Film Reviews by griggs

Somehow I dodged the modern remake(s), so this was my first proper dance with the story — and I honestly wasn’t ready for how bruised it feels. George Cukor’s 1954 version isn’t a simple “kid makes good” ride. It’s weirdly absorbed by the long tail of failure. Fame isn’t a fairy light here; it’s a spotlight that gets hotter the longer you stand in it.

Judy Garland is the whole show. She’s funny, sharp, and vulnerable without ever leaning on “fragile” as a shortcut. You can see Esther learning how to perform being a star as much as singing like one — and how much control she gives up along the way. The industry literally renames her as Vicki Lester, and it doesn’t feel like a choice so much as a decision made for her: her image, her name, her “package”, all nudged into place by a boardroom vibe of respectable, suits-on, white middle-class men deciding what will sell. The musical numbers aren’t just there to show off; they’re doing story work — big, glossy set-pieces where the applause starts to sound like pressure. Cukor shoots it all with clean, confident staging, so you always clock who’s watching and what each moment costs.

James Mason is the necessary shadow. He’s charming in that old-Hollywood way, but there’s panic underneath — a man watching his own legend slip away. His decline is messy and public, and the film doesn’t flinch from how the industry manages the narrative, then moves on.

It’s also kind of maddening that the studio cut it down after its initial release, and later restorations had to patch missing sections back in with sepia coloured stills. You can feel the seams, and it’s hard not to mourn what isn’t there. It runs long and sags in places, but when it hits, it really hits — glamorous tragedy with a proper sting.

The first thing that grabbed me was the colour. Kurosawa’s first film in colour doesn’t just use it — he paints with it, turning a shantytown on a rubbish dump into something oddly storybook. Even the title is part of the game: “dodes’ka-den” is an invented tram-rattle, and the boy “drives” his imaginary streetcar like he’s got a timetable to keep.

What surprised me is how Kurosawa shoots him — with the confidence and clarity you often get in a Western. He’s a figure moving through a territory, and the world seems arranged around his path. The film leans into mythmaking rather than realism — Toru Takemitsu’s score helps, and so does the way Kurosawa places people like figures in a tableau.

It’s an oddity: loose and overstuffed, funny until it suddenly isn’t, with one late tonal lurch that’s pure whiplash. Knowing its box-office failure fed into Kurosawa’s 1971 attempted suicide adds a shadow, but the film keeps finding beauty where most of us look away.

Some films about Hollywood are basically love letters. This one is more like a thank-you note written on the back of a knife. It’s glossy and fun to watch, but there’s real venom underneath — ambition, ego, and charm with strings attached.

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, The Bad and the Beautiful unfolds through three people looking back on producer Jonathan Shields: the man who gave them their big break, then took what he wanted in return. Kirk Douglas is fantastic here — magnetic, ruthless, and always a beat ahead. You keep waiting for someone to finally shut him down, and then he smiles and the room changes temperature.

What I enjoyed most is how cleanly it shows the deal: credit traded for loyalty, success bought with compromise, affection tangled up with leverage. The betrayals don’t feel like plot twists so much as the cost of doing business. It’s cruel, sharp, and oddly addictive — the kind of Hollywood story that makes you laugh, then check your pulse.

I expected the sequel to go bigger, louder, and dumber. It does go bigger, but it's also basically a romantic drama with webbing — feelings first, physics second. The love story is pushed right to the front, with Peter and MJ stuck in that loop of doubts, missed timing, and "just talk to each other" misery.

Sam Raimi, though, is clearly having more fun. The direction has extra swagger, like he's realised he can lean into his own weirdness. The darker, nastier flourishes that feel borrowed from his horror roots, and when the film lets him get gnarly, it perks up.

Time hasn't been kind to some of the CGI. The stuff that was once awards-season celebrated now has that early-2000s rubbery sheen. And the emotional spirals repeat too often Still, there's a likeable sincerity to it, and Raimi's confidence keeps it rolling — even when it's not quite sticking the landing.

I was more intrigued than anything — I’d heard the legend, seen the visuals, and wanted to know what the fuss was about. Delicatessen delivers a crumbling apartment block, a butcher with a sideline, and a constant thrum of hunger — grubby, clever, and oddly cosy for something this morbid.

When it keeps things small and strange, it’s properly fun. The physical comedy is terrific, the timing is razor-sharp, and there’s that brilliant sequence where the whole house falls into rhythm, like everyone’s living inside the same squeaky joke. The craft is undeniable, and you can see why it earned its cult status.

