Film Reviews by griggs

A British slice of domestic poison that plays like a genteel Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, This Was a Woman is an elegant but chilly melodrama about a family quietly eaten from within. It’s more drawing-room deceit than true thriller, and most of the cast seem frozen in polite restraint.

Sonia Dresdel, though, is mesmerising. As the narcissistic wife and mother from hell, she turns manipulation into performance art — all arched brows and measured venom. Her presence gives the film its pulse, lifting it above its stagey trappings.

The script lands some sly blows against post-war class snobbery and moral hypocrisy, even if the direction plays it safe. Faint traces of mysticism and witchcraft add an unexpected twist — as though evil itself had settled into suburbia and put the kettle on.

This one’s basically cops and robbers meet the Post Office. It opens like a recruitment reel for heroic mailmen, then turns into a tidy little noir about a heist gone wrong.

Alan Ladd plays the inspector with his usual stone-faced charm, chasing crooks who’d probably fear paperwork more than prison. Phyllis Calvert shines as the nun who witnesses too much, Jan Sterling adds grit and glamour, and Lewis Allen keeps it taut while John F. Seitz fills the frame with rain and cigarette smoke — all the noir essentials.

It’s half recruitment ad, half thriller, but surprisingly it works. A clean, oddly wholesome noir that still finds time for guns, guilt, and old-fashioned moral duty. Think of it as first-class crime: sealed, stamped, and unexpectedly fun.

A moody, slow-burning neo-noir that works best when it says nothing at all, Islands is the kind of film that invites you to lean in and listen to the silence. Sam Riley gives a superb, quietly magnetic performance — all glances, pauses, and half-finished thoughts. You can feel him thinking even when he isn’t speaking, which is most of the time.

Working with Jan Ole Gerster, Riley stripped away much of the dialogue — and it pays off. Steeped in isolation and unspoken tension, the quiet stretches pull you in, forcing you to read the spaces between words. It’s a bold, patient approach that makes the film feel lived-in rather than staged — more like you’ve wandered into someone’s private reckoning.

The story unfolds like a mirage — mysterious, sun-bleached, and just out of reach. It lingers more than it lands — which is part of its charm. Islands may not rush to explain itself, yet it has a way of holding you fast — a film that breathes in silence and leaves its echoes behind.

Few films really capture the messy middle of love — not the rush at the start or the wreckage at the end, but that awkward, uncomfortable space in between. A Kind of Loving does.

Alan Bates plays Vic, a manchild stumbling through romance like it’s a minefield — selfish, confused, and trying to act like a grown man in a world that rewards him for staying a boy. He’s no villain, just proof of how easily working-class men were pushed into marriage long before they learned how to talk about what they felt.

June Ritchie, as Ingrid, has fewer lines but far more weight to carry. The film gives her three choices — marriage, motherhood, or misery — and she fills that space with quiet heartbreak. You can see the emotional labour she shoulders just to keep things afloat, even as her life shrinks around her.

John Schlesinger shoots it all with a tender realism: backstreets, bus stops, and bedsits where respectability matters more than happiness. It’s funny, sad, and quietly political — a story about how men take, women endure, and both end up trapped in a kind of loving that feels more like survival.

A tight, sweaty little noir that feels like a 1930s gangster movie dragged into the Cold War, He Ran All the Way traps everyone in a rising panic. John Garfield, in his last film before his sudden death at 39, is fantastic — jumpy, cornered, and cracking under the weight of his own nerves. You can almost smell the fear coming off him.

Director John Berry keeps things tense and airless, shooting mostly in small rooms where nobody can breathe. James Wong Howe’s cinematography does the rest — shadows, blinds, sweat, and faces half-lit with guilt. It’s noir boiled down to its essentials: light, darkness, and the mess in between.

The plot’s simple enough — a botched robbery and a desperate man on the run — but it hits harder when you know what was happening behind the camera. Both Berry and Garfield were being chased by HUAC, and you can feel that paranoia seeping into every frame. The movie’s grim, gripping, and strangely moving — a tough little send-off for an actor who, in the end, really did run all the way.

