Film Reviews by griggs

Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart is a dazzling yet flawed spectacle—a neon-drenched fever dream of romance that feels meticulously crafted yet strangely alienating. The production design is staggering, transforming Las Vegas into an artificial wonderland of colour and illusion. At the same time, Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle's melancholic soundtrack lends the film an evocative, aching beauty. Yet, beneath the visual and musical splendour, its emotions remain heightened but distant.  

What truly stings, though, is the nagging sense that Julian Temple saw this and thought, "If Coppola can make a neon-lit musical, so can I!"—with disastrous consequences for Absolute Beginners.

Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild is a blast–at least for a good chunk of its runtime. It kicks off with a quirky, rebellious energy that feels totally unpredictable, like jumping in a stranger’s car without knowing where you’ll end up. The soundtrack is incredible, full of jangly rock and new wave that keeps the momentum going and perfectly matches the film’s restless spirit. The production design is just as fun, bursting with bright colours, roadside Americana, and offbeat characters that make the world feel alive and full of surprises.

Melanie Griffith starts out as a total wildcard–commanding, mysterious, dressed in black with a matching wig, dragging Jeff Daniels into chaos. But disappointingly, the film tames her. Suddenly, she’s demure in white, her hair bleached, and instead of leading the adventure, she’s waiting to be rescued. As the film loses its initial spark, it starts to drift. Then Ray Liotta storms in like a lightning bolt, injecting the film with real danger and excitement. His raw intensity pulls everything back on track, making the final act a wild, gripping ride. A flawed but seriously fun film.

The Prowler is a gripping and deeply unsettling noir that takes a sharp look at corruption and abuse of power. Its exploration of these themes is often uncomfortable to watch, with its casual victim-blaming and unsettling moral decay, yet it moves along with the ease of a more conventional thriller. The film’s use of sound is particularly striking—one key character is mainly heard rather than seen, and his voice plays a crucial role in the story, adding an eerie, almost disembodied presence. Most of the film is made up of dialogue scenes between the two leads, which might explain its quick production, but that doesn’t make it feel any less accomplished. It all builds to a stunning climax in a desolate ghost town, a brilliantly staged and visually haunting ending.

Early on, I feared Rumble Fish might favour style over substance, especially given Matt Dillon’s wooden performance. Instead, it unfolds as a surprisingly thoughtful exploration on youth culture, gang life, belonging, and the toxic side of teenage masculinity. Coppola’s experimental choices–especially the striking black-and-white cinematography–give the film a dreamlike quality, elevating it beyond a standard coming-of-age story. Dillon’s stiffness risks undermining the film, but Mickey Rourke’s quiet magnetism as his older brother keeps it grounded. Yet, for all its ambition, the film’s visual style and narrative never fully coalesce, leaving it more intriguing than emotionally resonant. A flawed yet fascinating film, defined by its visual boldness and Coppola’s willingness to take risks.

Fat City is one of those quiet stunners that sneaks up on you. Set in the sun-blasted streets of Stockton, California, it follows small-time boxers drifting between hope and resignation. Don’t eXpect a typical sports film—there's barely any boxing. The real punches are emotional, landing during conversations in diners, changing rooms, and half-lit bars. It's about failure, dignity, and the weight of failed dreams.

John Huston, who boxed as a young man, brings a bruised tenderness to the story. Know for films like The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he always had an eye for characters on the losing side of life. That compassion shows here, especially in how the film treats its characters—with quiet empathy rather than judgement.

Susan Tyrell, raw and unforgettable, and a young, effortless Jeff Bridges complete the cast alongside Stacy Kerch, superb as as the washed-up fighter clawing for meaning in a world that's long since moved on.

Blissfully Yours is a languid, quietly daring film that drifts between realism and reverie. Apichatpong Weerasethakul structures it in two acts: the first grounded in the sterile routines of marginal life, the second slipping into a dreamlike jungle interlude where time and logic begin to dissolve. The appearance of the title card almost halfway through marks a shift—not just in tone, but in purpose.

