Film Reviews by griggs

There’s something delightfully warped about a film that combines rubbery monster mayhem with a deadpan anti-drug parable. Brain Damage delivers exactly that, served with buckets of goo and a smirk. The plot’s simple enough: an affable young man becomes host to a talking, brain-slurping parasite who offers euphoric highs in exchange for grisly meals.

The special effects are gloriously gruesome—practical, tactile, and gloriously over the top. This is latex, slime, and splatter done with love, the sort of craftsmanship that makes you wince and grin in the same breath. Frank Henenlotter keeps the tone bouncy, knowing exactly when to push the absurdity and when to lean into full-on gore.

It’s pure cult—cheerfully trashy yet surprisingly sharp in its satire. The humour never lets the horror get too heavy, and the horror keeps the humour from getting too smug. Messy, monstrous, and infectiously fun.

I’ve seen a lot in my time. A man juggling chainsaws. A llama in a neck brace. The 2025 reboot of The Naked Gun. Only one of those made me question renewing my cinema membership.

This time around, it’s Liam Neeson in the trench coat—all gravel, no gravy. He’s game, bless him, but parodying someone already carved from stone proves trickier than expected. The film tears through gags, pratfalls, callbacks, and dolphins like a dog through a recycling bin—plenty of energy, some recognisable shapes, very little that sticks.

There’s effort, to be fair. It throws everything at the wall: sight gags, puns, deadpan delivery, and the odd surreal flourish. But too often, it flinches. Jokes wobble, fade, or overstay. The pacing’s modern, the tone confused. The result? A remake that feels more like a photocopy of a spoof once described over a bad Zoom connection.

It’s not a disaster. You’ll smile now and then. And at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome. But mostly, it makes you miss Leslie Nielsen. And wonder if the llama’s free for the inevitable sequel.

Some films whisper, others shout—but a few simply mutter, confused and heavy, for their runtime. The Woman in the Yard falls into that final camp. It begins with a clear premise: a mourning mother named Ramona is unsettled by a mysterious woman in her garden. But this isn’t a typical haunting, it’s a raw exploration handled more directly than many “trauma horror” films dare.

Danielle Deadwyler delivers a quietly commanding lead performance. Her suffering feels tangible—worn like armour, tightening around every glance. The film shifts between psychological thriller and nuanced trauma study, its ambition undeniable even when execution fails.

What makes it striking is its refusal to treat the Woman as mere supernatural scare fodder. She feels more like a manifestation of Ramona’s internal collapse—a choice that is bold and unsettling in equal measure.

However, the slow pacing, narrative ambiguity, and uneven tone undercut its strongest ideas. You admire its courage, but much of that intent feels buried under too much stillness and not quite enough story.

Some films sharpen a single blade; others brandish the whole cutlery drawer. Antonia Bird’s Ravenous opts for the later—an existential, post-colonial, horror tinged, revisionist Western with a pitch-black sense of humour and a stomach for the grotesque. Somehow, against all odds, it works.

Set during the Mexican-American War and soaked in snow, blood and metaphor, the plot is simple enough: a disgraced soldier stumbles into a remote outpost and finds a very hungry survivor. From there, things spiral—from cannibalism to moral collapse, and maybe back again. The tone shifts constantly but deliberately, swerving between deadpan comedy and genuine dread without losing its footing.

It’s not flawless—the pacing dips, and some of the satire feels a little overcooked—but the ambition is undeniable. History, Ravenous suggests, is a nightmare of appetites: for power, land, flesh. And once you get a taste, good luck stopping.

There’s something refreshing about a film that doesn’t try to reconcile its contradictions—just chew through them.

You don’t expect a film with a knitwear-heavy murder spree to open with a giggle—but this one had me laughing out loud within minutes. I’ve seen a few Wheatleys, but Sightseers strikes a very different tone: deadpan, petty and weirdly provincial.

In its own twisted way, it’s British road movie—of which there are surprisingly few. A kind of Badlands with Kendal Mint Cake, where violence is less about destiny and more about dented egos and chemical toilets. The open road leads nowhere particular, just further into dysfunction.

Chris is a puffed-up chauvinist, a proud little Englander who think National Trust membership membership counts as personality. Tina, meanwhile, seems content to go along for the ride—anything to avoid her mother and the drudgery of home. Together, they stumble through a grimly of landmarks, tram museums, pencil factories and modest peaks, leaving corpses in the wake.

