Film Reviews by griggs

The Lady from Shanghai is a noir gem, not because it's flawless but because its flaws are fascinating. The plot? A messy, chaotic tangle that stumbles more than it strides—never entirely taking off.

Despite their off-screen history, Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth share zero on-screen chemistry, perhaps due to the butchering Welles was forced to do in the edit suite to please the producers, making their romance as icy as Hayworth's platinum blonde hair.

But that finale! The hall-of-mirrors sequence is one of noir's coolest, most stylised endings and leaves a lasting impression, a testament to the film's enduring legacy. This dazzling, breath-stealing masterpiece almost redeems the preceding narrative chaos. It's Welles at his most chaotic and brilliant.

Amadeus is one of those rare films that manages to be grand and intimate at the same time. Set against the powdered wigs and ornate splendour of 18th-century Vienna, it tells a deeply human story of envy, genius, and the unbearable silence of being ordinary.

F. Murray Abraham gives a towering performance as Salieri, a man crushed not by failure but by the knowledge that his mediocrity exists alongside Mozart’s brilliance. Tom Hulce’s Mozart is electric—childish, vulgar, and casually divine at the keyboard. The rivalry that unfolds between them isn’t just personal; it’s metaphysical.

The storytelling is elegant, the script wickedly sharp, and the music—of course—is sublime. But what makes Amadeus so extraordinary is its understanding that greatness isn’t always heroic, and jealousy isn’t always unjustified.

It’s a lavish, haunting, and unexpectedly funny film that dares to ask why talent lands where it does—and what the rest of us are meant to do about it.

Stylish and suspenseful, Spellbound is a melodrama with more going on beneath the surface than many of its 1940s peers. Hitchcock brings a cool precision to what is, at heart, a psychological whodunnit—with added Freud and a dash of Dalí for flair. The story leans heavily on the romance between Ingrid Bergman’s steely psychiatrist and Gregory Peck’s dreamy amnesiac. While the film still grips, the psychology now feels more charmingly outdated than cutting-edge.

It treats psychoanalysis like a narrative scalpel—cutting cleanly through trauma, guilt, and repression to arrive at a single, tidy resolution. Dreams aren’t elusive riddles here; they’re literal puzzles, waiting for someone like Bergman to decode. Peck’s character, meanwhile, suffers from a textbook case of psychogenic amnesia—a plot device masquerading as a diagnosis, cured by a dose of therapy and romantic perseverance. It’s hardly realistic, but keeps the tension taut.

Bergman carries the film with quiet resolve, while Peck teeters between haunted and wooden depending on the moment. The real thrill, though, lies in the design—the eerie dream sequence with Dalí’s surrealist landscapes and giant eyeballs, the razor-edged shadows that echo Hitchcock’s thrillers, and Miklós Rózsa’s theremin-fuelled score, which wails like the inner workings of a nervous breakdown.

The final act ties things up a little too neatly, and the gender dynamics—progressive for the time—still settle into a familiar mould: woman as emotional caregiver, man as fragile genius. Still, there’s a strange comfort in the clarity with which everything resolves, and Hitchcock keeps a steady hand on the tone throughout.

Spellbound may not be peak Hitchcock, but it’s a striking blend of noir intrigue, glossy romance, and psychological spectacle—more elegant than it is accurate, and all the more watchable for it.

I expected something much darker, but Miami Blues turns out to be more offbeat caper than hard-boiled noir. It’s violent, sure, but there’s a playful shrug to the mayhem—as if the film itself isn’t quite taking any of it seriously. Alex Baldwin struts through the chaos with a crooked grin and the energy of a man who’s never considered a long-term plan.

Fred Ward is the moral compass, albeit a bent one, playing a weary cop whose badge ends up in all the wrong hands. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s naïve optimism adds a strange sweetness to the mess, like someone wandered in from a romcom and decided to stay.

The tone is uneven, but that’s also part of the charm—it refuse to behave the way you expect. Whether it’s a crime film, satire or something in between, Miami Blues doesn’t quite settle. But for all its jagged edges, there’s something oddly enjoyable about watching it stumble around in its own madness.

Exuding heat—dry, heavy, and suffocating in more ways than one, La Piscene drifts along as slowly as a summer’s day, and at times it’s just as torturous. The tone is oddly matter of fact, which leaves certain events feeling curiously flat—dramatic events brushed on with a cool detachment. It can be a demanding watch, especially compared to Guadagnino’s remake A Bigger Splash, whose seductive swirl is anchored by Ralph Fiennes’ gloriously unhinged charisma—an ingredient sorely missed here.

Still there is much to admire. Set on the sun-drenched French RIviera, it charts a holiday where jealousy, desire and long dormant resentment simmer quietly. Romy Schneider and Alain Delon are magnetic, and Jane Birkin’s wide-eyed presence adds a touch of eerie innocence. The central act—a moment of quiet horror—is a genuine jolt. It’s just a pity the post-climax stretch drags on, like an afternoon that refuses to cool down.

