Film Reviews by griggs

I like to think I’ve got a decent stomach for war films. Then this one puts you in Warsaw on 25 September 1944 and turns “escape” into a nasty little word. A battered Home Army unit heads for the sewers, and the further they go, the less “out” feels like a real direction.

Wajda makes the underground a grim second world — part escape route, part confessional, all labyrinth. The camera crowds in, the sound is drip, breath, and panic, and the moments that sting aren’t speeches but scraps: a joke that lands with a thud, a tenderness that can’t do the job, a dawning sense that maps are just wishful thinking.

It’s devastating, but never showy. The Cannes prize in 1957 makes sense. Kanal respects courage — and refuses to pretend it comes with a guarantee.

It doesn’t feel like you watch this so much as you get pinned in place by it. No melodrama, no rescue — just Bresson showing how a kid gets worn down by a thousand small cruelties.

Mouchette isn’t destroyed by one single incident. It’s the whole setup: poverty treated like a character flaw, constant judgement from adults and peers, meanness dressed up as “discipline”, and any “help” served with a side of superiority. Even when she lashes out, it’s survival — that’s what a cornered child looks like when she’s had enough of being measured and found wanting.

Nadine Nortier is terrific: all glare, stiffness, and exhausted pride. Bresson’s style is spare but never empty — it keeps you close, and it keeps you honest. By the end, you’re not debating her decisions. You’re furious at how many people decided she didn’t matter.

My third Lubitsch in a month, and I’d half-expected the streak to wobble. Instead, Heaven Can Wait hooks you immediately: Henry strolls into Hells’s reception area and calmly argues he belongs there, while Laird Cregar’s “His Excellency” listens like a man enjoying the best audition of the day.

The rest is Henry’s life, told in flashback with proper Technicolour polish — rich interiors, perfect manners, and small emotional bruises that creep up when you’re not watching. It’s not a laugh-a-minute job; the humour is dry and polite, and the warmth arrives almost by stealth. Don Ameche holds it together beautifully: charming, vain, and somehow still human. 

The marriage is the most interesting part — messy, believable, occasionally sad — though I kept wishing the film would spend more time following Gene Tierney’s point of view. And the episodic structure can feel like a series of excellent scenes rather than one clean reckoning. Still, it lands lightly, and that’s Lubitsch’s whole trick.

Adapted from Rafael Sabatini’s 1922 novel, Michael Curtiz turns it into a 1935 studio adventure with real snap — swords, romance, and just enough James II / William III politics to raise the stakes without turning into revision.

It’s also the film that made Errol Flynn a proper star, and it’s an early showcase for Olivia de Havilland as the sharpest kind of romantic counterweight. The dialogue can get hilariously over-fancy, but Flynn says it like he’s daring you not to believe him.

Basil Rathbone’s Levasseur is a delight: treacherous, flamboyantly French, and weirdly charming. The swordplay lands, Korngold’s score keeps the pulse up, and the climactic sea battle still impresses — not flawless, but absolutely a good time.

The train is a trap: sealed compartments, bad politics, and reputations weighed like luggage. Shanghai Lily isn’t just along for the ride — Marlene Dietrich turns every close-up into a quiet act of defiance, all weaponised poise and “judge me if you like” cool.

Josef von Sternberg shoots it in plush shadows and slightly off-kilter glamour, as if the light itself has been bribed. Anna May Wong is pure cool too — watch how she underplays and still owns the frame.

The hitch is the romance: pairing Dietrich with Clive Brook gives you a leading man shaped like a blank page. When the love story goes flat, the film still glides on style and tension… it just arrives with more swagger than swoon.

There’s a parcel waiting for Marie at the theatre on a rough dress-rehearsal day for Swan Lake, and inside is Henrik’s diary — thirteen years of “don’t think about it” suddenly back on the music stand. A few pages in, and she’s on a boat to the island where it all started, because the past has appalling manners and perfect timing.

The summer story isn’t a glossy montage romance. It’s slow, awkward, and properly human, building towards that quiet click of “oh… this actually matters.” Bergman lets the joy play out in full, then keeps its shadow just off-screen, so even the light moments have a faint ache.

Maj-Britt Nilsson is the quiet miracle: all straight-backed discipline, then the smallest softening as she reads. Birger Malmsten gives Henrik an earnest warmth, Georg Funkquist brings a twitchy edge, and Gruffman the dog steals scenes with shaggy authority.

This had been circled for ages: Wilder, Lemmon, MacLaine — a trio that usually doesn’t miss. If The Apartment is Wilder doing New York bite, Irma la Douce is him taking a holiday in a knowingly studio-built Paris, and it’s hard not to come along.

Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon are the glue. Their warm, unforced chemistry makes the bonkers setup feel oddly plausible. You stop auditing the plot and start enjoying the timing: the pauses, the reactions, the way a look lands the gag before the line does.

It’s also unapologetically long for a comedy, and that’s the only real gamble. The joke-to-groan ratio stays comfortably healthy — more hits than misses — and even the flatter moments drift by with a smile. It wobbles late on, but by then you’ve had plenty of fun, and you’ll forgive the scenic route.

