Film Reviews by griggs

I didn’t expect a film about men on phones and typewriters to feel even tenser on a rewatch, but All the President’s Men still hums like a thriller. You already know how Watergate ends, yet watching Woodward and Bernstein inch towards the truth feels oddly nerve-racking, like you’re waiting for the penny – or the presidency – to drop.

Pakula turns newsroom grind into cinema: long takes, quiet corridors, that cavernous Library of Congress shot. Redford and Hoffman are great company, all frayed nerves and stubborn curiosity, backed by a parade of beautifully sketched side characters who seem one bad decision away from disaster.

What lands hardest now is how modern it feels. The film isn’t just about Watergate; it’s about who gets to define reality when power is cornered. In an age of spin, bots and “fake news”, its faith in painstaking, unshowy journalism feels almost radical. One of those rare films that deepens every time you return.

War stories seldom wear their purpose so openly or their craft so well. The film centres on survivors clinging to a life raft; their stories unfold in sober flashbacks that braid duty, loss and home-front resilience. The joints show, but the structure holds.

With Noël Coward writing, starring and co-directing with David Lean, In Which We Serve rises above routine exhortation. The filmmaking is controlled rather than bombastic; set pieces bite without bluster; sentiment stays measured. John Mills lends open-hearted grit, Celia Johnson distils patience into quiet grace, and Coward’s captain carries authority with a light, precise touch. The ensemble is uniformly strong.

It remains undeniably propaganda, tailored to 1942. The camaraderie feels a shade cosier than likely, and the distance between ranks is politely compressed. Even so, the compassion and formal clarity endure. Not a revelation, but a dignified salute to service and survival—made with steadiness, taste and a level head.

Ulmer finally gets some studio cash and spends it on ceilings. We open at a philanthropic knees-up where Horace Vendig is canonised—until old pal Vic walks in with Mallory, the spit of first love Martha. Neat trick: Diana Lynn plays both.

From there it unspools in Citizen Kane-ish flashbacks. Low angles, memory as a minefield. Bert Glennon keeps everything glassy. Zachary Scott is charm curdled, Louis Hayward the bruised conscience, and Sydney Greenstreet purrs away as Buck Mansfield. Keep an eye out for a baby-faced Raymond Burr at the edges.

The snag is the squeeze. Dayton Stoddart’s Prelude to Night gets crammed into 104 minutes, so motives sprint and a couple of pay-offs arrive underdone. Still, it’s cool, cynical, and handsomely staged—less a banquet than a sharp tasting menu of American ambition, served cold. Worth a look if you like your success stories with teeth.

Some films take their time getting started — Guilty Bystander just throws you straight in and lets you catch up. Within minutes everyone’s lying, drinking, or both, and the story’s already halfway down a dark alley. The script’s uneven, but it moves fast and throws in just enough grit and sarcasm to keep it fun.

The direction’s tight and surprisingly nimble, pulling a dozen loose threads into something that mostly holds together. You do end up a step ahead of our gloriously named washed-up detective, Max Thursday, who’s always one drink behind the plot — but that’s part of the charm. Sam Spade he’s not.

Only a few moments truly land — the chase across the A-train subway tracks being the standout — yet the cast keeps it watchable even when the pace dips. Guilty Bystander isn’t perfect, but it’s scrappy, sharp, and hard-boiled enough to leave a mark.

Some films sneak up on you — this one just knocks you flat. Forbidden Games opens in June 1940, with Parisians fleeing under Nazi fire. In the chaos, little Paulette chases her puppy across a bridge and loses everything else instead. It’s brutal, but oddly calm, like war has just become another kind of weather — something you endure if you’re lucky.

What comes next isn’t about innocence lost so much as innocence hanging on for dear life. Paulette ends up in the countryside and meets Michel, a kid just as bewildered by it all. Together they start building a tiny graveyard for the things war leaves behind — pets, toys, bits of normal life — a strange but touching way to make sense of it all.

What comes next isn’t about innocence lost so much as innocence hanging on for dear life. Paulette ends up in the countryside and meets Michel, a kid just as bewildered by it all. Together they start building a tiny graveyard for the things war leaves behind — pets, toys, bits of normal life — a strange but touching way to make sense of it all.

Forget fireworks; give me a stove, two brothers, and a dream. In a 1950s New Jersey seaside town, a tiny Italian restaurant fights to stay alive while the culture nudges it toward compromise. The hook is gloriously daft and deadly serious: Pascal, the swaggering rival, swears he can bring Louis Prima for a one-night feast that will save the place. What follows is a savoury argument about authenticity versus assimilation—the immigrant hustle measured out in ladles, loans, and pride.

