Film Reviews by griggs

Some films work best in small spaces, and Blue Moon leans right into that. Richard Linklater’s one-night, character study takes place in Sardi’s bar, where Lorenz Hart nurses his ego (and his drinks) as Oaklahoma! opens without him. It’s a sharp premise—one man’s crisis unfolding as his art form outgrows him.

Ehthan Hawke give Hart a fragile, slightly sizzled charm, equal parts wit and self-loathing. Andrew Scott is effortlessly smooth as Richard Rodger’s, and Margaret Qualley slips through the gloom with a warmth that almost redeems the melancholy. The performances fo much of the lifting; the direction keeps it intimate, if sometimes airless.

It’s an elegant film, if not especially exciting one—polished, well acted, and quietly sad. Blue Moon won’t dazzle, but it lingers, like the last drink ina bar that doen’t feel like home anyore.

Hikari’s Rental Family means well—almost too well. It’s so eager to move you it practically pokes you in the eye. The premise, about a lonely man hired to play a father figure for strangers, should be fertile ground for tenderness and reflection. And for a while it is. The performances are gentile, the tone warm, and the message clear: everyone wants to belong somewhere.

But for all its sincerity, the film can’t resist tugging too hard on teh heartstrings. Every emotional beat feels timed to the second, every reaction a little too rehearsed. What might have been quietly moving turns syrupy, leaving the aftertaste of something sweet but artificial.

Hikari directs with care and empathy, and there’s no denying the craft. Still, it confuses sentiment with substance—heart over depth. Rental Familyoffers plenty of feeling; it just doesn't leave much room for yours.

No Other Choice turns job loss into a capitalist horror show, where survival and self-image blur until both are lethal. Lee Byung-hun’s Man-su is a paper executive who takes redundancy personally — so personally he starts eliminating the competition. What follows is part midlife crisis, part murder farce, all dressed in Park’s usual elegance and jet-black humour.

The film is equal parts humorous and exhausting, a satire wound so tightly it sometimes snaps. Beneath the slapstick and strings lies something genuinely tragic: a man who’d rather kill than change, in a system that rewards the impulse. Son Ye-jin brings warmth and weary logic as the wife left to pick up what’s left.

Stylish, savage, and strangely sympathetic, No Other Choice proves Park can still find humanity amid the bloodletting of modern ambition.

Few films capture emotional excavation quite like Autumn Sonata. It’s intimate, brutal, and oddly comforting — like therapy with better lighting. The film unfolds in one location, almost like a play, and that staginess works: every glance, pause, and tremor feels heightened, as if truth itself has been cornered.

At its heart, Bergman pits Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann against each other with surgical precision — mother and daughter circling through guilt, pride, and damage passed down like bad genes. It’s a fitting farewell for Ingrid and a late-career summit for Ingmar, a cinematic This Be the Verse delivered with elegance instead of bitterness.

More accessible than most of his work, it distils everything Bergman does best: confession, cruelty, and catharsis. You don’t watch it so much as endure it — and come out grateful for the scars, hollowed out but somehow lighter.

Sometimes a film just wants to have fun — and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark does exactly that. What could’ve been a one-joke gimmick turns into a surprisingly sharp and self-aware comedy, driven by Cassandra Peterson’s brilliant comic timing. She vamps, deadpans, and sashays through every scene with infectious glee, turning camp into confidence and kitsch into charm.

The plot — small-town scandal meets supernatural silliness — holds together better than it has any right to. The jokes land, the gags are lovingly over-the-top, and the supporting cast seem delighted to be in on the joke. Director James Signorelli keeps things brisk and buoyant, his Saturday Night Live background giving it just the right snap.

It’s far smarter than its cleavage-heavy marketing ever suggested. Deserving of its lasting cult status, it remains sharper and funnier than most films twice its size — a gleeful blend of horror, humour, and high heels. Impossible not to enjoy.

There’s something oddly comforting about Beaver Valley — as if it’s been playing in classrooms for generations. The colours alone are a time capsule: rich Technicolor greens and golds that look too vivid to be real, yet exactly how nature documentaries should look. It’s the kind of film you feel you’ve seen before, perhaps while half-daydreaming at school years ago.

Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures always had a knack for blending education with entertainment, and this one does it with typical charm. The narration is gently wry, the editing crisp, and the animals — particularly the titular beavers — are given just enough personality to keep things engaging.

That it won the Golden Bear feels perfectly fitting. Beaver Valley is nature as fable, beautifully photographed and a little too polished to be wild, but still impossible not to smile at.

Some films make you laugh when you probably shouldn’t, and Re-Animator is proudly one of them. Stuart Gordon’s cult splatterfest is 1980s as shoulder pads—a lurid blend of horror, humour, and headless hysteria. The story of medical students who can’t stop playing god is simple enough, but the tone veers between mad science and gory slapstick with gleeful abandon.

There’s plenty of gore but not much real violence, which somehow makes it easier to grin through the carnage. The acting is serviceable at best, overcooked at worst, yet it fits the film’s cheerfully deranged energy.

A Stop Making Sense poster makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo—a neat touch of era-appropriate cool. Re-Animator isn’t great art, but it’s gloriously self-aware: a B-movie that knows exactly what kind of monster it’s made of.

Grief hangs over Miroirs No. 3 like a storm that never quite breaks. It’s a film about loss and the illusions we build to live beside it — graceful, deliberate, and quietly unsettling. The story edges toward a revelation that, in another film, might veer into horror, yet here it’s played with the intimacy of a chamber piece: more mournful than macabre.

