Film Reviews by griggs

The title Grey Matter says it all — the brain as a site of illness, memory, and trauma, but also the grey zones left after mass violence, where victims, perpetrators, and survivors blur together. It’s a heavy premise, and the film never tries to make it easy.

The pacing is slow, sometimes grinding, and the shifts into surreal territory can feel jarring. I’ll admit there were moments I wished it would move faster or give me a clearer thread to hold onto. But that’s exactly the point: it refuses the neatness of “healing” or “moving on,” showing instead how the past clings, shaping the present in ways you can’t just sweep aside.

What won me over is its honesty. Stark, strange, and sometimes frustrating, yes — but also purposeful. It doesn’t hand you comfort or closure, and that’s its power — memory isn’t neat, so why should the film be?

An anti-quest if ever there was one, The Gravedigger’s Wife follows Guled not in pursuit of riches or adventure, but of enough cash to keep his family afloat. He begs from estranged relatives, takes what work he can, and even returns to his rural birthplace, only to find pride, poverty, and grudges blocking the way. Meanwhile, Nasra faces her illness with quiet resolve, and their son watches, already learning what survival means in a world stacked against him.

Stylistically, the film is spare and steady, close to neo-realism. Wide shots of desert, city edges, and graveyard dwarf the family’s fight, yet never strip it of warmth. For all its austerity, it still finds room for humour, tenderness, and love.

This is less a story about death than about the cost of devotion in a system that fails ordinary people — love tested to breaking point, survival measured not in triumphs but in small, stubborn acts of defiance.

A simple tale about a boy and an ox ends up carrying a surprising load. Azarias dreams of school while tending cattle earmarked for his uncle’s dowry, and in that modest set-up the film weaves in education, marriage customs, tribal folklore, and the brutal legacy of civil war. It’s a lot to pasture in one story, yet it mostly works. The music is the secret weapon, giving warmth and rhythm when the narrative ambles. What might have been a scatter of themes instead hangs together as a parable both intimate and allegorical. Not every idea lands cleanly, and some of the weightier subjects feel skimmed rather than dug into, but there’s still charm in how it frames Mozambican history through the eyes of a child, his grandmother, and one very unlucky ox.

Everyone here wants out, but the film never actually leaves. First there’s Mofe, a factory worker saving for Spain, then Rosa, a hairdresser dreaming of Italy. Both are chasing a better life, both run head-first into the same walls: endless paperwork, family responsibilities, and a city that never cuts anyone a break. You keep hoping for a lucky turn, but it just doesn’t come.

What really stands out is how quietly it’s filmed. The directors don’t rush; instead they let scenes play out with the noise of traffic, the flicker of lights during a power cut, or a character waiting with a pile of forms. Lagos comes across as rough and beautiful at once — bright colours against broken buildings, with people carrying on regardless.

It’s not showy, but that’s the point. This Is My Desire isn’t about big wins. It’s about what it costs to keep wanting more, even when you know you might never get it.

The Great Adventurer kicks off with a suitcase full of cowboy gear arriving in Niger, and from there the absurdity practically writes itself. A young man comes back from the States dressed for a showdown, and soon he and his friends are strutting through their town like they’ve just ridden off a John Wayne film. It’s goofy, but it’s also sly—it pokes fun at how American culture gets imported, copied, and paraded like it belongs everywhere.

The film has a scrappy, homemade feel, which just makes it more endearing. It’s rough in spots and doesn’t always move at a clip, but the energy is there, and the sight of these self-styled cowboys turning their town into a mini Wild West showdown—horses, giraffes and all—is both ridiculous and kind of brilliant. You can see how later films like Touki Bouki borrowed this idea of clothes and performance as rebellion.

It may stumble, but it proves a cowboy hat can carry a whole film halfway across the world—even with giraffes in the frame.