I’m not a big musical fan, and An American in Paris didn’t really change that. The Gershwin score is glorious, of course — lush and lively in all the right places — but the film wrapped around it feels more like a gallery piece than a story. It’s beautiful to look at, just not all that engaging.

Gene Kelly dances like he’s trying to charm the paint off the sets, and Leslie Caron floats through her debut looking perfectly lovely, if not exactly alive. Everything’s bright, polished, and a bit too pleased with itself.

The famous ballet at the end is impressive in scale but exhausting in length — a flourish that forgets to mean anything. It’s a film of undeniable craft, but for me, there’s not much heart behind the spectacle. All tune, no tune-in.

Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler gets a slick and surprisingly tense makeover in Nia DaCosta’s Hedda — her warm-up before 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. It’s set in a lush, smoky 1950s world where everything looks beautiful and feels quietly suffocating. The whole thing unfolds over one long night, giving it a slow-burn, pressure-cooker vibe that really works.

Tessa Thompson is fantastic — poised, unpredictable, and just on the edge of coming undone. DaCosta switches up one major character’s gender, adding a bisexual thread that makes Hedda’s motives messier and more human.

A few of DaCosta’s choices go a bit overboard, but the film’s too striking to dismiss. Stylish, moody, and full of bite, Hedda shows you can bring Ibsen into the modern age without losing his edge — and that ending leaves just enough room to argue about what it all means.

Few prison films hit as hard or feel as tightly wound as Brute Force. It’s a sweaty, furious piece of postwar noir, all shadowed cells and pent-up rage. Jules Dassin directs with a sense of fatalism that feels almost operatic — like Rififi behind bars. Every corridor hums with tension, every conversation carries the weight of confinement.

Burt Lancaster leads a powerhouse cast of inmates plotting one desperate bid for freedom, while Hume Cronyn delivers a quietly chilling turn as the sadistic guard who seems to enjoy the system more than the prisoners. It’s grim, bruising stuff, but never dull — the violence comes not from gunfire, but from frustration and futility.

Like Le Trou, it finds dignity in endurance and solidarity, showing men defined less by their crimes than by how they face captivity. It’s noir stripped of glamour, replaced with sweat, steel, and the faint hope of sunlight through the bars.

I found Sundays and Cybele while working through the Oscar winners list — the 1963 Best International Feature winner — and it turned out to be one of those quiet surprises that actually earns its prize. What starts off looking simple, even a little suspect in premise, slowly unfolds into something tender, strange, and deeply moving.

Serge Bourguignon’s direction is luminous yet grounded, drifting between dream and realism. Hardy Krüger plays Pierre, a traumatised ex-pilot haunted by war guilt, and Patricia Gozzi is astonishing — direct, natural, and heartbreakingly clear-eyed. Their friendship is innocent, but it’s the adult world’s suspicion that turns it tragic.

Those Sundays together feel like borrowed time — small pockets of grace before the world closes in. It’s more Léon: The Professional than Lolita: less about exploitation, more about two damaged souls trying to feel human again. Troubling, tender, and quietly devastating, Sundays and Cybele lingers like a dream you don’t want to wake from — even though you know it ends in heartbreak.

Little Trouble Girls is one of those debuts that feels way too assured for a first film. Urška Djukic takes the old “Catholic girl’s awakening” setup and gives it a jolt — smart, modern, and quietly intense. The mix of faith, control, and desire is handled so confidently it’s almost uncomfortable to watch.

The sound design is incredible. The music isn’t just background; it shapes everything — sometimes soothing, sometimes suffocating. Saša Tabakovic is brilliant as the choirmaster: charming one minute, quietly predatory the next. He’s got the kind of authority that makes your skin crawl even when he’s smiling.

The rehearsal scenes are where the film really hits. Every breath and glance feels like a battle for control. It’s haunting, beautifully shot, and impossible to shake off. Little Trouble Girls gets under your skin and stays there — not loud or flashy, just quietly devastating.

