Film Reviews by griggs

Living in Oblivion is like stepping into an anxiety dream—complete with camera malfunctions, diva tantrums, and that creeping sense nothing will ever go right. It’s a low-budget film about making a low-budget film, and it captures the chaos brilliantly. Anyone who’s ever had to wrangle egos (in any industry) will feel right at home. DiCillo balances farce and tragedy with a kind of scrappy charm, and Steve Buscemi is bang on as the frazzled director barely holding it together. It’s messy, neurotic, and surprisingly relatable—like the cinematic equivalent of a nervous breakdown you can laugh at.

Tyrannosaur is a gut-punch of a debut from Paddy Considine—one of those films where the misery feels baked into the bricks, but there’s still a faint glimmer of light coming through the cracks. It opens with a jaw-dropping moment of violence and never really lets up, but the emotional power sneaks up on you.

Peter Mullan is magnetic as a man who’s permanently on the edge of exploding, while Olivia Colman delivers something quietly astonishing—a performance full of pain, restraint, and dignity. Eddie Marsan, meanwhile, is chilling in all the worst ways. It's a tough watch, no doubt, but not a hopeless one.

What really stuck with me was how these broken people begin, tentatively, to reach toward something like grace. It’s not neat or redemptive in the Hollywood sense, but it feels real. And that’s what makes it linger—grubby, raw, and unexpectedly human.

The Big Knife is a biting little Hollywood takedown–melodramatic, stagey, and oddly gripping. Jack Palance is mesmerising: all brooding bulk and broken soul. A man torn between comforts of fame and the wreckage it’s made of him. You can feel the weight of his conflict in every slumped shoulder and clenched jaw. The script lays it on thick–there are monologues for days–but there’s something weirdly compelling about the theatrical bluster. It might be a bit much at times, but the film still manages to skewer the system with style. Feels less like a movie and more like a pressure cooker set to explode.

Lion of the Desert is a curious beast–part propaganda, part sweeping epic, and unmistakably a product of its time (and backer). Funded by Colonel Gaddafi, it's not hard to spot the intended parallels between the film's stoic resistance leader and a certain Libyan strongman. Think Battle of Algiers dressed up in Lawrence of Arabia's robes–only with dar less subtlety.

It runs hald and hour too long and often lapses into melodrama. Still, the battle scenes are genuinely impressive, and its portrayal of Italian colonialism is surpringsly grounded. Shot on location, Gaddafi's chequebook was clearly put to good use.

A strange, heady mix–part searing social realism, part noir-ish urban tragedy. Manila in the Claws of Light drops you straight into the grime and graft of 1970s Manila, where hope is rationed, and dreams are up for sale. Some scenes feel timeless, others a bit staged or clearly of their era, but the overall mood is haunting.

It reminded me of mid-century Japanese cinema–The Life of Ohara, Red Beard, Women of the Night–films that quietly observe suffering rather than sensationalise it. The pacing is slow, sometimes punishing, but builds to something raw, poetic and human.

By the end, I felt like I’d walked those streets myself–bruised, heavy, and strangely moved. It’s not always subtle, and some the acting leans theatrical, but a quiet fury hits hard here. Gritty, tragic, and well worth the journey–even if it leaves you winded.

Bad Boy Bubby is one of those films where the idea’s better than the end result—but what an idea. A feral man-child, raised in squalor and fear, steps into the world armed only with the warped logic he’s inherited. It’s bold, bizarre, and occasionally brilliant—equally shocking and darkly funny. But it also stumbles: some scenes feel clunky, others smug. 

The sound design is inventive, the lead performance is unhinged, and the lead flirts with genius more than once, even if it doesn’t always follow through. Think Eraserhead meets Forrest Gump, doused in Aussie grime and blasphemy. I admired it more than I enjoyed it—and by the end, I wasn’t sure if it was profound or just loud. Still mad, brave, and altogether its own beast.

I struggled with The Grifters at first. The opening 30-40 minutes are pure exposition–endless setup with barely any tension–and I couldn’t help thinking it was wasting a cracking cast. But once it finally gets going, it twists into something much darker and more compelling. This isn’t a film about charming con artists tricking some poor sap–it’s about three grifters trying to outmanoeuvre each other with increasingly brutal results.

Cusack is solid as the small-time hustler trying to punch above his weight. Bening channels full-blown femme female chaos, and Huston is just ice-cold–easily the standout. What really got me, though, was the undercurrent of something deeper. These people aren’t just playing games for money; they’re trapped in a cycle of manipulation and damage that feels weirdly tragic. The final act pulls it out of the bag–bleak, inevitable, and properly gutting. Not flawless, but it definitely left a mark.

Cat People is a strange beast—slick, stylish, and silly. Paul Schrader took this on mid-writer’s block and mid-affair with his star, Nastassja Kinski, and it shows. The whole thing feels more personal than it should, tangled up in obsession, desire, and half-baked symbolism. Malcolm McDowell devours the scenery, the mood is thick with New Orleans heat, and Bowie’s closing track is the best bit. It doesn’t quite work as horror or erotica, but it’s fascinating in a weird, sweaty way. A film about lust and transformation—by a man clearly going through both behind the camera.

