Film Reviews by griggs

The Baby is entirely bonkers. It’s one of those films where you spend most of the runtime wondering if it’s meant to be a dark comedy, social commentary, or just a mad fever dream—and then the ending slaps you with something so horrifying and twisted, you just sit there gobsmacked.

It’s not good in any traditional sense, but it's truly bizarre. The fact that it plays it all straight adds to the weird, hilarious tension. Ruth Roman is terrific as Mrs Wadsworth—equal parts Joan Crawford glare and Joan Collins sass—and Anjanette Comer keeps a straight face like a champ.

House of the Devil is the kind of film that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled across a forgotten VHS in your local video shop circa 1983. From the grainy cinematography to the brilliant production design and period-perfect editing, Ti West nails the ‘80s aesthetic—it’s lived-in, not just styled.

It’s also surprisingly tense. There’s a real Hitchcock-style suspense at play, with a creeping, slow-burn horror vibe that calls to mind classics like The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Changeling. You can tell where it’s all heading, but the “how” and “why” keep you firmly in its grip.

That said, I did find myself wondering if it’s more style than substance. Is it a clever tribute, or is it borrowing too heavily from the past? Either way, it’s a fun and faithful throwback with an authentic atmosphere—even if it never becomes its own thing. Still, it’s well worth a watch.

Watching Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is like being trapped in a cinema that’s caught on fire, and instead of running for the fire exits, you’re blocking the aisles and cheering. Sono throws everything at the screen–violence, absurdity, sentimentality–and somehow, it still, or at least smoulders in your brain long after. It make’s John Waters’ Cecil B. Demented look like a restrained Hollywood Golden Age studio picture rather than a midnight movie by comparison. It’s overwhelming, ridiculous, and weirdly moving. You don’t just watch, you get swept up in his deranged energy. And when the credits roll, you’re exhausted but strangely elated–like you’ve just survived something brilliant and bonkers.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is pure chaos in the best and worst ways. It’s like someone dared Sion Sono to make Kill Bill on a sugar rush–with yakuza, wannabe filmmakers, exploding teeth, and buckets of blood. And somehow, it all circles back to the mad joy of making movies. There’s an infectious love of cinema here, even if it’s wrapped in complete nonsense.

It’s messy, loud and deeply silly–but that’s sort of the charm. It plays like a home video with a Hollywood body count, and even when it doesn’t all hang together, you can’t help but smile at the madness. Sono clearly doesn’t care about polish or subtlety–he’s going for broke, and it’s oddly endearing.

Taipei Story predates Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and The Terrorizers, but it already contains the emotional DNA of Edward Yang’s later work. Co-written by Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien—who also stars as the male lead—it’s a film about a couple, perhaps a city, caught between fading pasts and uncertain futures. Their relationship decays in slow motion, framed by a Taipei changing faster than anyone can handle.

Yang’s touch is subtler here, less polished than his later work, but no less potent. There’s a quiet devastation in every scene, a sense that life is slipping through these characters’ fingers. At the same time, they remain paralysed by nostalgia or indecision.

It’s not as expansive or intricate as A Brighter Summer Day, but it shares its sense of looming dread. And though it lacks the narrative trickery of The Terrorizers, it’s just as precise in capturing isolation. A sombre, aching portrait of modern disconnection—and a vital early entry in Yang’s legacy.

L’Eclisse is a film I didn’t expect to love—yet here we are, a near-perfect experience. Until now, I’ve struggled with Antonioni’s work: Blow-Up and The Passenger left me cold (though both are due a rewatch), Red Desert and L’Avventura nearly broke me, and only La Notte truly landed.

It opens with a breakup and follows the tentative, probably doomed connection between Monica Vitti’s disillusioned translator and Alain Delon’s slick stockbroker. Set mainly in Rome’s eerily quiet EUR district, the city feels more like a ghost town than a capital, amplifying the film’s alienation and emotional drift themes.

As ever with Antonioni, it’s mood over momentum, texture over dialogue—but this time, I was fully invested. Vitti is magnetic, all hesitation and grace, while Delon smoulders in sharp suits and moral vagueness.

The less said about the brief but baffling blackface scene, the better—Antonioni includes it early on as a throwaway gag, with Vitti returning from Kenya in costume. It’s meant to be playful but now comes across as casually racist and painfully out of touch, a reminder of the blind spots of the era.

And that final montage? Chilling, gorgeous, unforgettable. If this is what the end of love looks like, I’ve never seen it rendered more beautifully.

