Film Reviews by griggs

This is a mature courtroom drama that doesn’t beg for your attention—it earns it. Lumet turns the room into a squeeze: bodies arranged like barricades, a question left hanging a beat too long, and you feel the power shift without anyone spelling it out. It’s Lumet revisiting the pressure-cooker trick of 12 Angry Men: there the jury-room walls close in; here, the courtroom does, and the verdict starts to feel like a physical object.

Deborah Ann Kaye is left comatose after an anaesthesia error during childbirth. Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is a lawyer in freefall, reduced to handing out business cards at funerals, until Mickey (Jack Warden) pushes him a malpractice case that “should” settle. Her family wants money for care and a bit of peace. Galvin wants justice—plus delay, risk, and a trial that turns stability into a moving target.

James Mason’s Concannon makes that choice feel expensive. Newman is superb—frayed, stubborn, intermittently decent. Rampling has less to play, but she and Newman are all eyes. It’s about justice as self-respect: costly, exhausting, and worth fighting for anyway.

Some films flirt with melodrama; this one cannonballs straight into it. Douglas Sirk turns the dial to 11 and pours sugar syrup over every feeling until it sets — a plot fuelled by boating guilt and divine bookkeeping.

I expected the kindness just not the ridiculousness. It's the inverse of All That Heaven Allows: most people are rooting for Jane Wyman's heroine as she takes life's sucker-punches (and one or two of Rock Hudson's) with preternatural grace. The older-woman/younger-heartthrob pairing is a rare Hollywood gift, and they sell tender earnestness like pros.

The 'do good in secret' creed is hokey WWJD church-leaflet piety, and it curdles when her late husband's saintliness somehow skips the dull part: leaving his wife provided for.

Hudson starts off a bit green adn can't act drunk to save his life. The drama didn't grab me like All That Heaven Allows, but the romance nearly did; when he's prepping for surgery shirtless to sweeping harp crescendos, I'm laughing and leaning in at once. Completely daft — and, annoyingly, satisfying. 

It’s basically a Jekyll-and-Hyde gag dressed up in mid-century modern candyfloss — and, honestly, the dressing does a lot of the heavy lifting. The lab is a riot of multicoloured tubes and space-age clutter, the lighting snaps, the makeup is loud, and the whole thing commits to a cartoon world where taste is optional but confidence isn’t.

What’s thinner is the human stuff. The writing doesn’t give Julius Kelp much depth beyond “please like me”, and Buddy Love is less a character than a swaggering warning label. The film also leans on women as décor and punchlines: Stella Stevens is terrific, but the role mostly asks her to smile and be pursued, while Kelp’s humiliations are milked for laughs like that’s the main course.

Then the ending swerves into something real. When the formula fails and the mask drops, the self-acceptance speech lands with an unexpected thud — you can almost feel Lewis’s embarrassment crackling off the screen.

It’s hard to believe this is a first feature. Tarkovsky shows up with a fully loaded style, and Ivan’s Childhood doesn’t let you hide behind noble-war-movie nonsense. You get these light, airy dreams—sun in the trees, mum, play—then bang: mud, cold water, ruins, night. The dreams don’t soothe you. They make the waking world feel even crueller, like a receipt for what’s been taken.

Nature just watches: birch trunks, wind, reflections on the river. Beautiful, indifferent, always there. The camera glides, the framing turns people into shapes in a damaged landscape, and everything feels solid yet unsettled—like the past is still digging its nails in.

Nikolai Burlyayev’s Ivan isn’t “brave”; he’s wired, battered, and far too young. The adults mean well—school, safety, normal life—but they’re already too late. No comforting sacrifice. Just loss.

There’s a particular kind of film that can deliver a family dinner scene like it’s a high-wire act. You’re watching everyone pass the dishes, say almost nothing, and somehow broadcast decades of resentment, love, and regret with the clink of chopsticks.

Eat Drink Man Woman rides melodrama’s rollercoaster—shocks, reveals, rug-pulls—but it frames the whole thing with an Ozu-like calm. The camera stays composed even when the characters don’t. It’s a smart trick: the steadier the surface, the harder the emotional undertow pulls. By the time another “wait, what?” lands, you’re already invested, not just entertained.