But after a while I found myself admiring it more than feeling it. The whimsy-and-rot vibe starts repeating itself, and the satire doesn’t always bite as hard as it sets up. Still, even when it’s not fully clicking, it’s hard not to respect how confidently it builds its peculiar little world.

Before this, my Miyazaki batting average was mixed. I adore My Neighbour Totoro, but a few others left me admiring from the sidelines. Castle in the Sky grabbed me early and didn’t let go.

It drops you into a world of mines, engines, and military swagger, then keeps upping the stakes without losing its sense of play. The action has real physical weight — falls, chases, fistfights, near-misses — and that stomach-flip vertigo you only get when the ground is basically optional.

What I loved most is the mix of wonder and menace. The air pirates bring chaotic charm, the kids stay stubbornly decent, and the film’s suspicion of power feels quietly pointed, especially once Muska starts treating Laputa like a trophy to be claimed and weaponised.

It’s not flawless — a few beats are a touch storybook — but the pace, scale, and heart are irresistible. This is the one that made Miyazaki click for me.

I’d always assumed Love and Death would be “classic Woody”: a fairly straight story, the Annie Hall/Manhattan kind of lane, just in fancy dress. Instead it’s a Russian-lit spoof in Napoleonic-era chaos mode — the plot slipping on banana skins while everyone keeps talking like they’ve read too much philosophy.

When it’s on form, it’s properly funny: brisk one-liners, daft digressions, duels and disasters that land with a satisfying thud. It does drift now and then, and a few jokes feel like they’ve been lobbed in because the film can, but the pace usually snaps it back into shape.

But the real reason it works for me is Diane Keaton. Every time she’s back on screen, the film gets a jolt of electricity — sharp, loose, and completely in command. She does big physical comedy without turning into a cartoon, and the early seduction bit with the rented piano is pure timing and nerve. It’s his film on paper — in practice, she’s the one you follow.

I went in expecting to be absolutely flattened, mainly because this one owned awards season — 7 Oscar nominations and 4 wins, including Best Picture and Best Director. Instead, I found it solid, sometimes really moving, and a bit too aware of how Important it’s meant to feel.

The best thing in it is Clint Eastwood as Frankie. He’s genuinely brilliant — all tired pride and feelings shoved down where they don’t belong — and he even snagged an Oscar nomination for acting. It’s easily my favourite performance of his long after the spaghetti-western swagger wore off.

What surprised me is that the direction, despite winning him Best Director, often feels very straightforward. For a second I thought, “Maybe writer Paul Haggis could’ve directed it and added some extra zip”… and then I remembered Crash exists, and I withdrew the suggestion.

Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman did win acting Oscars for these roles, but for me neither performance quite screams “Oscar winner” on its own. If they play as well as they do here, I suspect Eastwood’s steady hand deserves a big chunk of the credit. Either way, he’s the one I’d have handed the statue to.

I was at school when the BBC showed John’s Not Mad, and the next day the playground was suddenly full of kids “with Tourette’s” — mainly because it sounded like a free swear pass. So I wasn’t exactly excited for I Swear. I expected a nice-but-soggy tearjerker.

But Kirk Jones’ 2025 biopic is better than that. It keeps things grounded and lets the awkward stuff sit there: the staring, the misunderstandings, the way it creeps into family life. It does press the “you should be moved now” button once or twice, but it avoids turning into a syrupy lecture.

The acting is what sold me. Robert Aramayo gives John proper bite as well as vulnerability, and Maxine Peake is great — warm, tough, and believable without being turned into a saint. It’s not perfect, but it’s genuinely affecting, and it earns that the hard way.

Setsuko Hara on my Japanuary watchlist is a guarantee I’m going to pay attention. Repast delivers: Naruse makes ordinary life feel quietly brutal, like you’re watching someone get worn down one small compromise at a time — and then realising it’s been happening for years.

After When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Yearning, it’s the same fury, just moved indoors. In Osaka, Hara’s Michiyo keeps the house running — shopping, cooking, tidying, smoothing moods — while her husband Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) drifts through life with that effortless entitlement that’s hard to argue with because it’s never announced. He’s not a villain; he’s worse, in a way: he’s just comfortable. The “money headaches” aren’t dramatic either. They’re small, thoughtless choices that Michiyo ends up paying for, emotionally and practically.

The arrival of Satoko, Hatsunosuke’s niece is the pressure point. She doesn’t just add chaos — she changes the temperature. Youth, possibility, a different rhythm of life… and suddenly Michiyo can see her own routine from the outside. The title starts to sting too. Meals aren’t just meals here; they’re repetition made visible. Who eats, who serves, who gets thanked, who gets taken for granted. Naruse turns cooking and clearing away into a quiet accounting system.

