It would seem to be a betrayal to discuss in any detail the plot of What Richard Did; specifically to explain what, exactly, Richard (Jack Reynor) did would do the film a disservice. It is sufficient to say this is a deeply-felt, emotionally-complex drama concerning Richard – handsome, charismatic teenage rugby star – and leave…
G.B.F. – “gay best friend” – is essentially a queer Mean Girls. Like that film, it exists in an exaggerated candy-coloured high school reality, our world emphatically underlined with a pink highlighter. It’s defined by rigid cliques spouting made-up slang, ruled over by picture-perfect teenage girls. The story centres on how a gay teenager’s inadvertent…
A truly excellent long movie is a wonderful thing. Some of my favourite films time stretch over more than three hours – Once Upon a Time in America, Lawrence of Arabia, Short Cuts – with the runtimes allowing for extensive character development (much like television). More significantly, long movies have the opportunity to create –…
The story of a 52 year old Chilean man, Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro), obsessed with Saturday Night Fever competing in a television show’s Tony Manero-lookalike competition seems perfectly pitched for a light-hearted comedy. A farce featuring oblivious characters trying their best, failing, but learning something important in the process. Tony Manero is not that film.…
Steven Spielberg’s telemovie debut, Duel wields its raw simplicity like a weapon. Often, it’s the brute force of a cudgel, as in the bestial roar emanating from the mysterious, menacing truck that looms in the rearview of David Mann (Dennis Weaver) – his surname a nod to the archetypal nature of the story. The truck…
A few minutes into Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley’s documentary about her family history, I decided I wasn’t going to like the movie. I have a natural disinclination towards documentaries built on recollections. Stylistically they’re built on talking heads, recreations and snippets of stock footage – a far cry from the cinematic creativity behind most…
It’s impossible to deny the iconic importance of James Whale’s Frankenstein. Its appearance is marked by the ornate artificiality, hand-built sets and classical special effects. The oft-parodied restoration of The Monster (Boris Karloff) has lost no potency, channelling the vitality of a theme park ride with its flashing lights, towering set and rickety rollercoaster cart…
Me, Myself and Mum is a remarkable, touching, one-of-a-kind picture. Based on director/writer/star Guillaume Gallienne’s stage show, it’s like a long-winded yet enthralling party anecdote, where the storyteller’s first priority is entertaining his audience with ribald jokes and quirky asides. This is a riotously funny film, and therein lies much of its appeal. Gallienne plays…
They Live is a hodge-podge of sci-fi satire, B-movie maximalism and cheesy humour that spends half its time succeeding on its own merits, and the other half venturing into so-bad-it’s-good territory. The film’s highlights are of a piece with director John Carpenter’s great horror films (Halloween, The Thing), as Nada (Roddy Piper) stumbles onto the…
A Girl Cut in Two is my first film from French New Wave director Claude Chabrol, and I certainly hope it’s not a representative first impression as it puts me in no hurry to investigate his other films. This romance-drama-thriller ambles through its pedestrian plotline without any sense of purpose; we cross-fade from scene to…
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