This film’s power is hard to describe to those who have not seen it. Unfolding at its own pace for nearly four hours, introducing us to a large cast of vividly-drawn characters, never wasting a moment, it’s as close as cinema can get to a great novel. An epic tale of teen angst, family and first love, it is often warm, funny, thrilling and intimate. But hanging over it is a sense of inevitable, impending doom, as events move towards…
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Bad Lucky Goat 2017
Today’s ‘Film of the Day’ on Mubi is a minor gem, a vibrant and offbeat account of several hours in the lives of two squabbling teen siblings as they desperately try to fix the problems caused by their accidental killing of a goat. It’s always a delight to discover a movie that focuses on such a unique and distinctive culture - the dialogue is in Providencia Creole, the first film shot in that dialect - and there is plenty of…
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R.M.N. 2022
There's a single scene, a town meeting in which the camera never moves but a range of characters engage in an increasingly heated debate, that raises this tense drama about xenophobia in a small Romanian town to a near-extraordinary level. It's among the more riveting sequences I recall in recent cinema. The rest, after a slow start, is thoroughly absorbing, often subtle but with bursts of melodrama and even one effective jump-scare. A strange ending that leaves some questions unanswered. Also, technically, my first Christmas movie of the year. Watched at Tyneside Cinema.
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The Little Mermaid 2023
Nearly an hour longer than the lovely '89 film - yep, an hour - this beached whale of a remake lies there gasping for breath, defying us not to accuse it of excess and bloat. Given the budget, it's depressing how ugly the photography is here, and how shoddy the CGI. Sebastian the crab, so indelible in the original film, is downright irritating here (so is the gannet, but she's portrayed by the screeching Awkwafina, so I expected nothing less)…
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Decision to Leave 2022
I really enjoyed Oldboy and The Handmaiden was an exquisite experience, but the other Park films which I have seen (admittedly not many) have left me cold. Decision to Leave I found largely uninvolving, despite good work by the two leads. Park bagged the directing prize at Cannes, and he certainly has an artful eye, with some notable visuals involving snow and sea. But other than a truly dizzying mountain sequence, this played for me as a totally generic, needlessly convoluted thriller, cold…
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Drive My Car 2021
It’s testament to this film’s enthralling power that, the first time I glanced at my watch during the screening, well over two hours had passed. Based on a Murakami short story - I haven’t read it, but some of the prose is unmistakably his - this is a rich and rewarding experience, superbly acted, epic in scope, deep in themes without being inaccessible. My attention wandered, briefly, in the last half hour or so but this is a major achievement.
