Usually a kid being possessed by the spirit of his deranged, Holocaust-survivor grandma would be the main focus in a horror movie, but it's almost incidental - mostly just the first 15 minutes - in this borderline-tasteless, surprisingly disturbing little number. Yakin seems to have something like this as a starting point, a fairly cheesy kids-in-jeopardy set-up, but he adds so many twisted asides - stray anti-semitism, kinky sensuality, veiled gender dysphoria, not to mention Nazi flashbacks to the Jewish…

Lots of cool ideas but the 'COOL IDEA' stamp is too visible, like new clothes with the price-tags still attached; they're a bit inorganic. Thought, e.g., that the early montage of a house standing tall through the seasons might be an image of unchanging essence - clear definition being precisely what gets lost on a "white, white day", a theme that recurs in the very next scene when the shrink asks our hero to define himself - but apparently there's…

Held me spellbound for three hours, if nothing else (extended cut, fwiw). 25th HOUR-ish - New York movie, moral drama about Doing the Right Thing, symphonic score over jagged rhythms - also Desplechin-ish for the sweep and scale, but more ambitious than either: an epic of human disconnection, based around the fact that language is such an imperfect way of trying to connect - emotion is easier, but we lose it as we grow older ("It is Margaret you mourn…

File with James L. Brooks' How Do You Know as a late-period rom-com that may seem inept because it dispenses with the usual pretence of realism (the magical setting helps, like it did, in a different way, in Almost Famous; maybe Crowe's peculiar sensibility needs the licence of an anything-goes milieu to really take flight). Myths and omens appear prominently. There's an emphasis on the touchy-feely - Danny McBride as Colonel "Fingers"; Bill Murray giving an impromptu massage - over…