Expected a frosty grief piece; got Emma Thompson in Fargo country, treating a scoped gun like standard kit. She’s heading to a Minnesota lake to scatter her husband’s ashes, takes a wrong turn, and finds blood on snow, a captive teenager, and a couple who make the air feel thinner. Judy Greer is gloriously vicious, Marc Menchaca pure menace, and Thompson’s decency turns the choice—drive on or intervene—into suspense. Cold enough to sting your teeth.

I’ve got a soft spot for films that treat failure as a full-time job, preferably with a decent punchline and a shred of grace. Broadway Danny Rose does it with warmth, bite, and zero snobbery.

The framing is the masterstroke: old comics at Carnegie Deli swapping stories that turn Danny into a folk hero of second-rate showbiz. It’s been widely borrowed, but rarely this clean. You can see the Curb Your Enthusiasm blueprint in the way tiny favours spiral into misunderstandings, embarrassment, and moral cornering.

Woody Allen plays Danny as optimism in a bad suit; Mia Farrow’s Tina is all sparkle and self-sabotage. Decency has never looked so funny — or so brave.

Some musicals flirt; this one strides onstage and grabs the mic. Funny Girl is, above all, a Streisand delivery system — and fair play, it delivers.

She's funny without mugging, vulnerable without begging, and she sings like she's turning nerves into rocket fuel. The film's central bargain is classic showbiz maths: how much of yourself can you spend on stage before there's nothing left of you to left to love?

Omar Sharif is absurdly handsome as Nick Arnstein, but the romance feels sketched, so the heartbreak lands right on schedule rather than as a shock. Still, when "Don't Rain on My Parade" hits, it's pure momentum. A bit baggy, hugely charismatic, and carried by one unstoppable voice.

I'd expected a tidy, rules-of-the-room whodunnit — a straight version of Clue: a body in the study and a lot more etiquette. Instead Sleuth mutates into a psychological cat-and-mouse game: theatrical, needling, and fizzing with an awkward, undeniable sexual charge.

The real pleasure is watching those two trade insults like they're serving canapés at a posh wake — sharp, petty, and strangely nourishing. You can see the DNA that Knives Out later remixed.

It's this close to perfect... except it commits the ultimate cowardice: after two hours stoking their sexual tension, it pulls out at the last second.

Some comfort films are just the cinematic equivalent of beige. This one’s a proper pick-me-up — warm-hearted, properly funny, and put together with real craft.

Cluny Brown is silly but never stupid. It glides along on farce fuel, then slips the blade in: class anxiety, good manners as a weapon, and those “polite” little cruelties that land harder because everyone keeps smiling. The characters feel observed rather than invented — nobody’s a cardboard cut-out, even when they’re posing like one.

Jennifer Jones gives Cluny a bright, stubborn spark, the kind you can’t politely pat out. Charles Boyer is deliciously dry as Belinski, dispensing charm like a quiet insult in a well-cut suit. Lubitsch treats society like a starched shirt: crisp, expensive, and begging to be creased. You leave lighter, and a bit more allergic to snobbery.

Some films want to tell you a story. This one wants to whip you into a frenzy, then quiz you afterwards.

The Testament of Ann Lee makes its Shaker founder both prophet and problem: a woman preaching gender and social equality while asking her flock to surrender to a vision. It plays like Suspiria spliced with Eggers’ The Witch — a folk-horror musical where devotion feels less like comfort than pressure. The images are bold, the gestures bigger than life, and the mood is thick enough to cut with a hymn book.

Amanda Seyfried goes fierce and unvarnished, and Thomasin McKenzie and Lewis Pullman help the community feel lived-in. But the connective tissue can be thin: scenes crest, then drift, and the film doesn’t always tighten its grip when it needs to. Gorgeous, fascinating… and just a little short on payoff.

One minute you’re watching a mild-mannered tax inspector count paperclips; the next, a disembodied narrator is calmly announcing his doom. That jump from banal to bizarre is the best thing Stranger Than Fiction has in its back pocket.

Zach Helm’s script has a few fun, oddball touches, but it stays so sweet-natured that the existential dread barely gets a look-in. It’s a story about a story, yet it feels lighter than it would in Charlie Kaufman’s hands: fewer splinters, more rounded edges. Will Ferrell is likeable as Harold Crick, and Emma Thompson is game as novelist Karen Eiffel, typing him towards tragedy; Dustin Hoffman’s literature prof turns panic into a seminar with pleasing deadpan.

The romance with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s tax-resisting baker is charming on screen, professionally dodgy on paper — and the film never quite grapples with that. Smart idea, soft landing: it amuses, then fades.

Second time round, The Matrix clicked more for me — not in an “I’m joining the cult” way, but in a “fair play, that’s a well-oiled machine” way. The central choice still bites: comfort and obedience versus truth and responsibility. I just wish the film trusted that dilemma instead of padding it with faux-philosophical waffle in a long coat.

Keanu Reeves is perfectly blank as Neo (a feature, not a bug), Carrie-Anne Moss radiates cool competence, and Laurence Fishburne sells conviction like it comes with good tailoring. Hugo Weaving has the most fun as a suit-shaped nightmare.

The effects still look classy. Bullet time remains slick. The Nokia “Matrix phone”, though, now feels as archaeological as a floppy disk. Stylish and influential, but still not entirely my rabbit hole.