Co-directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott (who also pops up on screen), it’s performed with the relaxed precision of a well-rehearsed service. Tucci’s Secondo juggles bills and charm; Tony Shalhoub’s Primo guards the sauce like a sacred text. Minnie Driver brings patience and spark, Isabella Rossellini breezes in like trouble on heels, and Ian Holm makes Pascal a deliciously oily showman. Around them, Allison Janney’s kind florist and Marc Anthony’s near-silent waiter give the room a steady pulse.

The set pieces are mouth-watering without foodie fuss. The timpano is both spectacle and prayer. Period pop and jazz keep the air loose. And that wordless breakfast at dawn—a simple omelette, a truce—tastes like forgiveness. Big Night earns its seat among the great restaurant films because it knows the table is both theatre and covenant. It’s generous, gently funny, and just tart enough to cut the richness—one wonderful film stocked with the best things in life: good food, good music, and people trying, messily and magnificently, to love one another.

There’s something a bit off-kilter about this one — a film about one of the grimmest chapters in history that somehow ends up feeling like a very glossy courtroom drama. Nuremberg is easy enough to sit through, maybe a little too easy, because the polish keeps you at a distance. You sense it enjoying the show more than the stakes.

Malek and Crowe spend most of the film circling each other in what’s meant to be psychological fencing. Crowe mixes swagger with menace, while Malek’s psychiatrist feels too tidy, trimmed down to a point instead of allowed to unravel. Their scenes should flare; they mostly simmer.

The trial sequences move briskly, but they skim the surface. When the real camp footage appears, it hits hard — and makes everything around it feel even more staged. It never quite digs in.

In the end, it’s a sleek retelling with a strong cast, but it never finds the messy, human truth underneath. Watchable, sure — just not as raw as the story deserves

You can feel the sting of the moment in this one — a thriller made just after the war, already nudging you toward the idea that evil doesn’t vanish; it just updates its address. The Stranger might look like Welles playing it straight, but it’s full of those sly little touches that tell you exactly who’s calling the shots.

The lighting alone is worth the price of entry. Welles carves faces out of shadows, turns small-town streets into lurking traps, and stages dinner-table chatter like covert interrogations. More than once I caught myself staring at the composition and realised I’d missed half the dialogue. The images have that kind of pull.

Welles as the villain is always a pleasure — all charm stretched thin over something sharp beneath. Edward G. Robinson makes a perfect foil, poking at the cracks in that polished exterior with quiet persistence. It’s not flawless, but the mood carries it.

What you get is a tight, moody little thriller — timely then, surprisingly fresh now — and a reminder that even when Welles coloured inside the lines, he still drew something striking enough to linger.

Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive is a gloriously trashy swamp fever dream: neon lights blazing, everyone drenched in sweat, and a crocodile that looks permanently fed up. Neville Brand rants, Robert England sleazes, and the guests seem to wander in from entirely different movies. It’s chaotic, repetitive, and wildly overlong — but it’s also scrappy, noisy fun with a pulse.

Few horror films balance schlock and sophistication quite like The Howling. Joe Dante takes the werewolf myth and gives it a sharp, satirical bite — part creature feature, part self-help parody, part therapy session with claws. It looks fantastic too: all fog, fangs, and early-’80s atmosphere, with effects that still impress long after the fur flies.

The cast have fun with it, from Dee Wallace’s nervy lead to John Carradine’s haunting turn as an ageing patient at “The Colony.” Beneath the camp and chaos, there’s a surprising streak of melancholy — a sense that transformation isn’t just terrifying, it’s inevitable.

And that finale? Gloriously audacious. The Howling may not rewrite the rulebook, but it delivers enough wit, atmosphere, and visceral flair to prove the full moon still has teeth.

There’s no getting around it — this is a lot of movie. Gorgeous, yes; practically glowing with old-money candlelight and gold leaf. But The Leopard also takes its sweet time, drifting from salon to battlefield to ballroom with the unhurried confidence of a film that knows you’re not going anywhere. It’s glorious to look at, and you definitely feel every minute of it.

Burt Lancaster gives the Prince a lovely, worn-down dignity, like a man quietly watching the world change under his feet. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale swoosh through scenes looking impossibly beautiful, reminders that the future is arriving whether the old guard likes it or not. Their energy perks the film up just when it needs it.