His restraint is the weapon: tight rooms, doorways that feel like boundaries, chores that repeat until they become a kind of sentence. What finally pushes Michiyo isn’t one big betrayal, but the slow accumulation of loneliness and being treated like the household’s invisible infrastructure.

Then the ending arrives and gestures at a kind of mental or spiritual reset — beautifully filmed, almost serene — but it’s a slightly odd fit with everything we’ve lived through. Screenwriter Sumie Tanaka wanted divorce; the studio wanted “happy”. You can feel the compromise, like peace that’s been carefully arranged rather than earned. I finished it quietly rattled, in the way only a “small” film can manage.

It’s one of those days where the phone won’t stop ringing and your flat starts feeling like a loading bay for other people’s bad decisions. Madrid becomes a brightly coloured panic room: doors slam, secrets leak, and everyone arrives two minutes too late with the worst possible news.

The mad thing is it’s only 89 minutes, yet it crams in more plot than films twice its length — and it still never feels cluttered. It just shoots by, juggling all these threads with this slightly intoxicating “how on earth is this going to collide?” momentum. Some of it’s gloriously contrived, sure, but that’s half the fun: you lean in and watch Almodóvar pull the strings without tangling them.

Carmen Maura is the towering centre of it all — frazzled, funny, and weirdly moving when the noise drops for a beat. Even the gazpacho is pulling its weight as a comic weapon of mass sedation. By the time the outrageous chase kicks off, I was grinning like an idiot.

Two men stuck in a cell, one soothing himself with retellings of old films, the other refusing anything that smells like comfort — and it somehow becomes a tender, bruised look at male intimacy. Talk is the lifeline.

When it keeps things tight between the two of them, Kiss of the Spider-Woman really works. The chats have that late-night, can’t-sleep honesty, and both leads are terrific — warmth and mistrust trading places line by line.

In the late stretch, the film starts widening out, and the spell weakens. It gets more explanatory, less lived-in, and what felt private begins to feel staged. Still, as a two-hander about connection under pressure, it hits more than it misses.

There’s a particular kind of dread that doesn’t need ghosts: the quiet panic of a paycheque vanishing, and the daily commute performed out of habit. Tokyo Sonata finds Kiyoshi Kurosawa swapping Cure/ Pulse chills for the more familiar horror of status and shame.

A salaryman loses his job and can’t say it out loud, so he keeps leaving the house like nothing’s changed. Teruyuki Kagawa plays Ryuhei as a man handcuffed to pride, while Kyoko Koizumi’s Megumi tries to keep the family upright on instinct and fatigue. The sons split too: one lunges for a grand escape, the other for a quieter exit.

The film is darkly funny in a way that stings — watching routine turn into theatre, and dignity into a costume you can’t take off. Midway, Kurosawa steers into a sudden, unsettling detour that makes the social rules look faintly ridiculous.

It slightly loosens its grip when it follows every thread, but the final piano passage lands with surprising clarity. Human, sharp, and quietly bruising — a family resetting in real time.

For years I treated superheroes like football teams: you picked Superman or Spider-Man and stuck with it. The old animated Spidey shorts never stood a chance against Christopher Reeve, and I happily kept my distance until Into the Spider-Verse softened me up.

So I finally tackled Raimi’s Spider-Man, still half-expecting noisy myth-making and not much else. Instead: balance. The origin stuff is sketched with surprising care, then the action drops in at just the right moments, like punctuation rather than filler. It’s got heart, proper laughs, and stakes that feel human-sized even when the buildings aren’t.

Best of all, it’s blissfully unencumbered — no homework, no winks to twelve other films, no franchise admin. Just a smart script, a great cast, effects that still sing, and a tone that knows when to be sincere. Watching it 24 years late, I’m mildly annoyed to admit it: this is the gold standard most capes still haven’t caught.

I should’ve loved this. Peter Sellers drifting through a swanky Hollywood dinner party, turning small slip-ups into a slow, unstoppable social meltdown? That’s usually my kind of comedy. When it’s working, the film nails that cruel little rhythm of farce: everyone trying to stay polite while the room quietly catches fire.

But it’s built around brownface, and the accent is brutal. It doesn’t sit at the edges as a bad joke you can ignore; it’s the main ingredient. So every time the film starts to find its groove, you get yanked back into discomfort, and the laughs curdle.

That leaves The Party in an awkward middle ground. I can see the craft — the timing, the physical business, the way scenes escalate cleanly — and I can also feel it becoming harder to enjoy by the minute. If you’re curious, treat it like a historical artefact with a few good gags, not a cosy crowd-pleaser.