What ultimately rescues the film is its atmosphere. Those shimmering Mediterranean colours, the endless hum of cicadas, the bleached stillness of it all—captures heat not just as weather, but as mood. If A Bigger Splash was named after David Hockey’s painting, this is the sunstroke that inspired it.

There aren’t many films that make me laugh out loud in a cinema—Friendship did. Loudly. It’s a goofy, surreal spin on the terror of adult socialising, seen through the eyes of a needy, borderline-psychopathic energy vampire desperately trying to wedge himself into another man’s friend group. Tim Robinson plays the kind of character that might split the room—somewhere between Larry David in Curb and Steve Carell in The Office—but with a difference: he’s not smug, just catastrophically earnest. He doesn’t want to be right, he just wants to belong… even if it means steamrolling every boundary in sight.

His long-suffering wife deserves hazard pay, trapped in a marriage with a man who treats social interaction like a hostage negotiation. The humour leans uncomfortably close to tragedy, but always pulls back just before it hits despair. There’s something admirably loose about the whole thing—not everything sticks, but that feels part of the charm.

It’s deranged, strangely sweet, and very funny. Not quite glued down, but it doesn’t need to be.

A year before Arthur Penn kicked Hollywood’s teeth in with Bonnie & Clyde, he served up the The Chase—all tension, sweat, and Southern sleaze, but not quite the revolution.

On paper, it’s dynamite: Brando as the weary sheriff trying to hold the town together with a stare and a sigh: Redford, all bruised charisma, as the escaped convict everyone turns into a symbol; Fonda, strung tight between regret and desire. And that’s before you even get to the supporting cast—Fox, Dickinson, Duvall, Rule—each adding fuel to the fire that’s always just about to ignite.

The plot is simple: a jailbreak and the social meltdown it triggers in a small Texas town. But the atmosphere is the draw—greed, gossip, booze, and bigotry ooze out of every frame. By the time it erupts into a junkyard hellscape, it’s less about justice adn more about collapse.

It doesn’t always stick the landing, but the chaos feels earned. Brando doesn’t perform as much as smoulders—like he’s waiting for the credits to put him out. Messy, yes. But never dull.

In the Cut isn’t that film that ruined Meg Ryan’s career—it’s the one that proved she had range the romcoms never let her show. As Frankie, an emotionally armoured English teacher, she falls into a raw, obsessive affair with a crass, possibly murderous cop (a sweaty, swaggering Ruffalo). It’s not erotic escapism—it’s the kind of sec that make your flight-or-fight instinct twitch.

Back when Ryan appeared on Parkinson to promote it, she got the cold shoulder. The film was mocked, misunderstood, and mis-shelved. But two decades on, it’s been reappraised as a feminist masterpiece. Which considering it’s Campion should surprise no one.

Set during a sweltering NYC summer, the heat isn’t just physical—it’s psychological. Desire and danger become indistinguishable. You’re drawn to the thing most likely to kill you. Campion threads that kink through every frame, making pleasure feel like a threat.

Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But it’s honest, unsettling, and far more daring that the prestige dramas still playing it safe.

Coming off Thunderbolts*, I was genuinely looking forward to The Fantastic Four: First Steps—finally catching up with the MCU just in time for the big summer tentpole release. Unfortunately, if this is the start of the new MCU ten-year plan, I’d be very worried. It doesn’t feel like a bold new beginning; it feels like a franchise coasting on fumes.

The production design is the standout: a crisp blend of Jetsonian retro-futurism, wool-and-poly uniforms, and 1950s space-age optimism. It’s fun to look at, at least.

Pedro Pascal brings weight, and Vanessa Kirby does well even if she’s mostly reduced to a maternal subplot. The rest of the cast feels wasted—Julia Garner, Sarah Niles, and Natasha Lyonne barely get a look-in, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach disappears under a mountain of CGI.

The gender-flipped Silver Surfer is an interesting choice, but the film doesn’t really explore it—it’s just there, like most of the film’s ideas. A few flickers of charm, but overall it feels like the MCU has served its time.

Slicker, sweatier, and somehow sillier than the original, Predator 2 swaps the jungle for a scorched, near-future LA that feels like it is on the verge of spontaneous combustion. The city’s baking under a brutal heatwave and buckling under a turf war between heavily armed gangs and a no-less militarised police. Enter the Predator, still leaping across rooftops like parkour is no big deal, while the human cast—Danny Glover, Gary Busey, María Concita Alonso, Bill Paxton—look perpetually knackered and vaguely confused.

There’s something undeniably fun about the sheer excess. Director Stephen Hopkins isn’t here to match McTiernan’s tight direction—he’s here to let it all sprawl: more guns, more goo, more sweaty paranoia. The film has since earned a bit of a cult following, now seen by some as pulpy, misunderstood genre mayhem. That’s not entirely wrong.

