Film Reviews by griggs

Atmosphere practically drips from every frame of The Letter—Wyler wrings suspense from shadow, mist, and moonlight with such precision it’s like watching noir take its first breath. Set in colonial Singapore, the film feels engineered to spotlight Bette Davis, who delivers the kind of brittle, haunted performance awards are built around. The plot’s a slow burn, coiled tight with moral ambiguity. Victor Sen Yung is tremendous in a thankless role, as are the other Asian actors, though what they’re given to play with deepens some ugly, era-typical stereotypes. A gripping, evocative piece that’s both of its time and indicts it.

There's something wonderfully earthy about The Castle: it clocks its own modest scope, refuses to overreach, and never takes cheap shots at the Kerrigans; instead, it lifts them up. Charming, sharp, unsentimental, and full of a working-class warmth that envelops you like a familiar hug. Michael Caton anchors the clan with a grin you could park a tow-truck in, while Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, and mates volley lines like backyard cricket sledges. Spot a baby-faced Eric Bana; I swear he speaks scarcely fifteen words. Cult status deserved.

Wake in Fright is what happens when the sun fries your brain and the beer eats your soul. A schoolteacher stops overnight in an outback town and ends up spiralling into a hellscape of sweat, gambling, and unrelenting hospitality. It’s all dusty bars, forced mateship, and a kind of macho madness that doesn’t take no for an answer.

The film’s real power lies in how it traps you—just like the lead—until escape feels impossible. Kotcheff, somehow both outsider and insider, captures the oppressive heat and psychological rot with real bite. Gary Bond is great as the slowly unraveling outsider, and Donald Pleasence turns up in full sweaty menace.

There’s one notorious scene that’s still hard to watch, and it earns that reaction. This isn’t a film about Australia—it’s a film about being cornered by a place, a culture, and your own worst instincts. Bleak, bold, and unforgettable.

Dirty Pretty Things wants to be both gritty realism and slick thriller but ends up stuck in an unsatisfying middle lane. The plot wraps itself up far too neatly—you never really believe things won’t work out. For a film dealing with the harrowing lives of asylum seekers and migrants working illegally in London, it’s oddly shallow. Is it social commentary or pulpy suspense? In trying to be both, it does neither justice.

Surprisingly, given Steven Knight’s pedigree, the realism feels scripted rather than lived-in, while the thriller side is too polite to thrill. Chiwetel Ejiofor delivers a grounded, watchable performance, but Audrey Tautou is left playing a daft, passive character with none of the grit you'd expect from someone who’s survived this far. Under Frears’ direction, it all just floats along—too clean, too easy, and ultimately, too forgettable. A missed opportunity.

The Thing from Another World might wear the skin of a low-budget B-movie, but it’s smarter, tighter, and—if rumours are to be believed—more Hawksian than its credits suggest. Dialogue crackles and overlaps with a casual naturalism that feels decades ahead of its time, and the cast’s calm under cosmic pressure is oddly charming. The creature’s rarely glimpsed, and the horror mostly happens off screen, but that only adds to the film’s quiet confidence. Fresh, fast, and surprisingly sharp.

Stardust Memories is Allen doing Fellini doing Sturges doing Allen, only with more neurosis and fewer Italians. It’s a film about a director who wants to be serious but keeps getting ambushed by beautiful women, flashbacks, aliens, and his own fans, who all wish he’d just shut up and be funny again. Yes, it’s self-indulgent. Yes, it wallows in angst. But it’s in black and white, so it must be art. And honestly, it’s funnier than it has any right to be.

Kurosawa’s The Idiot is the hardest of his films I’ve watched to engage with. The impact of the studio butchering it leads to this confusion. It was meant to be shown in two parts, but the studio cut 100 minutes and stitched it into one long, uneven piece—and you feel it. Part One is slow, and full of exposition—heavy on backstory, light on feeling. It’s hard to connect with anyone when they all speak like ghosts drifting through a snowstorm. But Part Two picks up: the emotions hit harder, the drama feels real, and you finally see what Kurosawa was aiming for. It’s a tragic story about kindness, shame, and how being too good, can hurt everyone. Setsuko Hara is brilliant. Mifune burns through the screen. It’s messy and uneven, but strange and moving in its own broken way.

The Panic in Needle Park is a cold, unvarnished look at addiction, stripped of sentiment and moralising. It follows Bobby and Helen—two young drifters orbiting each other in an Upper West Side overrun by heroin. Kitty Winn is superb, all quiet uncertainty, but it’s Pacino—extraordinary in his feature debut—who commands the film. He’s magnetic, impulsive, and terrifyingly plausible as a petty hustler fuelled by charm and bravado.

Schatzberg’s direction is almost forensic: no score, no stylisation, just the city’s din and the flat rhythm of junkie life. The film refuses redemption arcs or easy judgement. It simply observes, with a mix of detachment and despair, as love becomes co-dependence and survival morphs into routine.

What emerges is bleak, occasionally tender, and deeply unsettling—a portrait of two people clinging to each other while quietly drowning.

Uncomfortable, unsentimental, and still chilling in its realism.

Gimme the Loot is a spirited, low-budget indie that gives voice to characters you rarely see in films—let alone with this much charm. Set over a few sweltering summer days in New York City, it’s soaked in sunshine, graffiti, and grit. There’s a voyeuristic pleasure in how it captures the city—wide, textured shots that feel like you're walking a few paces behind the characters, eavesdropping.