Wheatley keeps the tone sharp and the pacing brisk. The humour is dry as a cream cracker, the locations perfectly underwhelming, and “Mint me!” might be new catchphrase. Not quite top-tier, but sharp, strange, and unmistakably his.

Frustrating doesn’t quite cover it. There’s a bold, unnerving film buried in Pola X—and in the final twenty minutes, it claws its way to the surface. Those closing scenes are haunting, austere, and genuinely arresting. The mood, at times, is magnetic: shadowy forests, industrial decay, the ache of bodies unsure what to do with themselves. The cinematography captures it all with cold elegance, and Scott Walker’s score thrums beneath it like an open wound. Even the in-film band has presence.

But then there’s the rest. A sprawl of scenes that wander in, say nothing, and sit awkwardly at the edge of the narrative. It’s as if the editor went on strike—or perhaps refused to cut a single shot on aesthetic grounds.

There’s much to admire here. But admiration fades when you keep checking your watch. By the time the film reveals its sharpest edges, it’s already dulled your patience.

Beautiful, dreamy, and more than a little daft, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman floats somewhere between myth and melodrama, swaddled in Technicolor and fatalism. Ava Gardner, lit like a living oil painting by Jack Cardiff, plays Pandora with the kind of glamour that feels elemental—less a character than a force of nature. James Mason, as the cursed Dutchman, brings quiet gravity to a role that asks him to deliver poetic reflections on guilt and fate while looking permanently windswept.

 It’s a storybook of a film—wind-swept beaches, antique yachts, mystical paintings, and timeless devotion all viewed through a lens of heightened romanticism. The influence of Powell and Pressburger—particularly Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes—is easy to spot, thanks to Cardiff’s rich colour work and painterly compositions.

The pacing drifts, and the narration does more telling than showing, but there’s a certain hypnotic pull to its sincerity. Like its doomed sailor, the film is haunted by the past, consumed by longing, and sailing ever toward the sublime—regardless of whether it makes port.

Somewhere between Say Anything and Pulp Fiction lies Grosse Pointe Blank—a rom-com in a hitman’s suit. John Cusack plays a professional killer heading home for his high school reunion, which turns out to be more about closure than carnage. He’s mopey, sardonic, and of course, he’s brought Joan along for the ride.

Dan Aykroyd turns up to chew scenery and exchange bullets in a couple of shootouts—highly choreographed, oddly daft, and occasionally impressive. But for all the firepower, the film never quite goes off. The stakes remain soft, the thriller elements mostly decorative, and the dialogue often feels improvised. Like many films in Tarantino’s wake, the mood and pace are set not by plot but by soundtrack. Joe Strummer’s score, plus a roster of ’80s and ’90s alternative and ska, sells the nostalgia and smooths over the narrative wobble.

Grosse Pointe Blank is more interested in looking and sounding cool than saying anything. It’s enjoyable enough—just don’t expect it to hit the mark.

Dust clings to every surface, and silence says more than diagloue in Yaaba, a quietly affecting tale from Burkina Faso. A young g boy befriends an elderly outcast known as "the witch", much to the disapproval of his viallage. Their friendship is the heart of the film—understated, unsentimental, and the more powerful for it.

The story move with the rhythm of rural life—unhurried, circular, and marked by small, decisive moments. Squabbles, illness, suspicion, and tenderness unfold in long takes and sparse exchanges. Their's a folkloric quality to it all, but it's grounded in the dust and heat of a world that feels both real and gently mythic.

Not everything lands. Some emotional beats are a little too tidy, and the plot leans more on mood than momentu,. But Ouédraogo's eye is sharp, and his restraint admirable. Yaaba is slight, yes—but also quietly absorbing, offering a rare window into childhood, community, and compassion etched into the landscape itself.

On the surface, it’s all soda fountains and sock hops. But beneath Pleasantville’s glossy black-and-white shell lies something far thornier. The film presents itself as a parable of repression and personal awakening, with colour seeping in as characters discover art, desire, and dissent. It’s clever, up to a point.

As townsfolk begin policing who’s “in colour” and who isn’t—banning books, smashing windows, and enforcing curfews—the parallels to 1950s authoritarianism are clear. But while the film borrows the language and tactics of segregation-era America, it avoids any direct engagement with race. The town is conspicuously white, making its civil rights allegory feel oddly hollow. For a film about expanding perspective, the view stays curiously narrow.

There’s charm in places—Jeff Daniels’ timid artist, Joan Allen’s quiet defiance—but it ends up feeling more like a concept than a conviction. Pleasantville wants to colour outside the lines but never quite picks the right brush.