And the food—good grief. Exquisite stuff, filmed with such care it feels like a love language. Somehow, it all comes together so neatly it feels… unfairly perfect.

Most of the time this feels like Burton decorating the room instead of telling a story: whimsy-by-the-yard, oddballs on parade, and a fairytale sheen that keeps emotions safely behind glass. I admired the craft more than I felt much of it.

Then the film finds its pulse. Ed Bloom’s stories stop reading as cute lies and start sounding like armour — the way some dads keep you close while staying just out of reach. That hit home. My own father had that same aura: more lives, jobs, and half-told chapters than I understood when I was younger.

The ache isn’t “what was true?” so much as “how much did I never get to see?” Big Fish is uneven and over-decorated, but when it finally talks about fathers and grief, it talks straight

It looked like a frothy wedding comedy. Then Muriel’s Wedding pulled the rug: ABBA, cringey laughs, and—whoops—real sadness underneath.

What I loved (and winced at) was how the big white wedding isn’t a harmless daydream here. It’s a life plan women get nudged towards, and Muriel clings to it like proof she matters. In doing so, she nearly misses the better stuff right beside her—friendship, small joys, and the hard, unglamorous business of learning to like herself.

A couple of split-diopter shots really stayed with me. Muriel sits stranded in the foreground while someone else stays razor-sharp in a doorway behind her, like the world quietly judging.

Toni Collette makes the need feel human, not a punchline, and Rachel Griffiths brings grit and heart. The ending lands as proper relief—earned, not syrupy.

You know within about five minutes what kind of film this is. It doesn’t overthink it: Bruce Lee walks in, the film knows exactly how to frame him, and it sensibly lets him run the show before sharing the fun once everyone’s on the island.

The set-up is straightforward in the best way: Han doing his Bond-villain routine, a tournament that rolls around every three years, and a string of fights in different flavours. Jim Kelly’s Williams has swagger for days; John Saxon’s Roper is surprisingly game and properly handy; and Ahna Capri’s Tania gives “the secretary” far more presence than the job description suggests.

It’s not a plot you chew over afterwards—it’s a framework for style. The fights are crisp, the attitude is infectious, Lalo Schifrin’s score is an earworm, and that mirror-room finale still hits: smash, feint, grin, repeat.

I keep banging on that Monroe had far more range than the studio’s “dizzy blonde” wrapping. The maddening part of The Seven Year Itch is that she proves she can do that persona perfectly — and you can see it’s technique, not “just Marilyn”. Playing ditzy well takes control, like Les Dawson pretending to murder the piano while quietly being terrific.

The story’s simple: Tom Ewell’s ad-man is left in sweltering Manhattan while his wife and kid escape to Maine, and the woman upstairs wanders into his head as much as his hallway. Wilder laces it with fantasies and little “what if?” set-pieces, but the film keeps treating her like a gag delivery system rather than a person.

There are brief flashes of a richer Marilyn — a sudden drop into that other, lower voice; a couple of dream beats where she goes faintly femme fatale — and they hint at a better movie. The famous dress scene is oddly muted given the legend. Still, despite the patronising packaging (and Ewell’s unpleasant blankness), it’s hard to deny it’s entertaining.

I wanted this to be a scruffy, rude little crowd-pleaser. The setup’s got promise, the cast can play, and there are moments where it genuinely makes you laugh. But No Hard Feelings can’t build on its own good bits.

The script feels bland and charmless, and the story beats are so signposted you can see them coming from the car park. A lot of the jokes get lobbed out and left to fend for themselves — the kind of lines that should pop, but instead just sit there.

Then, in the third act, it reaches for a warm, sentimental glow and the film starts changing channels mid-scene: crude one minute, earnest the next. Funny in patches, but not enough to carry the tonal wobble. Nora Ephron, you are missed.

Some films feel like nostalgia with the edges sanded down: warm, slightly smug, and determined to be pleasant. That’s Radio Days for me — an affectionate scrapbook of 1940s Brooklyn, narrated from adulthood and stitched together as a run of vignettes.

The ensemble is the main draw. It’s all cramped rooms, overlapping arguments, and relatives who treat sarcasm as a food group. The radio stuff is properly fun too — serials, jingles, broadcast voices — making everyday life sound bigger than it is. Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest, in particular, find tender notes beneath the patter.