The story is minimal: a Burmese migrant, his Thai girlfriend, and an older woman each seeking escape from their own constraints. The plot takes a back seat to mood and sensation. Sunlight on skin, the buzz of insects, a casual touch—these become the film’s true narrative beats. Themes of exile, identity, and impermanence simmer beneath the still surface, as Apichatpong reflects on borders—literal and emotional.

This is a film about fleeting freedoms: of the body, of movement, of joy. It doesn’t offer answers—just space to feel, and maybe drift a little yourself.

Seconds isn’t just my favourite film—it’s the one that rewired my brain, made me understand just what is possible to convey on screen. As the third part of John Frankenheimer’s loose paranoia triology, Seconds dials down the politics and drills deep into personal dread: it’s about identity, regret, and the terrifying lure of second chances.

James Wong Howe’s cinematography is a masterclass in unease—skewed angles, fisheye lenses, and stark contrasts that make even the calmest moments feel unnervingly off. Rock Hudson, often dismissed as lightweight, is magnetic here—fragile, haunted, and utterly convincing.

At the time of its release, some critics claimed the film turned conventional once Hudson appears on screen. That misses the point entirely. This isn’t wish fulfilment—it's a deeply unnerving riff on Faust, where dreams curdle and rebirth comes at a cost. It's as much Kafka as it is sci-fi.

From the infamous grape-crushing bacchanal to that chilling final shot, Seconds is a waking nightmare—and a brutal reminder that escape isn't always freedom.

Cockfighter is southern gothic at its dustiest—slow, strange, and steeped in a kind of faded honour. Monte Hellman drops us deep into backwoods America, where silence, pride, and obsession rule. It’s a quiet film, but it gets under your skin.

Warren Oates is brilliant as Frank Mansfield, a man who’s taken a vow not to speak until he wins back his title on the cockfighting circuit. What’s especially odd—though kind of perfect—is that Harry Dean Stanton, usually the quiet one, does most of the talking instead.

The film doesn’t rush or explain. It just unfolds, hot and heavy with tension, like a long summer day with no breeze. The cockfighting scenes are hard to watch, but they’re part of a world Hellman captures with eerie calm. It won’t be for everyone, but if you like your stories raw and stripped back, this one sticks with you.

The Hourglass Sanatorium was recommended to me as a warm-up to a forthcoming trip to Kraków—well, if this is the vibe, I may rethink the visit! Though not set there, parts were filmed in the city, and the mood is certainly… distinctive.

Wojciech Has adapts Bruno Schulz’s surreal stories into a full-blown dreamscape. Think crumbling corridors that open into jungles, trains that lead to crypts, and time that loops, folds, and collapses. It’s visually stunning, and the sustained dream logic rivals Fellini, Tarkovsky, and Jodorowsky.

Beneath the spectacle lies something sadder: a meditation on memory, possibly even dementia, as a man wanders through fragments of his past. But while the film trades heavily on empathy and loss, it doesn’t extend the same care to its women. They’re fantasies—naked, idealised, or ignored—and even his mother barely registers.

Then there’s the lingering question of what’s missing. Schulz was Jewish, murdered by the Nazis. His mysticism remains, but the film feels filtered through a distinctly Polish Catholic lens. Is that erasure, appropriation—or just interpretation?

I’m glad I watched it. But for all its beauty, it left me uneasy—an exquisite mausoleum of memory, with some ghosts best left unburied.

The Shrouds is a strange, thoughtful film—one that lingers long after it ends. Cronenberg has crafted something dense with ideas, rooted in grief and death—subjects we don't talk about nearly enough. We spend so much time trying to live well, yet we rarely ask what it means to die well, or lose someone well. Films like this matter because they create space for that conversation.

The tone is subdued throughout. Vincent Cassel, playing a grieving tech entrepreneur Karsh, gives a deliberately flat performance that mirrors the numbness of mourning. Anyone who's lived through grief and depression will recognise the fog Karsh is wading through—the slow, soupy sense of time, the absence of energy or feeling.

Beneath the surface, the film explores how we memorialise the dead, how technology reshapes our most intimate experiences, and whether capitalism can ever make peace with mortality. The conspiracy thread taps into all of this: vandalised graves, hacked livestreams, and suspicions of corporate or geopolitical sabotage. These ideas may sound far-fetched, but they feel plausible. In Cronenberg's hands, conspiracy becomes a symptom of grief—irrational, desperate, and strangely credible.