After Dark, My Sweet really threw me. On paper, it’s classic noir—damaged drifter, femme fatale, a dodgy plan spiralling into doom. But instead of moody shadows and rainy alleys, it’s all sun-scorched streets and bleached-out landscapes. It feels less like a thriller and more like a fever dream, drifting through a cracked and crumbling world.

Jason Patric absolutely nails it as the ex-boxer teetering on the edge. He’s quiet, twitchy, and weirdly tender—like a man who’s just about holding it together. His performance crept up on me. There’s real emotional weight beneath the surface.

That said, the film’s slow—really slow. It’s not big on plot twists or action, and at times, I found myself wondering where it was all going. But the atmosphere is spot on—drenched in dread and that sinking feeling of inevitable failure.

It’s not one I’d rave about, but I respect the mood it builds.

Hallow Road is a tidy little thriller built on a long-shelved Black List script that mostly delivers. Nearly the entire film unfolds inside a car, with Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys acting through phone calls while cycling through various shades of panic. Rhys has less to do, but both leads give solid, committed performances. There’s real tension at times—though oddly, my biggest fear was Pike’s phone battery dying. I'm not sure that was the intended horror, but it got me.

It’s a simple and effective setup that rattles along at a decent pace. Yet, it somehow manages to feel both over- and underwhelming. The ending is clearly signposted, and when it arrives, it feels like the film skips over a few crucial details. Still, it’s enjoyable enough for what it is—tense in the right places, well-acted, and crucially, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Greg Araki’s The Doom Generation is full-throttle chaos from the jump—a shrieking, blood-soaked, neon-lit howl that doesn’t unfold so much as explode, and then explode again. And again. It’s sex, violence, and absurdity on repeat, each cycle more deranged than the last—and somehow, that repetition becomes the point.

Very much a time capsule of mid-’90s teenage nihilism, it plays like a queer filmmaker scribbled a hetero love triangle on the back of a burning napkin while high on sugar, rage, and discarded MTV clips—only for the emotional core to emerge in the quiet chemistry between the two men.

Part dystopian road movie, part deranged rom-com, part grotesque social satire, it walks a fine line between parody and despair. The acting’s deliberately flat, the world totally unhinged, and every punchline is dipped in acid. Trashy, ugly, magnetic mayhem—and I couldn’t look away.

September 5 is not the film I expected. Given the reviews I’d read beforehand, I was expecting this to be pro-Israel propaganda, with many critics pointing to the timing of its release and references to the Holocaust as a means of bias. Yet, I found the film strangely lacking in terms of the actual conflict in the Middle East, not that I expected any comment on today’s conflicts, but contextualisation of the events of the time. Instead, it takes a different approach, examining how the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist attack, where 11 Israeli hostages were killed by the Palestinian Black September group, along with five of the attackers and one West German police officer, became the first major crisis broadcast live on television, highlighting how even the most sombre coverage inevitably turns into a form of entertainment.

The production design was excellent, enabling the most gripping aspects of the film, the chaotic scramble behind the scenes: networks bickering over satellite access, sports and news departments clashing over who should cover the events. Whilst real footage of the news broadcasts are used, actual archival footage of the events is used sparingly, keeping it out of reach. Seeing a fleeting glimpse of a young Trevor McDonald was also a treat.

John Magaro shines as an ABC producer trying to wrangle order from the madness. At the same time, Leonie Benesch is superb as a German translator navigating uncomfortable questions about her country's past - when it is suggested to her that all Germans were willing executioners. A reputation and image that by holding the Olympic Games, West Germany was trying to lose.

September 5 doesn’t dig deep into politics; if there are parallels to be drawn with current events, it leaves them to you. And that is how the film succeeds in being a succinct media procedural, offering a compelling look at the news machine scrambling to cover history in real time. The film captures the tension of live broadcasting, where technical hurdles and corporate egos clash with the gravity of unfolding tragedy. Strong performances from the cast keep things engaging as you are immersed in the control room chaos. It may not be the film I expected, but as a window into the birth of 24-hour news culture, it’s undeniably interesting.

Spring in a Small Town is a quiet stunner–delicate, melancholic, and profoundly affecting. Directed by Fei Mu in 1948, it follows a woman stuck in a crumbling marriage whose life is upended when her former lover–now her husband’s friend–comes to visit. It’s a love triangle but without the melodrama. Everything’s handled with aching restraint.

Unlike most films from that era in China, it avoids politics entirely, focusing on personal emotion. That choice nearly doomed it, as Mao’s regime labelled it “bourgeois” and buried it for decades. It’s rediscovery is a gift.

