Film Reviews by griggs

Crowded platforms, weary faces, and that blend of boredom and mild despair—Underground has it all, just with more hats and fewer headphones. Asquith turns a modest tale of love and jealousy into a full-blown thriller, proving that even in 1928, Londoners were already jostling, avoiding eye contact, and tutting at anyone who stood on the left of the escalator. Some commutes never change.

There’s a certain irony in watching a film so gorgeous it almost proves its own point about empty beauty. Sorrentino’s Rome glows like a fever dream — fountains, palazzos, and perfectly posed decadence — you wouldn’t expect anything less. But beneath all that glamour is a city putting on a show of grandeur while feeling oddly hollow.

Jep Gambardella floats through an endless cycle of parties, cosmetic perfection, and clever talk. The cultural elite are modern-day patricians, swapping empire and marble for gossip and artifice. Their soirées are distractions — champagne, chatter, and a touch of existential dread.

It’s elegant and mournful rather than wild; a kind of requiem for a culture that’s forgotten why it ever chased beauty in the first place. The Great Beauty channels the spirit of ancient Rome’s decadence through a weary, modern lens — exquisite, yes, but maybe a bit too pleased with itself.

For a film built on whispers and screams, A Tale of Two Sisters certainly nails the latter. The performances are superb across the board — especially in the final act, where grief, guilt, and madness collide in a crescendo of anguish. It’s beautifully made, full of eerie stillness and immaculate framing — the kind of horror that looks like a dream but sounds like a nightmare.

The problem is that the story winds its way to a twist you can see coming from miles off. It’s caught between psychological horror and supernatural mystery, and instead of committing, it hesitates somewhere in the middle.

There’s much to admire — its mood, melancholy, and precision — but it never quite delivers the gut-punch it promises. A haunting experience, yes, but one that holds something back.

It’s easy to see why Tarantino swears by Friday. Strip away the guns, gangsters, and trunk shots, and you’re left with the true DNA of his early work: people talking. The film drifts along like a hot afternoon, where nothing happens—until suddenly it does. Those conversational one-twos—funny, tense, and oddly poetic—could slide straight into Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown without missing a beat.

Ice Cube and Chris Tucker carry it beautifully: one perpetually stoned, the other perpetually stressed. Their chemistry feels loose and lived-in, as if you’ve been sitting on that porch with them for years.

It’s not flawless—the story wanders, and a few jokes haven’t aged gracefully—but it has charm, rhythm, and an irresistible sense of place. A stoner comedy that ended up preserving a moment in time.

A lot swirls through The Exorcist III—serial killers, possession, theology—yet it holds together through sheer conviction. William Peter Blatty trades Friedkin’s shock for something more insidious: dread that seeps into every corner of the frame. It’s less a rollercoaster than a slow descent, a meditation on faith, guilt, and the evil men do—both human and otherwise.

George C. Scott anchors the film with weary gravitas, his grief and scepticism giving weight to the madness around him. Opposite him, Jason Miller—or perhaps something in his skin—delivers a performance that’s unnerving in the quietest ways. The editing and sound design disorientate beautifully, each cut and whisper feeding that creeping unease.

Imperfect, yes—but perfectly chilling. The final act wobbles under what feels like studio meddling, yet by then the spell’s been cast. A worthy successor that proves the devil’s still in the details.

Welles pulls together bit of Shakespeares’ history plays—mainly Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, with touches of Richard II, Henry V, and even The Merry Wives of Windsor—and turns them into one big, aching story about friendship, foolishness, and the passing of time. At the centre is Falstaff, the great old rascal who laughs in time’s face until time gets the last laugh. It’s scrappy, echoey, and sometimes hard to follow, but that‘s part of the charm—it feels like proper Shakespeare, full of noise, mud, and life.