A slow, brooding character study, Lilith pairs Warren Beatty’s war veteran with Jean Seberg’s magnetic patient in a mental institution. On paper it promises fire, but in practice it smoulders more than it burns. The film is beautifully shot — every frame polished and deliberate — and Seberg gives the kind of performance that makes you lean forward, brittle and radiant at once.

Beatty, by contrast, feels stiff, and the Freudian psychology tips toward melodrama. What should be unsettling starts to feel overwrought, as if the script is more fascinated with case studies than characters. Still, there’s an atmosphere that’s hard to deny: hushed, claustrophobic, and occasionally hypnotic.

For all its beauty and intensity, though, the story never quite earns its weight. Lilith draws you in, then circles the same ground until the tension thins. It’s a striking swan song for Rossen, but not an entirely satisfying one.

A sleek, twisty tale of scams within scams, Nine Queens keeps its cards close while flashing just enough to keep you hooked. It’s fast-paced and crisply directed, with Buenos Aires itself playing a sly supporting role — bustling, watchful, always ready to swallow the unwary.

What really sells it is the pairing of Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls. Their partnership crackles, shifting between wary mistrust and reluctant camaraderie as the con tightens. Watching them spar and improvise through each setup is half the fun; the other half is trying to stay one step ahead and usually failing.

If there’s a catch, it’s in the precision. The plotting clicks together so neatly it feels engineered, more clockwork than chaos, which robs the ending of some sting. Still, the film earns its charm: smart, stylish, and slippery enough to keep you guessing until the final shuffle.

Biopics about rock stars usually fall flat: plenty of tunes, not much drama. The Buddy Holly Story is no exception. It rattles through the milestones but never really scratches beneath the surface.

Gary Busey, though, is the revelation: twitchy charm off stage, a tyrant in rehearsal, and electrifying on stage. He learned guitar for the role and performs every song live — not just competently but with a raw edge that feels dangerous, immediate, alive. The film itself looks handsome, soaking the ’50s in warm tones without drowning in nostalgia. But too often the energy dips, cutting between Busey’s fire and politely clapping crowds, more TV special than rock ’n’ roll riot.

In the end, it’s tidy and conventional, but Busey keeps it sparking. Holly burned fast and bright; Busey channels that spirit with an intensity that hinted at the wild, unpredictable path his own career would later take.

Undoubtedly, Aster is at his strongest when he stays grounded: fear, guilt, and resentment simmering in a small town battered by COVID. Masks weren’t tyranny, they were survival, yet the community still cracked. The true horror lies in paranoia and conspiracy corroding trust. A mayoral race weaponises health rules, while George Floyd’s murder and the rise of BLM seep into brittle lives.

The film renders that trauma with force: the unseen threat of infection, the menace of a cough, the loneliness that fractures families. It’s timely, empathetic, and frightening—Aster close to real fear. But then comes the diversion: a fabricated enemy that pulls focus from the sharper nightmare he’d already captured.

From a transatlantic seat, though, the omission glares: how do you revisit COVID politics without Trump or MAGA, the very forces that lit the fire? In their place, caricatures: youths mocked for protesting police brutality, women written off as conspiracists. That isn’t analysis, it’s scorn. And Aster’s habit remains: escalation for its own sake. Each film harsher, stranger, more indulgent. Shock, posed as insight.

Still, it grips. What begins as a piercing study of fear falters into spectacle, yet its unease lingers. Aster may squander truth chasing spectacle, but he has rarely felt more vital.

Trancers isn’t just a movie, it’s a VCR fever dream cooked up in a back alley off Sunset. Born as a Blade Runner knock-off on pocket change, it’s only improved with age—like the cheap bottle you thought would kill you but somehow tastes better every year. Every character gets to say “Jack Deth” as if it’s holy scripture, and if any film invented bullet time, it wasn’t The Matrix—it was this scrappy Reagan-era oddball.

The Father Christmas shoot-out? Pure madness. Santa with a shotgun, and it slaps. The industrial wastelands of L.A. do the heavy lifting, while the obligatory L.A. River sequence is there for one reason only: to shout “we really filmed this in Los Angeles.”