It's not perfect, but it's gripping in its own quiet way—and well worth the emotional excavation.

Parthenope is exactly what you’d expect from Paolo Sorrentino: breathtakingly beautiful, achingly stylish, and dripping with melancholy. Every frame looks like a perfume advert—gorgeous people, in golden light, drifting through elegant spaces like lost thoughts. And that's both its strength and problem. The pacing drags, especially in the middle, where whole scenes seem made to be looked at rather than felt. Still it's hard to deny the film's hypnotic pull. Celeste Dalla Porta is quietly magnetic in the title role, though she's often more symbol than person. There are flashes of real emotional weight—grief, desire, identity—but they're fleeting, swept away by the tide of style. It's a lovely film to drift through, even if it occasionally feels like it is drifting too far.

Ida is quiet, spare, and devastating in its stillness. Shot in crisp black and white with a square frame that often leaves characters adrift in empty space, it says as much through absence as it does through dialogue. At its heart is the tension between Ida and Wanda—faith and doubt, silence and guilt—but the real divide is internal. Anna, the obedient novice, is all passivity. Ida, who emerges as the film unfolds, begins to make choices.

The Holocaust’s legacy is ever-present, not just in what happened, but in what remains unspoken. This isn’t a story about survivors—it’s about those born into the silence that followed. Memory competes with the desire to forget, or at least not be reminded. Commemoration is handled by the state, not the people.

Ida isn’t really the protagonist, but a vessel—shaped, questioned, manipulated. Her nunhood is almost incidental; she could have been anything. What matters is what she chooses, once she knows the weight of her past.

Epidemic is far from von Trier’s best, but as a second film it hints at where he was heading–especially the raw, lo-fi sensibility that would later shape Dogme 95. If this has been my introduction to his work, it would probably have put me off for good. The metaphysical and metafictional framing is tough going, only really clicking in the last 20 minutes. Still, watching it retrospectively, it’s fascinating to see the early seeds of his style take root.

The Limits of Control is Jarmusch at his most Dadaist–opaque, stylised, and willfully obtuse. The plot barely matters. What you get instead is mood, rhythm, and a string of cryptic encounters that will either pull you in or push you away. You’ll love or loathe it. Isaach De Bankolé floats through Spain like a Zen cipher, and Tilda Swinton’s surreal monologue on The Lady from Shanghai is especially beguiling. If this weren’t the work of one of indie cinema’s elder gods, you might genuinely wonder whether this film happened at all–or if you just dreamt it.

Raging Bull feels like a film Scorsese made as if it were his last—every frame, every cut, every sound is delivered with a level of intensity that borders on obsession. The boxing scenes are astonishing. Shot with the camera tight in the ring, they create a sense of tunnel vision that draws you into each blow, each breath, each roar of the crowd. It’s not just visual—it’s visceral. You don’t just see the punches; you feel them.

But all of that would be style if it weren’t for the character study at the centre: Jake La Motta, pure undiluted toxic masculinity personified. I hadn’t seen this since a screening 25 years ago, which was cut short due to complaints about the violence and language. Fair enough—the domestic abuse scenes are brutal. But this is La Motta’s life, not fiction, lifted directly from his autobiography Raging Bull: My Story. If a screenwriter had invented him, he’d be accused of going too far. Emotionally stunted and prone to sudden, senseless violence, he’s a man incapable of love—only ownership. He beats his wife, alienates his brother, sabotages his own career, and still believes the world owes him something.

De Niro throws everything into this. He trained as a boxer, gained 60 pounds to play the washed-up La Motta, and famously pushed Scorsese to make the film. It shows. His performance is raw, unrelenting, and often hard to watch. Joe Pesci, pulled from obscurity and retirement by De Niro, matches him beat for beat.

Thelma Schoonmaker’s Oscar winning editing is extraordinary, turning chaos into poetry. Together, she and Scorsese created something close to cinematic perfection—about a man who was anything but. Still, it’s hard to ignore the uncomfortable truth that the film put La Motta back in the spotlight. A man who deserved to fade into obscurity found new fame—not despite his violence, but partly because of it.