It's a good move on the part of K Bran and screenwriter Michael Green to not go with another tentpole Christie adaptation but rather one of her lesser known and in fact, less well-regarded Poirot novels, Hallowe'en Party. And then to transplant the English country house mystery to a decaying palazzo in Venice. Much more than the CGI-fest that was Egypt in the 1930s for Death on the Nile, Venice just after WWII feels appropriately mysterious and a great setting…
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May December 2023
Oh Todd Haynes, you've done it again.
From the opening credits, you're instantly thrown back into an 80s made for TV melodrama movie, with a glaze on the camera lens to go with it. Then comes the strident score from Marcelo Zarvos but indebted to Michel Legrand's score from The Go-Between and you know Todd Haynes is playing with us, heightening everything without parodying. All that before you get Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and a revelatory Charles Melton playing within a script that is knowing without outright wink-wink. Will definitely see this again.
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Gallant Indies 2020
I've never seen a live opera performance as it's not really my thing, but for the production documented here by Philippe Béziat, I would make an immediate exception. The addition of contemporary dance in the form of krumping, voguing and flexing to the production brings it alive; this despite it being an 18th-century baroque opera which would hardly seem a match for dancing that is more commonly seen on the street. The culture divide between the dancers and the opera…
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El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie 2019
I only started watching Breaking Bad, the series, this year. Finished it today and went straight to this. Satisfying in a loose ends tying up kind of way. And Robert Forster, we didn't deserve your talent. All that's left now is static on the radio.
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What Keeps You Alive 2018
Imagine the most brainless characters and then make them more stupid, just for cheap thrills. To a certain extent, the filmmaker takes his audience to be just as brainless. On the plus side, it's nicely shot and definitely passes the Bechdel test. So there's that.