A visually lush, gloriously weird descent into madness that doesn’t quite know when to quit. It starts in the world of cutthroat capitalism and ends somewhere between Shutter Island and Possession, with Cronenberg-lite body horror thrown in for good measure. Looking like a Victorian consumptive, Dane DeHaan is perfectly cast as the soul-sick exec sent to a sinister Swiss spa. The film nails its eerie mood—creaking pipes, pastel walls, menacing bathwater—but loses grip on the plot somewhere around the third eel. Overlong and overindulgent, but at least it’s not afraid to be properly bonkers.

The Tribe is a fascinating attempt to rework silent cinema for the modern age. Told entirely in Ukrainian sign language—without subtitles, narration, or soundtrack—it throws you into its world with no safety net. At first, I felt adrift, but quickly realised that language extends far beyond words. The story unfolds through gesture, expression, and atmosphere. It’s a striking and original approach, but also a tough watch. The brutality is unflinching, and the characters, while compelling, are deeply unlikeable and difficult to connect with. By the end, I was absorbed yet unsettled—moved by the craft, but kept at a distance by the grimness of the world it depicts.

Embrace of the Serpent is a haunting, hypnotic river journey—told through two timelines and one shaman who has seen his world slip away. We meet Karamakate as both a fiery young guardian of lost traditions and an older man, hollowed out by time, unsure of what remains. In both stories, he guides a foreign scientist in search of the sacred yakruna plant—but their actual destination is something far more profound.

The film drifts through the Amazon like a dream, capturing the scars left by colonialism: stolen knowledge, crushed cultures, and spiritual disconnection. It doesn’t shout; it lingers, unsettles, and quietly knocks the wind out of you.

The monochrome visuals are jaw-dropping, the atmosphere otherworldly, and the message—about plundered wisdom, cultural erasure, and the wounds left behind—hits hard. It’s like Heart of Darkness—only told by those left behind. A bold, beautiful reckoning with what memory, time, and tragedy have washed away.

Mr. Nobody is a profound meditation on… everything, apparently. Time, love, death, the cosmos–why pick one theme when you can have them all at once? Jared Leto stares meaningfully into space while the plot folds in on itself. It’s deep, man. Or, at least desperately wants to be.

The Night of Counting the Years really got under my skin—bleak, beautiful, and loaded with historical weight. The story follows a tribe torn between preserving and profiting from the past and the moral murk that comes with that dilemma. The pacing is slow and deliberate, the dialogue sparse, and the tone more austere than hypnotic—but that restraint really worked for me. It never over-explains or holds your hand but trusts you to sit with the dread and work it out for yourself, making it land all the harder.

You can feel producer Rossellini’s influence in the background—this is Egyptian neo-realism that knows the power of silence. Every frame carries a quiet intensity. It’s an absolute shame that The Night of Counting the Years was Shadi Abdel Salam’s only feature-length film. He spent years meticulously researching a follow-up about Queen Nefertiti, but it was never completed. It wasn’t for lack of vision—it was a case of perfectionism, purpose, and priorities.

The biggest shame now is the state of the film itself, especially the sound. The Night of Counting the Years aches for a proper restoration and absolutely deserves one.

Darling feels like Britain trying on the French New Wave for size—full of style, attitude, and sharp Mod fashion—but it’s more gloss than grit. Julie Christie is excellent as Diana (aka “Darling”), drifting from man to man, city to city—rootless, emotionally immature, and seemingly irresistible… until she isn’t.

Beneath the confidence, she’s clearly flailing, full of regret, more posturing than revolution. No surprise she won the Oscar—she nails that mix of charm, bravado, and quiet despair. Dirk Bogarde might be even better—he’s subtle, sharp, and just as deserving of his BAFTA. Whenever he’s on screen, he quietly takes over.

Schlesinger wants us to see Darling as a modern, sex-positive go-getter, but the film doesn’t always know how to treat her. Sometimes, it admires her; sometimes, it sneers. The narration tries to close the gap but ends up reinforcing the distance. I didn’t feel invited in—I felt like I was peering through a shop window at someone trying on identities like outfits—perhaps that's the point.

In the end, Darling is stylish, clever, and occasionally biting—but emotionally, it left me somewhere in no-man’s-land. Intriguing but not quite satisfying. It's a time capsule that’s still trying to work out what it wants to say and how to say it.

Amerikatsi opens with a brilliant blend of whisky and satire–Life is Beautiful by way of Brazil, all charm, visual gags, and bureaucratic absurdity. The first 20 minutes are packed with clever setups and comedic flair before the film becomes more grounded and poignant. As the humour fades, a moving portrait emerges–of life under lock and key and the quiet resilience of the human spirit.

The tonal shift is handled with surprising grace. The film never becomes overly sentimental or preachy; instead, it remains gripping, intimate, and emotionally honest, powered by strong performances and smart writing.

But the real star is the score–a gorgeous fusion of Western and Armenian musical styles that reflects Charlie’s cultural displacement with emotional precision. Amerkatsi stands out for its ability to explore oppression through comedy without dulling its emotional weight. Thoughtful, funny, and deeply humane–it’s well worth your time.