That restraint keeps it grounded, though perhaps too safe. The direction is elegant, the performances finely tuned, but the pacing rarely strays from comfort. It’s all beautifully lit, if a touch over-polished.

Still, there’s grace in that composure. Miroirs No. 3 lingers like a half-remembered dream — delicate and human, content to trace grief’s reflection rather than plunge beneath its depths.

Paul Greengrass turns real events into cinema that feels caught between chaos and control, and The Lost Bus is no exception. Based on the 2018 Camp Fire in California, it follows a group of teachers and children trapped on a school bus as the inferno closes in. It’s tense, humane, and shot with that restless handheld energy that makes every second feel lived.

Yet something’s missing. Downed power lines take the blame, while the real culprit — climate change — stays off-screen, humming beneath the smoke. It’s strange that a filmmaker so tuned to truth lets this one slide.

Still, The Lost Bus moves and disturbs in equal measure. Greengrass finds humanity amid the panic once again, even if this time the bigger picture never quite makes it into frame.

There’s a strange charm to The Invisible Man—a film that dazzles as much with its trickery as with its madness. James Whale directs with a wicked grin, mixing early sci-fi horror with a touch of black comedy. The effects remain astonishing for 1933. Even now, every bandage and floating teacup feels like a small miracle of invention.

At times, though, Whale seems to be showing off rather than telling the story. The film toys with big ideas — science, morality, power — before stumbling into a finale more chaotic than climactic.

Still, Claude Rains’ manic voice and Whale’s visual flair keep it aloft. The Invisible Man is an eccentric experiment that sometimes loses its focus but never its fascination—a spectacle that proves even thin air can have presence.

There’s something magnificently old-fashioned about Mutiny on the Bounty — a film so sturdy you can smell the salt air and feel the rope burns. Frank Lloyd steers the ship with a steady hand, keeping the grandeur intact while grounding it in human grit and defiance.

Charles Laughton’s Captain Bligh is monstrous perfection — every glare and bark a study in discipline turned cruel. Clark Gable, stripped of his trademark moustache, gives Fletcher Christian the nobility of a man who’d rather drown than kneel. It’s not subtle — the sea looks vast, the ideals clear, and the mutiny inevitable — but that’s part of its charm.

This is adventure cinema with grit, gusto, and just enough moral ambiguity to keep it afloat. A grand old yarn that reminds you why Hollywood once ruled the waves.

Sound has rarely felt this dangerous. Tuner turns pitch and pressure into weapons, blending crime, romance, and uneasy humour with unnerving precision. Daniel Roher directs like a man fine-tuning chaos, and Leo Woodall shines as a gifted piano tuner whose painfully sharp hearing both guides and torments him.

The film hums with tension; you can almost feel the vibrations in your teeth. Dustin Hoffman brings weary gravitas, Havana Rose Liu keeps things unpredictable, and the sound design deserves its own billing — I half-wished for earplugs, though not for the reasons you’d expect.

A few notes falter near the end, but the rhythm never slips. Tuner is sleek, stylish, and surprisingly tender — proof that in cinema, the quietest moments often make the most noise.

There’s something knowingly artificial about Jay Kelly — a film that gleams like a Nespresso advert stretched to feature length. George Clooney plays Jay, a famous actor who might as well be playing himself playing Cary Grant: all charm, poise, and immaculate tailoring. The performance loops neatly — Clooney impersonating an icon impersonating Clooney. He knows exactly what he’s doing: an icon discovering, perhaps too late, that charisma isn’t connection.

Yet the film isn’t just about Jay. Adam Sandler’s Ron, his weary but loyal manager, gives the story ballast. Their European wanderings become a two-hander about public polish and private need — Clooney’s gloss against Sandler’s awkward sincerity. When Ron finally drops the act and simply asks Jay a question, the film, for a moment, exhales.

Still, Baumbach and Mortimer’s script mistakes smoothness for soul. Everything gleams, nothing quite sticks. Jay Kelly moves you briefly, but the emotion fades with the lights — a study of men so practised at charm they can’t escape its shine.

There’s something oddly hollow about House of Wax — and not just the mannequins. Watching it in 2D is like seeing a magic trick after the reveal; the wonder’s gone but the gestures remain. You can sense where the 3-D thrills once leapt at startled ’50s audiences, now hanging in the air like ghosts of a gimmick.

The story works well enough — revenge, wax, and plenty of screaming — yet the characters are mostly props, their fates as light as the melted faces around them. Only Vincent Price feels real, gliding through the set like a man in on the joke, giving it a rare touch of class, or maybe just irony.

House of Wax is handsome and sometimes eerie, but it never quite sticks. Perhaps in 3-D it still breathes; in 2-D, it barely flickers.

Something quietly sinister seeps through Village of the Damned — that most English of invasions, where danger arrives not with monsters but with manners. Midwich looks idyllic at first: hedgerows trimmed, tea poured, all perfectly calm. Then come the children — pale, polite, and far too intelligent for comfort. The horror doesn’t pounce; it settles in, one twitching curtain at a time, until those glowing eyes and that eerie hum make civility feel like a trap.

Wolf Rilla draws real tension from a simple setup, his restraint doing most of the work. The pacing stumbles here and there, and the dialogue can labour the point, but the mood never loosens its grip. Everything feels just slightly, deliciously off.

It may not be a genre milestone, but it endures as a model of quiet dread — proof that horror doesn’t need to scream. Sometimes it only needs to look back.