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Author Archives: Ross Birks
The Lady From Shanghai (1947)
Out of all of Welles’ celebrated movies Lady from Shanghai is probably the most dated. It’s not quite as good as its canonical reputation in film noir would lead you to believe. His broad brush strokes – chopping and dying Hayworth’s hair, that hall … Continue reading
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Eastern Promises (2007)
One of my favourite movies to revisit from a year stacked to the teeth with masterpieces. It’s the playful cruelty of Eastern Promises which makes it endlessly entertaining. Knight’s procedural screenplay and Cronenberg’s dissective direction compliment each other perfectly. Anchor onto that … Continue reading
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The Fate of the Furious (2017)
Probably the worst in the series since Fast & Furious but, as ever, the characters and the bloated ensemble manage to make it overwhelmingly entertaining. It’s also the first FF in a long time to feature action sequences that left me kind of numbed … Continue reading
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Oleanna (1994)
I’m a huge, huge David Mamet fan and yet I have never seen a single David Mamet play performed on stage. Aside from his films, all I have is his plays in book-form and just reading his words, studying the … Continue reading
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Ritual (2013)
Mickey Keating has made five horror movies in as many years and while none of them really amount to much beyond a respectable knowledge of genre history, language and tradition individually, as a whole they suggest a young, hungry filmmaker … Continue reading
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Things (1989)
I don’t even know how to describe this thing but I adore it deeply. Imagine Jared Hess directing August Underground and you’re on the right track. One of those bizarre transmissions from the ether that only cinema can deliver. An out-and-out experience of relentless … Continue reading
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Palo Alto (2013)
An extremely assured debut from Gia Coppola. It’s hard not to think of The Virgin Suicides with its skewed coming-of-age stylings and pastel colour scheme – it also exists in the kind of airy, dream-pop reality Sofia has continually perfected – but … Continue reading
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Tetro (2009)
Over the past ten years Francis Coppola has retreated into making increasingly personal and experimental films beginning with Youth Without Youth in 2007, continuing with Tetro and culminating (for now) in 2012’s Twixt. These films feel like open wounds. Semi-autobiographical and confessional, they find Coppola … Continue reading
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Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
Released barely a year after the similar Back to the Future, Francis Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married can’t help but feel like a rather pedestrian studio version of a potentially intriguing idea. Instead of Marty McFly going back to his Mum and Dad’s … Continue reading
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Dementia 13 (1963)
A groovy Corman/Coppola jam that plays better while squinting into the schlock to see seeds of that Coppola gold. There’s a lot of genuinely arresting imagery here, all gothic-tinged and rendered in spooky B&W. An extended sequence involving the heroine … Continue reading
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"This Film Should Be Played Loud" 