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 of mirrors finale – are still effective but you can probably get as much out of this movie by watching key clips on YouTube as you would watching the whole thing. It’s a bit stagnant here and there and often fizzles to the ground like a deflated balloon. Welles’ Irish accent irritates me too but, you know, he’s still one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived.
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 Mortensen’s remarkable supporting performance and you have a real firework of a movie. In fact, the world it tackles here is so rich that I have no doubt if Knight was producing it today it would be a prestige mini-series.
It certainly lacks the subversiveness of Cronenberg’s self-penned movies but as a commercial rendition of that sensibility it’s pretty great. I remember so many little details about this film, most of all the look of the blood. How dark, thick and syrupy it seems. Weird. Trust Cronenberg to make a movie where even the bodily fluids feel like a supporting character. Plus, even if the majority of the film was dogshit, the naked fight in the bathhouse would still bump it up to canonical. Legit one of the best sequences ever put on film. One word review: OUCH.
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 and indifferent. It severely lacks the physical crunch of the last few instalments and Statham’s promotion to BFF undoes a lot of Furious 7‘s groundwork. Then again his bromance with The Rock’s Hobbs is one of the film’s undeniable delights. Also, can Diesel and Johnson please kiss and make-up? Their lack of screen-time together and fudged chemistry here could be the virus that eventually tears this family-fuelled franchise apart. Let’s face it, nobody wants that.
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 language and conjuring the dialogue in my head, he has been the source of so much enjoyment and inspiration for me. Oleanna, even on the page, is one of his most provocative and thrilling plays and undoubtedly problematic. How many of those problems are by design is not for us to know but this unnecessary film adaptation, adapted and directed by Mamet himself, goes a long way to suck the life out of the whole thing. It is a painfully flat, boring and tedious experience that is well-performed but feels almost utterly lifeless. Two and a half stars out of courtesy for the source material which swam around my head for days.
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 determined to make his own mark in a very cluttered landscape.
Ritual is Keating’s first movie and, unsurprisingly, his crudest. Still, there’s a playfulness with the narrative and the tired horror tropes that is enough to keep you invested. I have no doubt Keating will eventually make a movie that is genuinely good and it will be because of these early films, produced in an apparent creative hurry, that he will learn from his mistakes and ultimately figure out his own voice and strengths.
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 nonsense that is among the most memorable artifacts I’ve ever come across. I wish I could buy a full-size poster of that DVD cover and pledge my allegiance to all-things Things by mounting it on my living room wall for all the world to see. Genuinely one of a kind.
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 for the most part it stands on its own feet. Jack Kilmer appears to have inherited his Dad’s magnetism as well as his looks and makes for quite an arresting young presence yet it is clearly Emma Roberts who steals the show here. Being that it’s adapted from a collection of short stories written by James Franco it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see him in the cast but it doesn’t feel like gratuity casting. His scenes with Roberts are some of the film’s best, and most uncomfortable. I also enjoyed this world. Watching millennials aimlessly drift around or crash into one another doesn’t sound like riveting cinema but the observations and soundtrack make it an engaging tapestry. Palo Alto feels rather minor compared to other Coppola joints but I’m excited to see whatever Gia comes up with next.
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 mining his own life for inspiration as well as his earliest, most abstract influences.
Tetro is something of a companion piece to Coppola’s earlier Rumble Fish (which the filmmaker frequently cites as a favourite of his own work) and, like that film, sees his passions beautifully rendered in black and white. It’s another story of two brothers (Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich), with Argentina providing the backdrop and the low-key theatre and art life as the subject. The film works best when it settles into a mood or a space. I think of the wide shots in the apartment or theatre spaces gorgeously captured in pin-sharp HD by DP Mihai Mălaimare Jr. (who would later shoot The Master). It is unashamedly poetic and quiet when need be and for the most part avoids the brash opera that defines Coppola’s most celebrated works. The film exudes a feeling and a mourning for something that isn’t dour or too heavy. It’s like the first light of morning, when everything is silent and a new day is being contemplated. Now I sound like a character in the film, but see: this is the effect it has on you. You begin to live this world.
Vincent Gallo is a strange actor and one I always struggle with. His persona is almost too big for the characters he plays and he generally just seems like a bit of a douche and yet this is a quality he shares with many other Coppola actors, making him perfect for the job. This might be my favourite performance I’ve seen of his and he embodies both a young Pacino and Matt Dillon (the original choice for the role) at times. I’d like to see the two of them work together again in the future as there is a chemistry here filled with potential. Also Ehrenreich is captivating as Gallo’s younger brother and just goes to show that Coppola lost none of his skill for spotting young talent in his older age. I’ve no doubt Tetro will experience something of a tiny resurgence of interest in light of Ehrenreich’s Han Solo outing and for a film so clearly culled from the inner-concerns and deep passions of its filmmaker, that will be a small victory.
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 high school days, it’s Kathleen Turner being zapped back to her youth in the 1960s. Coppola took on the project to get himself back in the studio’s favour after the box office hammering he took on The Cotton Club and therefore Peggy Sue showcases the famously bombastic filmmaker on his best behaviour. While the set-dressing and surface pleasures often blossom into something eye-catching, overall it feels a little bit “Movie of the Week” and is frustratingly placid.
The performances are good with Nicolas Cage being especially fascinating. I’m always taken aback by his early performances, it’s clear he was always painting with bold brush strokes and wanted to make his mark on his generation of actors. He always stands out in these movies to the point of being distracting and yet he is repeatedly the one thing I remember from them. It would all culminate in Moonstruck of course but to see him here, embracing wigs, prosthetics and the truly transformative potential of screen acting, and you can see the seeds planted for the batshit choices he would make later in his career.
This is a well-made and efficient movie with Coppola casually hitting mainstream story beats as if on auto-pilot. It’s one of his most pedestrian achievements; light, fluffy yet absolutely forgettable. Still, it did the trick and gave the filmmaker his biggest box office success since Apocalypse Now. The baby boomers ate it up.
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 de-roboing to plant some dolls at the bottom of a swamp only to discover a rotting corpse in said swamp and then getting (SPOILER ALERT) decapitated by an axe-wielding murderer upon resurfacing is an excellent bait and switch. While certainly rudimentary, Coppola: The Great Screenwriter is definitely coming into focus here. One of those delicious low-budget spook shows that would play great as background imagery at a Halloween party.
"This Film Should Be Played Loud" 