It’s clearly made by young, passionate filmmakers with something to say, offering a warm, funny, and quietly political take on lives often ignored. The plot—two young graffiti artists scheming to tag a landmark—never really lands as it should, drifting too often into cul-de-sacs. But the characters are so alive, thanks to the brilliant performances by Ty Hickson and especially Tashiana Washington, that you hardly mind.

It doesn’t all come together, but the film’s soul is undeniable. It rambles, sure—but with purpose, personality, and real heart.

Watching Minority Report in 2025 is a disorienting experience. It tries so hard to be futuristic, yet now looks visibly dated. Not in a quaint, Jetsons way—but like someone proudly demoing tech that’s already obsolete. It's a film brimming with big ideas, but the ideas are far more interesting than the film that carries them.

Spielberg once made Duel and Jaws—lean, raw thrillers built on instinct. Post-E.T., he took a sentimental turn, and while Minority Report wants to be gritty and philosophical, it’s still filtered through his family-film lens. It’s Blade Runner with a cuddle.

There’s plenty to admire: the core premise is classic Philip K. Dick, and the world-building is clever in places. The action mostly works, and the supporting cast adds depth. But Tom Cruise, mid–Ethan Hunt transformation, brings too much brand and not enough vulnerability. He’s all forward motion, even when the story calls for doubt.

The real problem? It pulls its punches. The noir atmosphere keeps getting interrupted by Spielbergian sentiment or a slick chase scene. What should be murky becomes clear-cut. It wants to ask difficult questions but can’t help trying to answer them, too neatly.

And then there’s the tech. Gesture-controlled interfaces, retina scans, targeted ads—once shiny, now cringe. It feels less like a dystopia and more like Steve Jobs unveiling the iPad. That’s the trap: design a future too close to the present, and it becomes painfully obvious when it’s passed.

In the end, Minority Report is a film with serious questions, delivered with popcorn in one hand and a product placement deal in the other. If you want big ideas wrapped in slick surfaces, it delivers. If you want something with teeth—go back to the shark.

Black Panther swings for the crown and almost wears it. Picture Shakespeare in a vibranium tracksuit: warring cousins, stolen birth-rights, the whole tragic lot. Boseman anchors the drama, but Jordan’s Killmonger barges in—hurt, furious, and dangerously persuasive. Wakanda dazzles, a bold vision of Afrofuturism where sun-bleached savannas meet mag-lev trains, and tradition coexists with cutting-edge tech.

Then Marvel remembers it’s Marvel and chucks everyone into a muddy PS2-era punch-up. Shame. Still, the film’s mix of politics, heritage, and speculative world-building leaves most capes looking like straight-to-video. Not perfect, but for the MCU? Practically revolutionary.

Joyland really took me by surprise. It’s a quiet, thoughtful film about people stuck between what they want and what their family or society expects from them. The whole thing feels very real—no big speeches or dramatic twists, just small choices that slowly add up and change lives.

Haider, played brilliantly by Ali Junejo, is caught in the middle of it all, and Alina Khan is great as Biba—tough on the outside but clearly struggling underneath. But it’s Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz who hit me the hardest. You can feel her slowly being pushed aside, and it’s awful to watch.

The film’s full of lovely little moments—a poster flapping on a motorbike, awkward silences, stolen glances. It doesn’t offer neat answers or big endings, but that’s part of what makes it work. It’s sad, sometimes funny, and always honest.

How Alexander Mackendrick went from the Ealing charm of The Ladykillers to this cynical New York pressure cooker is beyond me—but I’m glad he did. The Sweet Smell of Success is a masterclass in razor-sharp writing, with insults that cut deeper than a column from J.J. Hunsecker. Curtis is all sweaty desperation, Lancaster pure reptilian control. No heroes here, just ambition, manipulation, and cigarette smoke curling through a morally bankrupt media world. It’s brilliant, brutal, and utterly joyless—in the best possible way. A sour cocktail of ego, power, and decay.

Released the year before I was born, Superman was no doubt the first film I ever saw—and for a while, it was everything. I had the duvet, the lunchbox, the posters. At that age, I didn’t know who Marlon Brando or Gene Hackman were, and I certainly wasn’t clocking Trevor Howard or Glenn Ford. All I cared about was Superman. And he was real.

Watching again, forty years later, I wasn’t expecting to love it this much. It’s exposition-heavy, sure, and the Krypton prologue is pure Brando bait. What surprised me most was Margot Kidder. Knowing her now as a scream queen from De Palma’s Sisters, Black Christmas, and The Amityville Horror, it’s wild to think she was cast as Lois Lane. Back then, horror stars didn’t get to pivot into family blockbusters—not unless they were already household names. That kind of genre leap was rare then, and still feels unusual now.

And Christopher Reeve? Let’s be clear: Superman is Christopher Reeve, not the other way around. No superhero has ever been cast so well.

A featherweight plot and wafer-thin romance didn’t do much for me—but when the storm hits, so does the brilliance. Keaton's deadpan grace, coming timing, and jaw-dropping stunts make this a technical marvel. Emotionally slight, yes—but formally? A hurricane of invention. Pure cinema. collapsing house and all.