Filmed mostly in Spain (those “Welsh” castles aren’t), Chimes at Midnight somehow looks more authentically medieval than most British productions. The Battle of Shrewsbury is pure chaos—a blur of mud, blood, and confusion that feels way ahead of its time, like something out of Ran. Here is Welles the self-exile, railing against old age, authority, and decline; a man out of favour telling stories about men out of power. Beneath all the bluster, though, there is a real sadness—the sense that time itself is the enemy.

Like Othello and Mr. Arkadin, it was made on a shoestring, often filmed without sound and rebuilt later, with Welles often dubbing not just himself but half of the cast. It shouldn’t work, but it does—those ghostly voices give the whole thing a dreamlike feel, like wandering through memory itself. Chimes at Midnight isn’t just Falstaff’s swan song; it’s Welles’ too—defiant, melancholy, and gloriously out of step with everything around it. Messy, maybe, but all the better for it.

At its best, Blue Is the Warmest Colour is a brutally honest coming-of-age story—tender, awkward, and true in its depiction of first love and its collapse. Adèle Exarchopoulos gives a raw, vulnerable performance that almost feels intrusive to watch, while Léa Seydoux matches her with aching control and quiet defiance.

But honesty only goes so far when filtered through the male gaze. The film’s author, Julie Maroh, famously called it “a brutal and surgical display, turned into a pornographic fantasy rather than a realistic depiction of lesbian desire,” and it’s hard to disagree. The sex scenes linger so voyeuristically they undermine the film’s emotional truth. What could have been intimate becomes spectacle, seen through fascination rather than empathy.

 It’s a frustrating contradiction: a film that understands love yet misrepresents desire. A masterpiece of emotion trapped inside a straight man’s fantasy—beautiful, bruising, and just a little too pleased with itself.

On the one hand, Guardians of the Galaxy has all the right ingredients for popcorn joy: brisk pacing, a distinct tone, and a welcome weirdness that makes it stand out from the Marvel pack. The soundtrack slaps, the world-building feels lived-in, and the ragtag band of misfits gives off a scruffy charm. For a while I was on board.

Then the formula kicks in. Every emotional beat gets undercut by a quip; every moment of awe, smothered by CGI. Chris Pratt's easygoing swagger turns from charm to smarm, and what begins as something refreshingly eccentric slides back into the usual Marvel groove—fast, hollow, and too eager for laughs.

It’s slick, funny, and loud, but like a jukebox stuck on shuffle, it never plays the song you want to hear.

Let’s start at the top: The Smashing Machine is a good film. Dwayne Johnson is even better—intense, wounded, and more human than he’s ever been, giving his most layered performance to date. Emily Blunt, as his partner, brings warmth and frustration in equal measure, though the story keeps its gaze on his inner bruises rather than the toll they take on her.

Benny Safdie directs with a sharp eye for texture—sweaty gyms, harsh lights, quiet despair. It recalls The Wrestler: the ache of performance, the loneliness of physical glory, the body as both weapon and cage. Still, there’s something missing—an emotional punch that never quite lands.

What remains is a fascinating portrait of masculinity in freefall: a man fighting not just opponents but himself, beautifully shot and bruisingly human, if just shy of knockout power.

It’s no surprise The Cousins picked up the Golden Bear, or that Akira Kurosawa listed it amongst his hundred favourite films. For only his second feature, Chabrol already knew what he was doing. What starts as a breezy, slightly wry student comedy slowly turns sour—a story about how charm, money, and moral laziness eat away at everything decent.

The set-up’s simple: one cousin from the country arrives in Paris, all hope and good manners; the other—rich, bored, and a bit of a snake—shows him the ropes. You can almost smell the Gauloises and cheap wine. By the time the parties end and the records stop spinning, you realise how hollow it all is.

It’s stylish, sharp, and quietly brutal in that way French films often are—a film that sneaks up on you, looking like a student romp but landing like a gut punch.

There’s a fine line between satire and self-parody, and HIM doesn’t so much cross it as sprint headlong into it. Billed as a satirical psychological body horror, it sets out to dissect male vanity and the grotesque pursuit of perfection—but never quite finds the right tone. The ideas are there, just buried under awkward dialogue and imagery that mistakes excess for depth.