Visconti luxuriates in every detail — the fabrics, the faces, the melancholy. The famous ball sequence is jaw-dropping, indulgent, and at least twenty minutes longer than you’re ready for. But when it clicks, it really clicks: a grand farewell to an era wrapped in silk and slow dances.

Overlong? Absolutely. But often so dazzling you forgive it — and even enjoy drifting along at its pace.

The late-night knock is always a giveaway in noir, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Barbara Stanwyck slides into The File on Thelma Jordan with the kind of cool, slow-burn allure that makes even sensible men forget themselves. Wendell Corey’s district attorney knows he should walk away, but the film has fun watching him drift closer, as if hypnotised by a flame he swears he won’t touch.

Stanwyck keeps Thelma’s motives cloudy enough to draw you in, but never enough to let you settle. Corey matches her with a worn, sympathetic charm — a man caught between duty and desire, and losing ground by the minute. Their scenes together have a quiet pull that does more work than any of the later courtroom manoeuvres.

Siodmak guides the story with his usual shadowy elegance, letting the lighting and angles suggest doubts the characters won’t voice. It’s not the most hard-edged noir of its era, but it builds a steady, absorbing atmosphere. By the end, you’ve wandered into the same moral fog as everyone else — and Stanwyck is still the clearest light in the room.

After nearly a month off the big screen thanks to shingles in my eye — and ordeal I wouldn't wish on my worst cinematic enemies — there was something darkly appropriate about returning to the very room where Kubrick shot the Ludovico Technique in A Clockwork Orange. Sitting there with my hourly eye drops, blinking like poor Alex DeLarge mid-rehab, felt almost too neat a parallel. And in its own twisted way, Bugonia was the perfect re-entry: a film about paranoia and pressure, watched in a space famous for forced viewing. Sometimes the cinema gods really do enjoy a theme.

There's a real confidence humming through this one — the sort of film that knows exactly where it is going even when its characters look lost. You feel the Save the Green Planet! bones beneath it, but Lanthimos bends them into something cleaner and stranger, threading modern paranoi through a story that keeps its wit close at a hand.

Emma Stone dives into the madness with real bite, while Jesse Plemons give the film its quiet, unsettling pulse. Together they set the tempo — sharp one minute, surprisingly tender the next. It works.

What makes Bugonia click is how lightly it wears it oddness. Instead fog the broad theatrics or knotted structures of Lanthimos' recent films, it opts for something leaner: a story that keeps turning sideways just when you think you've found your bearings. None of those shifts feel cheap: the film's grip is too steady for that.

By the end, it's anxious, funny, and oddly warm — a conspiracy tale that winds you tighter while letting you laugh at the tension. A strange little machine, humming beautifully.

Don’t be fooled by the title — everyone’s trapped in something here. Max Ophuls takes a Cinderella story and flips it on its diamond-encrusted head. What begins as a glamour-soaked fantasy curdles into a velvet-lined prison, with Barbara Bel Geddes playing a woman who buys the dream and ends up paying interest.

Robert Ryan is the husband from hell — polished on the surface, poison underneath. Their scenes play like a dance that keeps slipping out of step, all charm and danger in equal measure.

Lee Garmes shoots it like a noir in evening wear, every shadow dripping with bad intentions. He takes and average melodrama and turns it into an interesting film noir. Ophuls glides through the wreckage of the story with elegance and irony — part romance, part warning. Caught may sparkle like champagne, but it burns like gin on the way down.

You’ve got to hand it to The Poseidon Adventure —  few films have gone down in history quite so literally. It's the granddaddy of disaster flicks, the one that proved audiences will pay good money to watch rich people crawl through air ducts. Gene Hackman yells at God, Ernest Borgnine yells at Hackman, and Shelley Winters just swims her heart out. Half the cast are upside down, the rest are drowning in melodrama.

Ronald Neame directs like a man gleefully tip over a dollhouse, and the result is pure 1970s mayhem — sweaty, soapy, and gloriously sincere. The sets twist, the dialogue groans, and everyone looks one waterlogged close-up away from quitting show business. Yet the spectacle still holds up: all steel, sweat, and brute-force stunt work, no CGI pixels required.

It's as subtle as a foghorn but twice as entertaining. Earnest, bonkers, and weirdly moving, it's cinema's classiest shipwreck — the rare film where "going under" counts as a career high.