The cinematography is lyrical, full of quite ruins and long silences, with an almost European art film feel–think early French realism or pre-Ozu Japan. The cast, especially Wei Wei, are superb, giving performances full of longing and nuance.

It’s slow, subtle, and haunting. This little masterpiece is not for the impatient but for those who like their heartbreak poetic.

They’ve officially turned the dial past 11 and snapped it off. John Wick 4 is a three-hour symphony of carnage—elegant, relentless, and bordering on mythic. It takes the balletic violence of John Wick 3, straps it to a flaming muscle car, and drives it up the Sacré-Cœur steps. Twice.

The globe-trotting plot is mostly nonsense—half ancient ritual, half loyalty card programme—but who’s here for logic? You’re here for set pieces, and this film delivers like it’s being paid per corpse. Donnie Yen is the standout: blind, deadly, and somehow charming while murdering half of Paris. Bill Skarsgård swans about like a Eurotrash Bond villain, and the whole thing plays like The Good, the Bad and the Extremely Well-Dressed.

The franchise’s ongoing love letter to The Warriors continues, most explicitly in the radio DJ who calmly narrates the carnage, dispatching assassins like a silky-voiced oracle with a stack of vinyl and bloodlust. It’s a pulpy homage that deepens the series’ comic-book mythology, adding noir flair to the madness.

There’s also something quietly reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva at play—not just in the Paris setting, but in the way the film channels that cinéma du look flair: blending pulp action with operatic flourish, rigid codes of honour, and haute couture violence. It’s a spiritual cousin in style, if not in story—where even murder feels like performance art staged in a cathedral of excess.

By now, the Wickiverse has fully embraced its own absurdity. It’s Keanu as a stoic samurai-cowboy-Jesus, punching through stained glass and existential dread. Preposterous? Yes. But also pure action cinema nirvana—long, loud, glorious.

I was eager to finally watch this cult classic, though it’s hard to ignore how its once-radiant glow has dimmed. Diva is obsessed with looking cool–in that regard, it absolutely succeeds. Every frame is stylish and meticulously composed. But beyond that, there’s not much to hold onto. Alex Cox was right to call it an ‘Art Director’s film’–the aesthetic is everything, while the story is an afterthought. The plot is wafer-thin, following a hapless courier who stumbles into a criminal conspiracy, though it does deliver one excellent chase sequence through Paris at night. And, of course, I’ll never forget the right way to butter a baguette now. It’s easy to see how Diva influenced Luc Besson and Leos Carax with its Cinéma du Look styling, but in the end, it’s more of a mood piece than a genuinely gripping film.

Miracle Mile is the kind of film that sneaks up on you. What begins as a quirky, synth-soaked ‘80s romance quickly pivots into something far darker—a tense, time-ticking thriller about the possible end of the world. It plays with your expectations and does it smartly. 

It reminded me of After Hours, with its eerie, empty streets and a rising sense of urban madness. Anthony Edwards is excellent as the everyman suddenly thrust into chaos, trying to make sense of increasingly alarming events. As the city stirs, panic spreads—looting, violence, and hysteria erupt in waves.

What’s unnerving is how the film keeps you guessing: is this happening or just a massive misunderstanding? It doesn’t quite pack the punch of Scorsese’s film, perhaps because faceless nuclear doom is harder to connect with than the weirdness of late-night city dwellers. Still, it’s a compelling, offbeat descent into dread—uneven but gripping.

The Wild Pear Tree is a slow, meandering wander through the frustrations of youth, homecoming, and generational disappointment. It’s all long conversations, philosophical tangents, and metaphor-heavy visuals—but somehow, it works. Sinan is both insufferable and relatable, and the dynamic with his charming wreck of a father quietly steals the film. It’s overlong, sure, but if you’re in the mood for something introspective and beautifully shot, this one digs deep—and then keeps digging.

Blood for Dracula is what happens when Andy Warhol produces a vampire film but forgets to include a pulse. Udo Kier stars as a tubercular, virgin-obsessed Count who leaves a bloodless Romania for Italy, where the local virgins are all too busy being ravished by a communist handyman with muscles and a moustache. What follows is a two-hour fever dream of incest, rape, domestic violence, and a sprinkling of paedophilia, all wrapped in painfully dry, soundless sex scenes and Marxism. The acting is wooden, the accents criminal, and the political commentary so blunt it could bruise fruit. And yet—somehow—it’s mesmerising. Praise be to the 4K UHD restoration, which polishes this sleazy oddity into a thing of warped beauty. The colours pop, the grain dances, and Kier’s sweaty desperation has never looked sharper. It’s tasteless, tone-deaf, utterly absurd… and weirdly more watchable than Twilight.