It’s the kind of film that makes you squirm, though not always for the right reasons. The commentary on body image and toxic masculinity should sting; instead, it lands with the subtlety of a gym mirror shattering in slow motion. Compared to The Substance, which turns feminist body horror into a weapon of righteous fury, HIM feels oddly meek—circling its subject in self-conscious poses rather than cutting into it.

By the time the finale wimps out, the supposed revelation—that the men who run sports exploit their stars—lands with a thud. Who knew? For all its glossy surfaces and posturing, HIM ends up a flex without any real muscle behind it.

I went into For Sama knowing little beyond its reputation as a documentary from the Syrian civil war. What I didn’t expect was how personal it would feel—less reportage that a whispered letter between mother and daughter. It isn’t a film about Sama so much as one made for her, and watching it, I often felt like and interloper, eavesdropping on a message never meant for me.

When the credits rolled and the list of collaborators appeared, the film’s purpose shifted. This wasn’t just a private record of survival; it was a memoir, and open letter to Sama—and anyone willing to bear witness. Waad Al-Kateab’s camera moves between tenderness and terror, capturing life in Aleppo with quiet, devastating clarity.

It’s raw, humane, and often overwhelming, but that’s it spell. What begins as one mother’s message to her child becomes a collective act of remembrance—proof that even amid ruin, love insists on being seen.

The Changeling opens not with a scream but with silence—the kind grief leaves behind. After losing his wife and daughter in a car accident, a man hollowed by loss retreats into a cavernous mansion, haunted long before the first ghost appears. George C. Scott carries that pain like a wound his performance steady, restrained, and quietly devastating. The house becomes an echo chamber for his mourning, its creaks and whispers indistinguishable from memory.

Comparisons with Don’t Look Now are fair: both turn grief into a haunting, though Roeg’s belongs to the early ‘70s, when horror leaned toward psychological unease. The Changeling, arriving on the cusp of a new decade, carries that melancholy forward into something quieter and more formal. Here, the supernatural feels less like intrusion than manifestation—pain demanding to be heard.

It’s not flawless—the pacing drifts, and the revelations verge on procedural—but when it works, it chills with quiet conviction. A mournful ghost story about loss that refuses to stay buried.

On paper, this should have been tailor-made for me. As a lifelong Ealing Comedy fan, I ought to adore this one—often hailed as the studio’s crown jewel. Yet Kind Hearts and Coronets always feels like an old friend I admire more than enjoy. The opening act, with its heavy narration and stately pacing, drains the fizz before the satire can truly bite.

Alec Guinness is, of course, magnificent—playing eight members of the D’Ascoyne family with sly precision and more costume changes than a West End revue. But beyond his virtuosity, the rest feels oddly flat. Dennis Price, as the ambitious Louis Mazzini, sucks the life out of every scene he’s in—so refined, so bloodless, that the film’s wickedness never quite lands. The wit is dry rather than sharp, the charm mannered rather than mischievous.

Even on a third watch, it feels new not because it’s fresh, but because so little of it sticks. Elegant, clever, and impeccably made, yes—but like its protagonist, a little too polite about its own villany.

Leftovers rarely look this alive. Agnés Varda takes the humble act of gleaning—picking up what others discard—and makes it quietly radical. Misshapen potatoes, furniture on sidewalks, even her own reflection: all become part of a moving essay on waste, need, and the hidden value of scraps.

The film is as much about Varda as her subjects. Her DV camera becomes a second pair of hands, roving with curiosity, dipping to the ground or tilting up to the sky. She pauses on mould in her kitchen, lingers on her aging hands, and folds herself into the film with wry honesty that makes each digression feel essential.

Gloss is absent, but that’s the point. The Gleaners and I turns fragments into something whole, showing that cinema, like gleaning, is an art of salvage. Varda doesn’t just capture what’s overlooked—she elevates it into a feast.