Film Reviews by griggs

The Ballad of Wallis Island takes a little while to settle as Tim Key and Tom Basden gradually shed the personas they’re best known for. But once they do, the film finds its rhythm as a warm, offbeat meditation on longing, awkwardness, and delusion. Key plays a lonely lottery winner who uses his fortune to reunite a defunct band—Basden and an unflappable Carey Mulligan—for a private gig on a remote island. Mulligan is coolly indifferent throughout, but Basden is clearly unsettled, both by performing to an audience of one and by his unresolved feelings for her. It’s a strange setup, but one handled with surprising tenderness. The humour is gentle and well-observed, with moments of genuine pathos tucked between the absurdities. There’s a sadness to the whole enterprise that never overwhelms but lingers just beneath the surface. A bittersweet, quietly funny gem that rewards patience and empathy in equal measure.

Coffee and Cigarettes unfolds like a mixtape of moody, deadpan conversations—filmed over 17 years but stitched together with surprising ease. Each black-and-white vignette offers a dose of caffeine, nicotine, and existential small talk, where the awkward silences often say more than the words. Some pairings fizz, others fizzle, but the whole thing hums with Jarmusch’s offbeat charm. It’s low-key, lo-fi, and oddly comforting—like bumping into cool strangers in a café you wish was yours.

“This story takes place in the 13th century of the Bambara Empire.” From the opening titles, Yeelen tells you it’s playing by its own rules. This is a hypnotic, esoteric journey through West African myth, where sacred relics, elemental magic and prophecy collide.

Souleymane Cissé made the film as a direct response to European ethnographic cinema—those stiff, outsider documentaries. Instead, this is storytelling from the inside: slow, symbolic, and brimming with ancestral weight. Nianankoro’s quest to confront his sorcerer father is both literal and deeply spiritual.

Not everything is explained, and that’s the point. The symbolism pulses with meaning, even if you can’t always grasp it—and maybe you’re not supposed to. It’s not a film that holds your hand, but it does cast a spell.

Yeelen is one of the most transporting films I’ve ever seen. Cinema as ritual.

Burn After Reading initially gave me the distinct impression I'd seen it before—though in reality, I’d simply been overexposed to the trailer, which remains sharper and more consistently amusing than the film itself. The Coens assemble a formidable cast and a premise brimming with farcical promise, but the narrative never quite picks up the pace. Tonally, it veers between dark satire and absurdist thriller, often without fully committing to either. Still, there’s real craftsmanship in the writing that might reveal more on a second viewing—once expectations have been suitably adjusted. It’s clever, but not as hilarious or incisive as it seems to think. Yet somehow, it sticks with you—odd, offbeat, and just intriguing enough to warrant another spin.

Now, Voyager caught me off guard. I expected a soggy melodrama and got something far more affecting. The dialogue may verge on the poetic, but Bette Davis delivers it with such conviction that it never feels overwrought. The ending is where it really lands–tender, bittersweet, and quietly powerful. She doesn’t chase the fairytale; she choose dignity and emotional freedom. It’s not your typical Hollywood conclusion, but it’s all the more satisfying for it. A film about growth, agency, and defining your own kind of happiness–deeper and wiser than I ever expected.

The Alto Knights sounds like it should be a blast–two rival mob bosses, both played by De Niro? What’s not to love? Sadly, the answer is nearly everything. The premise is decent on paper, but in reality, it’s just two hours of De Niro talking to ‘himself’ while the story trudges through a tired, episodic structure. Two minutes of action, pause, a bit of narration, then reset and repeat. It plays out like a history lesson with no real drive–“this happened, then that happened”–with little urgency or momentum. It all feels very old fashioned and not in a charming way. That said, De Niro gives it his all and clearly isn’t coasting, even if the material doesn’t give him much to work with. The dual-role gimmick wears thin quickly, and by the end, I was more interested in checking the time than who came out on top. A real missed opportunity.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a quietly moving directorial debut from Chiwetel Ejiofor, who directs and stars in this true story set during Malawi's 2001 famine. It's not a flashy film, but it's sincere—and that sincerity carries it.

The film's strongest when it focuses on the father-son relationship, which forms the film's emotional core: prickly, proud, and ultimately redemptive. Ejiofor's performance lends real weight, while Maxwell Simba effectively conveys William's quiet determination. The final act—when the windmill finally spins—is properly affecting, even if the build-up is a bit too neat.

It's a story about the power of education, especially in places where it's hardest to reach. And how sometimes it takes a kid to remind the adults what's possible. It didn't blow me away, but it did make me care—and that's more than enough.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a strange, beautiful beast—six Western vignettes stitched together with Coen Brothers flair and just the right amount of gallows humour. Originally meant for TV, the whole thing has a slightly off-kilter look—super-saturated skies and dusty dreamscapes that don’t always sit right but somehow suit the tone. There’s real craftsmanship here, from the melancholy score to the sharp writing and gorgeous cinematography.

It plays with Western tropes in a way that’s affectionate rather than mocking—plenty of nods to the classics but filtered through that Coen weirdness. Some stories are charming, others downright grim. The tonal gear-shifting can be jarring; just as you’re settling in with one tale, it ends—sometimes with a punch, sometimes with a shrug.

Not every segment lands, but the overall effect is oddly haunting. It’s a high-concept campfire anthology—singular, patchy, but worth the ride.

Scum is one of those films I’d been putting off for years. At school, it was passed around on battered VHS tapes alongside porn and video nasties—spoken of in hushed tones as if it were contraband. Watching it now, I found it far less disturbing than expected—at least until the harrowing final 15 minutes. That said, it’s still a grim, unsparing depiction of life in borstal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s closer to reality than many would like to admit. It was this film, in fact, that helped accelerate public pressure to dismantle the borstal system altogether.

Alan Clarke’s direction is stark and unflinching, favouring long takes, and a documentary feel that heightens the sense of institutional rot. It’s easy to see why the BBC, who originally commissioned it, baulked—rejecting the television version, which led to Clarke remaking it as a feature film. Sadomasochistic staff, inmates used as cheap labour, and no hint of rehabilitation—just violence, degradation and survival. It’s challenging, raw, and well worth the wait.

The Pawnbroker is heavy stuff. Lumet really knows how to shoot a bruised soul in a brutal city—New York feels like it's closing in on every frame. Rod Steiger plays Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor numbed by grief after witnessing his family's murder. The film's exploration of his grief and isolation is both empathetic and contemplative. He keeps everyone at arm's length, but the city won't let him drift. Quincy Jones' score is a proper knockout—sharp, mournful, and totally in sync with the film's emotional weight, connecting the audience to Nazerman's existential struggle. Grim but gripping.

I’m sure Paradise Now is a better film than the version I. Unfortunately, it was dubbed—with no option to change it—and also had burnt-in subtitles that didn’t match the dialogue. So, I spent most of the film trying to make sense of two clashing scripts at once. Not ideal.

Even so, there’s a lot here that’s clearly powerful. The preparation scenes are tense and eerie—the suits, the videos, the rehearsed goodbyes—all done with an unsettling calm. You can feel the claustrophobia of life in the West Bank, with its checkpoints and constant surveillance. The film does try to show the humanity behind the horror, and I respect that. I wish I could’ve experienced it properly without the distractions of the worst dub-sub combo I’ve ever seen.

A calling card more than a film, Following shows early signs of Nolan’s tics—fractured time, moody score, and women who barely register. It’s clever, sure, but also cold and a bit too pleased with itself. It felt more like an exercise than a story I was meant to care about.

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.