Cheap, shameless, deranged—and all the better for it. Trancers isn’t just cult canon; it’s Jack Deth forever.

A teenager nearly ending civilisation feels less like a thriller than a time capsule in WarGames. Think shopping malls, MTV on the telly, and a modem that screeches like R2-D2 choking—pure 80s awkwardness in neon. The Cold War hums in the background, but most of the fun is watching Matthew Broderick fiddle with bedroom tech that looks quaint now yet still crackles with danger.

He plays it like Ferris Bueller with a floppy disk, while Ally Sheedy brings disbelief and spark, grounding the silliness. One minute it’s arcade trips and after-school hangouts, the next DEFCON alerts are flashing like pinball lights. The blen of breezy teen comedy and nuclear dread shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

Silly, prophetic, and oddly cosy, it’s a reminder that once a bored kid could almost start a war—and today, things don’t feel much safer.

Watching The Outsiders reminded me straight away of The Wanderers, though the two come at the early ’60s from very different angles. Coppola leans into myth, framing teenage turf wars with a soft-focus glow, while Philip Kaufman’s film a few years earlier had a bawdier, rougher energy that felt lived-in.

The Complete Novel cut of The Outsiders makes the needle drops the driving force, swelling and sentimental, almost like a jukebox musical. The Wanderers also trades heavily on its soundtrack, but there the songs feel closer to the Bronx streets they echo from, rowdier and more immediate. Coppola’s version plays like a fable softened by nostalgia, Kaufman’s like an awkward, funny, sometimes brutal memory.

The real highlight of The Outsiders is the cast, all future stars caught just before they broke through. It’s fascinating seeing that much talent bottled in one film. Yet compared to The Wanderers, which gives its gang more bite and grit, Coppola’s boys feel more like icons in the making than characters in the mess.

Neon, glass and shadow turn Paris into a city at once familiar and alien, ruled by reason and stripped of poetry. Into this world strides Eddie Constantine’s Lemmy Caution, trench coat and pulp swagger intact, as if he’s wandered in from another reel. His deadpan delivery makes him a strange but steady anchor against Godard’s stark backdrops.

Anna Karina gives the story its human spark, her performance suggesting warmth in a place bent on erasing it. Godard films offices, hotels and highways as monuments to control, while the rasping voice of Alpha 60 saturates the soundtrack like an endless lecture. The effect is both oppressive and slyly comic. What emerges is a noir-sci-fi hybrid that argues for human feeling against a world of cold logic.

Shadows and secrets creep through the corridors of The Fallen Idol. From the start, the camera lowers us to a child’s height, letting us glimpse an adult world just out of reach. What’s thrilling is how the smallest details—a whisper behind a door, a look held too long—swell into high drama when seen through a boy’s eyes.

The film plays like a thriller smuggled inside a childhood memory. Graham Greene’s story knows how to build unease from silences as much as words, and Carol Reed directs with the patience of someone who trusts the audience to piece things together

Ralph Richardson grounds it with quiet authority, but it’s young Bobby Henrey’s wide-eyed bewilderment that makes the tension sting. It isn’t grand spectacle but something smaller and sharper: the feeling that the world of grown-ups is dangerous, and that truth is slipperier than it first appears.

The new 4K release makes Better Off Dead look far glossier than its reputation. It’s still very much an oddball teen comedy, somwhere between John Hughes and Looney Tunes shorts. Lane’s heartbreak spirals into cartoonish duels, crooning hamburgers, and a paperboy who treats debt collection like trench warfare.

Not every gag survives the upgrade—some creak, some evaporate mid-scene—but the film has a scrappy energy that keeps it moving. You get the sense the filmmakers were making it up as they went, and sometimes that looseness works better than polish would.

What’s left is a strange, lopsided charm: too uneven to be a classic, too bizarre to forget. The mainstream jokes fade, but the weird shines brighter. Watching it now, you see a film that shouldn’t hold together, and somehow does—just about.