It’s loud, its’s messy, and it’s got its moments—especially in the sound design, which makes every slash and shriek feel almost alarmingly close. But it’s also a bit like being shouted at in a sauna. There’s style, but not quite enough substance to track.

Plenty of ideas on the table—modern dating, identity, the way people talk past each other—but not all of them land. Materialists is heavy on the chat, and not always in a good way. There are laughs, mostly of the sharp and awkward variety, but the rhythm never quite settles. It often feels like a dinner party monologue drifting into TED Talk territory.

The performances are perfectly solid, but the casting feels slightly off. The lines don’t always sit right in the mouths that deliver them—like hearing someone else read your diary aloud. It creates a strange distance, just when the film needs connection.

Where it does hit is its take on emotional shortcuts—the belief that if you say the right thins, earn enough money, and tick enough boxes, love will automatically follow. But too many of these characters seem more invested in being loved than in doing the work of loving someone else—or even themselves. The film understands that performance without presence won't cut it.

There are moments of insight and humour, but it keeps you at arm's length. Clever, watchable, but hard to fully believe in.

Buckaroo Banzai is less a film and more a transmission from another dimension that just happened to land on VHS. It throws everything at the screen—sci-fi, kung fu, Cold War paranoia, comic books, rock bands, aliens, brain surgery—and dares you to keep up. The plot barely qualifies as one, but that’s hard the charm. You’re just supposed to go with the flow and enjoy the weird.

The cast is ridiculous. Peter Weller deadpans through quantum gibberish, Ellen Barkin plays it heartbreakingly straight, and John Lithgow’s Italian accent veers between Soviet madman and Looney Tune depending on the vowel. Christopher Lloyd and Clancy Brown lurk in the background like a weird buddy cop spin-off movie, within the movie. And then there’s Jeff Goldblum, dressed as a cowboy neurosurgeon named New Jersey, casually stealing every scene without seeming to know what film he’s in—or caring.

It’s clearly try to be everything, and while that leads to confusion, it also means you’re never bored. Whether that qualifies as brilliance or chaos is debatable. But if you’ve ever wanted to watch a jet car breach dimensional walls while a rock band saves teh world, Buckaroo Banzai is exactly your flavour of madness.

Everyone in this film is awful—and that’s the point. But they’re not just awful in one note. They are awful in layers: jealous, manipulative, greedy, sometimes weirdly principled. That mix gives Born to Kill its edge early on, especially in moments like the showdown on the beach—tense, sweaty, and twitching with danger. The violence feels genuinely unpredictable, mostly because there's just not enough decency kicking around in these characters to make you wonder if someone might do the right thing, or at least hesitate.

The real heart of it is Marty, whose entire identity is built around Sam. His loyalty isn't just practical—it's painfully romantic, and watching him try to hold the chaos together is far more affecting than anything between Sam and the women. Once Marty (and the gloriously blunt Mrs. Kraft) exit the stage, the film deflates. It becomes just another slog through noir's mean streets, minus the spark that made the earlier scenes hum.

Three strangers drift through the same empty Taipei apartment, barely aware they're sharing it. May Lin, an estate agent, uses the flat between property viewings. Ah-jung, a cocky street vendor, treats it as a temporary escape. And then there’s Hsiao-kang—quieter, more withdrawn, almost ghost-like. Of the three, he’s the most removed, slipping in and out like someone hoping not to be seen.

Vive L'Amour is less about what happens and more about what doesn't. Dialogue is minimal, connection is rarer still, and the film settles into a kind of emotional stasis that's both awkward and strangely absorbing. It's all about alienation, urban disconnection, and the strange ways we try—and fail—to reach one another.

Tsai Ming Iiang doesn't tell you what to feel; he just gives you the silence and asks you to sit with it. Hsaio-kang's voyeurism isn't predatory—it's about wanting to exists. When he eats a peach left behind by someone else, it feels like borrowed intimacy. A trace of someone else's warmth.

There's no tidy resolution. No grand carthasis. Just a quiet accumulation of loneliness. Vive L'Amour doesn't shout—it barely whispers. But if you've ever felt invisible in your own life, this one know exactly how that feels.

Mickey Rourke smoulders, Eric Roberts yells, and somehow it all just about works. The Pope of Greenwich Village is one of those scrappy little crime films that feels like it’s making things up as it goes—but in a good way. Two cousins try to hustle their way into a better life, mess with the wrong people, and get in way over their heads. There’s a dead body, a bag of cash, and a mobster who’s not shy about ordering thumbs removed. You get the vibe.

Rourke plays in cool—slick hair, half-smile, quiet rage—while Robert’s is pure chaos in a pastel suit. He’s either giving the performance of his life or testing the limits of volume. Either way, he’s never boring. The whole thing has that sweaty, desperate energy of people who think they’re in The Godfather but are really just trying to pay pay rent.

It’s rough around the edges and occasionally loses the plot, but it’s got heart, style, and a killer New York vibe. Flawed, but kind of fantastic.