Tone is the problem. Or rather, tones—plural—vying for dominance like jealous siblings. The Young Poisoner’s Handbook can’t decide whether it wants to be a sardonic true-crime character study or a grotesque farce. The result is a film that feels oddly weightless, despite all the poisoning.

Based on the life of Graham Young, it charts his journey from precocious sociopath to calculating killer, with a heavy dose of ironic detachment. But the irony feels brittle, the humour forced. The performances are fine—Hugh O’Conor does a decent job of making Graham eerie yet oddly flat—but there’s no real insight, only affectation.

The film flirts with satire, especially in the institutional scenes, but never lands a strong point. It’s too glib to be disturbing, too arch to be moving. There’s potential here—a chilling story and a killer concept—but it’s buried under tonal whiplash and a script that keeps smirking at its own cleverness.

 This handbook might be better left unread.

There’s no easing in—just a lurch straight into chaos.Late Shift doesn’t let up, tracking one overstretched nurse through a night that feels like it might never end. It moves at breakneck speed, stacking emergencies, frustrations, and quiet acts of resilience with such urgency it could be mistaken for real time.

The camera sticks close, sometimes uncomfortably so, forcing us to bear witness as pressure mounts. It’s tense—relentlessly so—but threaded with moments of dark humour and absurdity, the kind that comes only from experience. The film knows the rhythms of exhaustion: the awkward jokes, the breath snatched behind a curtain, the numbness that sets in when choices run out.

Then, abruptly, it stops. The final moments are devastating, stripped of words, as Anthony and the Johnson’s Hope There’s Someone crashes in and what’s been buried all night finally spills out. I was in bits by the end. Still am, to be honest. It’s a film that holds you hostage—then leaves you reeling in the quiet.

Elegant suits, late-night snacks, and the slow grind of loyalty—that’s the pace on offer here. Touchez Pas au Grisbi sells itself as a gangster flick, but it’s really a melancholic meditation on ageing out of your profession, with guns holstered and regrets worn like cologne. Jean Gabin plays Max, a weary thief with a pension plan, trying to fade into comfortable obscurity. Trouble is, his best mate Riton can’t keep his mouth shut.

There’s something admirable in how little the film cares about thrills—it’s more supper club than shootout. Gabin smoulders, of course, but he’s a philosopher more than a felon, dispensing wisdom between glasses of wine. The script, however, leaves him underfed; you keep hoping it’ll give him something meatier than resignation and raised eyebrows.

Still, the mood—worn silk and closing-time weariness—has its charm. Not exactly gripping, but quietly assured. If this is the gangster’s farewell, it’s delivered with a shrug and a final bite of foie gras.

Spencer Tracy steps off the train like a dropped match—into a town that’s all tinder, no water. Sturges strikes tension from the first frame. The desert may be vast, but Bad Day at Black Rock feels claustrophobic from the outset: one man asking questions no one wants to answer, in a place that hasn’t seen a train stop in years.

Tracy plays it calm but unflinching, a war veteran with one arm and more backbone than the entire town combined. His presence peels back the town’s shame—rooted in racism and the forgotten lives of Japanese-Americans after internment. There’s more talking than action, but the words hit like blows. When fists do fly, they land harder for the delay.

It’s slow-paced, sure—but tight. Not a minute of its trim 81 is wasted. Even the silences hum with suspicion. Only the ending feels too neat—as if, having stared into moral rot, the film blinked.

Still, for most of its runtime, this is precision cinema with real heat.

The murder and beheading of teenage shepherd Nizar is portrayed with somber restraint, steeped in the grief and numb shock of a small mountain village. “Based on a true story” appears before the first frame, yet parts of Red Path feel so outlandish you forget—until the closing credits remind you it all happened.

The strongest scenes follow the family back up the mountain to retrieve Nizar’s body, whilst his head is stored in the family fridge and reporters crowd their home, It's a quesy balance of macabre and tragic, handled with care. Less convincing are the dreamlike encounters between Achraf—the cousin who survived—and a living Nizar. Framed as catharsis, they register instead as a misjudged fantasy detour.

The film also skirts vital context: the killers' links to Tunisia's IS wing and the national shock that followed. Without that frame, the tragedy seems smaller than it was. What remains is an unsettling portrait of loss, grief, and intrusion—potent in parts, but weakened by choices that pull it away from the reality it seeks to honour.