Still, I kept wanting a bit more grit — one moment where the sweetness catches and actually stings. Instead it ambles into a wrap-up that plays like the punchline to a very, very long joke: charming, airy, and gone the second the set clicks off. Entertaining enough.

Some films get treated like the bonus track on a greatest-hits album: loads of fun, therefore “minor”. The Hidden Fortress has worn that label for years—big crowd-pleaser in Japan, then downgraded to a Star Wars trivia card. Which is a shame, because it’s bracingly unsentimental about what “entertainment” can include.

If you want to play spot-the-influence, the parallels are easy to see. Tahei and Matashichi are the bickering point-of-view pair (ancestors of C-3PO and R2-D2, if the droids were hungrier, nastier, and constantly trying to profit). Princess Yuki is a clear template for Leia: royal, stubborn, and allergic to shrinking herself to keep men comfortable. And Mifune’s General Rokurota Makabe is the seasoned protector figure—often compared to Obi-Wan, but with more swagger and visible grief under the armour.

What I love is how Kurosawa refuses the cosy “proto-droids” myth. The opening makes war ugly and class brutal; the peasants aren’t loveable scamps, they’re selfish scavengers. That moral mess is the contrast that makes the film’s decency feel earned. Yuki’s compassion—especially towards a young woman trapped in sexual exploitation—has real consequences and forces the group to behave like humans, not just survivors.

It’s a chase movie and a road movie at once, shot in widescreen that keeps pushing people to opposite edges of the frame until you can feel the distrust. Its biggest “crime” is being this much fun—and that’s exactly why it belongs at the top table.

You can feel the squeeze from the first minute: a merchant ship is torpedoed, and suddenly a bunch of strangers—plus one rescued German sailor—are stuck together on one cramped lifeboat. Hitchcock keeps it visually nimble, so it never feels like filmed theatre, and the suspense hangs on one ugly question: can you trust the enemy when survival depends on it?

Tallulah Bankhead dominates as Connie Porter—privileged, vain, razor-bright, and stubbornly alive. As the ordeal strips away her comfort and polish, what’s left is pure backbone, and she stays magnetic. Around her, the boat turns into a tiny society, with class and competence constantly being re-priced.

The survival beats bite: a burial at sea for a dead infant, Gus’s off-screen leg amputation, then that snap of mob justice when they realise the German has been playing them. The film doesn’t gawp; it lets your imagination do the grim work. Two shots stick like splinters—empty arms still cradling loss, and a boot that’s suddenly just surplus. It’s amazing how fast principles evaporate when you’re thirsty.

I queued up a cosy Capra lark and got something that quietly sharpens into a social punch. Longfellow Deeds—greeting-card poet, tuba enthusiast, and fish-out-of-water—inherits $20 million from his uncle, and arrives in New York as the Depression-era story everyone wants to sell.

Capra keeps the scenes on a short lead: jokes land, then consequences follow. You can almost hear the newsroom machinery—headlines, hustle, moral shortcuts—as Jean Arthur’s Babe Bennett works him under false pretences for a story, then catches feelings (and a conscience). When a desperate farmer turns up with a gun, the film stops winking and shows its hand: Deeds’ plan to fund 2,000 ten-acre farms isn’t a gimmick, it’s a challenge.

Yes, Capra can’t resist a big courtroom crescendo, but the sanity hearing still bites. It’s humane, funny, and unexpectedly bracing—comfort cinema with a backbone.

Some films become lifelong companions. This isn't one. It's a delight, but it sits well below the towering The 400 Blows, which still feels electrifying.

Antoine's been discharged from the army and is back in Paris, moving between jobs and romantic misjudgements: hotel work, a stint at a private detective agency, then another attempt at adulthood. The humour lands in the specifics — stakeouts with all the stealth of a foghorn, "professional" routines treated like holy writ, and romantic pivots where he talks himself into trouble mid-sentence. Claude Jade steadies the film; Delphine Seyrig makes a single encounter feel momentous.

Made in 1968, it's striking how lightly politics brushes past — a throwaway phone-line nod, then Truffaut heads straight back to the romcom while Godard and Varda were turning more openly political. The middle sags a touch, but it's charming company — just not one that demands an immediate replay.