here aren’t angels or villains; they’re receivers, picking up adult dread and sending it back with total conviction. Innocence isn’t deceitful—just persuadable.

What I admired most is how cleanly it’s told. No timeline gymnastics, no clever misdirection—just a straight, brutal line from suggestion to consensus. It hits with the force of a slow-motion pile-up.

And Mads Mikkelsen plays decency like an exposed nerve. Magnificent, but it leaves you sore.

I watched Gran Torino expecting a rough-edged crowd-pleaser with something to say, and… it mostly is. Eastwood knows exactly how to hold the screen, and the film has a solid, old-school momentum when it’s just letting scenes play and relationships form.

But it also wants credit for “taking on racism” while giving Walt plenty of room to enjoy it. He tosses out slurs — including “gook” — and they’re sometimes delivered like a bit of comic ribbing rather than something poisonous. It’s clearly aiming for “relic learns, softens, redeems himself”, and the ending goes hard for that payoff.

The snag is the structure: it can slide into a white-saviour shape, with Walt as the moral centre and solution, while his Hmong neighbours are there to be threatened, protected, and improved. Worth a watch for Eastwood and the craft, but it left me admiring it more than liking it.

Music documentaries usually try to bottle a moment. This one catches the instant it turns. It even starts with the Stones watching the footage back on an editing deck — like they’re being made to sit through their own legend, only the mood has already gone a bit sour. Then you’re back in 1969, and the music does what it does best: it sells the dream before it shows you the bill.

The Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin keep the camera steady and let things play out. The Altamont build-up is basically a slow-motion bad idea: vague plans, corners cut, and everyone quietly passing the buck. The decision to use the Hells Angels as security lands with a grim inevitability. Nobody seems properly in charge, and you can feel the tension climbing even when people are smiling.

When someone is killed, the film doesn’t play it up — it just doesn’t look away. There’s no hindsight voiceover, no soft focus on “what it all meant”, just the awful sense of watching a moment turn into a headline while it’s still happening. The hardest-hitting scene comes later, with the band watching it back: fame meeting consequences, frame by frame. Jagger doesn’t look guilty so much as stunned, like the air has left the room.

It’s a brutal comedown for the ’60s, even if the film’s narrow focus can feel a bit ethically uneasy, more interested in the blast radius than the wider context. Still, you finish it hearing the music differently — less escape, more denial with great guitars.