Compact, grimy, and straight to the point — Railroaded! is a tough little noir that doesn’t waste a frame. Anthony Mann takes a pulpy story about a framed man on the run and turns it into a sweaty, claustrophobic exercise in tension. For a low-budget picture, it looks fantastic; every shadow feels alive, every room ready to choke on its own smoke.

The film runs on pure attitude — everyone sweats, snarls, and double-crosses their way through a plot so cynical it almost folds in on itself. You can already see Mann’s style taking shape: that mix of moral doom and visual precision he’d later perfect in his Westerns.

It’s rough around the edges, sure, but that’s part of its charm. Railroaded! moves fast, hits hard, and leaves just enough grit under your fingernails to remind you where it came from.

Italian horror never did subtle, and Zombie Flesh Eaters is no exception — but that’s exactly why it works. Lucio Fulci takes Romero’s undead idea, ships it off to a Caribbean island, and swaps social commentary for maggots, machetes, and magnificent decay. It’s sweaty, sunlit horror that feels exotic, grimy, and gloriously gross.

The acting’s as ropey as ever for Italian horror — all stiff delivery and post-dubbed voices — but you can tell they threw real money at it. The gore, the makeup, and that wild underwater zombie-versus-shark scene all look incredible for what’s basically pulp cinema. Fulci might revel in trash, but he makes it look expensive.

The result’s pulpy, grisly, and weirdly beautiful. Every squelch, scream, and eyeball puncture lands with purpose. It’s nonsense, sure — but the kind of nonsense that gets under your skin and stays there.

Few debuts land as confidently as Cronos. Guillermo del Toro’s first feature is a melancholic horror — a gothic fairy tale about time, decay, and the quiet sadness of wanting to live forever. It’s elegant, strange, and full of sympathy for it’s monsters; the kind of horror that makess you sigh more than scream.

The plot’s simple enough — a clockwork scarab that grants immortality — but del Toro gives it real weight. Faith and machinery blur together here: salvation made from cogs, gears, and a little blood. Federico Luppi brings warmth to a role that could’ve been pure grotesque, while Ron Perlman adds dark comedy as a thuggish heir who couldn’t care less about the myth, only the money.

Still, it’s the bond between Jesús and his granddaughter Aurora that gives it heart. She’s the film’s conscience — silent, innocent, and quietly devastating. Cronos might not be perfect, but it’s rich with atmosphere and feeling. You can already see the filmmaker del Toro would become — one who knows monsters aren’t evil, just heartbreakingly lonely.

It’s all a bit bonkers, but that’s part of the charm. The Amityville Horror sits somewhere between supernatural thriller and domestic meltdown, with enough psychological unease to keep it interesting. The story of a family haunted by their new home’s bloody past feels familiar now, but there’s a raw conviction here — the sense that everyone involved really believes the American dream’s gone sour.

James Brolin goes convincingly off the rails, Margot Kidder does her best “Lois Lane meets haunted housewife,” yet somehow ignores the only character with instincts — the dog. Meanwhile, Rod Steiger’s terrified priest battles clouds of flies and divine interference in scenes that somehow make the house feel genuinely cursed.

It’s dated, overwrought, and occasionally absurd, but its hysteria and sincerity give it power. Unlike The Conjuring and its glossy descendants, this one actually feels possessed — by guilt, paranoia, and 1970s furniture.

Cinematic folk horror at its finest, Witchfinder General burns slow but leaves scars. What starts with a flicker of feminist curiosity about witch-hunting hysteria soon hardens into something bleaker — a vision of England where power and cruelty go hand in hand. It’s grim, grounded, and all the more powerful for it.

Vincent Price is superb as Matthew Hopkins, less a cartoon villain and more a petty, joyless functionary of evil. Ian Ogilvy and the rest of the cast keep pace, their quiet restraint making the bursts of violence land harder.

Shot with eerie beauty by Michael Reeves and cinematographer John Coquillon, every hill and village feels steeped in dread. It’s one of the defining works of British folk horror — a film that shaped everything from The Wicker Man to The Witch, and still feels horribly relevant in its cruelty.