Christopher Machell
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Criterion Review: A Brighter Summer Day
★★★★☆ Unreleased in the West since its 1991 release, Edward Yang’s historical epic A Brighter Summer Day is finally available through the Criterion Collection. This gorgeous, stately and moving landmark in Taiwanese filmmaking has undoubtedly been worth the wait.Firmly rooted in the political context of its 1961 Taiwan setting, and at an uncompromising 4-hour running…
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DVD Review: Long Shot
★★★★☆ Maurice Hatton’s 1978 film Long Shot is independent cinema at its most charming. As aspiring film producer Charlie (Charles Gormley) hawks his screenplay in Edinburgh, the film’s meandering, shaggy-dog plot does little to harm its overall warmth, wit and Lothian vibe.Littered with cameos from a host of cinematic luminaries, including a great turn from…
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Film Review: Stockholm, My Love
★★★★☆ Documentarian Mark Cousins makes the move to fiction with Stockholm, My Love, also marking singer Neneh Cherry’s feature debut in a melancholy turn peppered with naturalistic renditions of her own music. The result is an uplifting love letter to the Swedish capital.Cherry fully inhabits her role as Alva, an architect skipping work on the…
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Criterion Review: The Fisher King
★★★★☆ Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is at the top of his game. A shock-jock radio host specialising as a kind of anti-Frasier Crane, he encourages listeners to call in with their problems before humiliating them with insults and the music of Ray Charles.Living in a sterile Manhattan apartment and repulsively self-satisfied, it’s all going so…
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Film Review: Der Müde Tod
★★★★☆ The English title of Fritz Lang’s 1921 Der Müde Tod, or Destiny, may well be snappier, but the literal translation – The Weary Death – is surely the more poignant. Overshadowed by the director’s finest work, Der Müde Tod is minor Lang, but deserving of this restoration.Der Müde Tod opens with a strange man…
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Criterion Review: Diabolique
★★★★★ “Don’t be devils! Don’t ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don’t tell them what you saw. Thank you, for them.” So close the end credits of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 Diabolique, hailed as the first film designed around a true climactic twist.Christina Delassalle (Vera Clouzot) is the rich owner of a…
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Film Review: Wonder Woman
★★★☆☆ After three Supermen, five Batmen and fifteen MCU films with more stars called Chris than women in the lead, the undisputed Queen of Superheroes is at last given her own film. Patty Jenkins has also done what others couldn’t and delivered a good DC film.Wonder Woman is not a great film, nor is it…
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Film Review: War Machine
★★★☆☆ Satire comes in two modes: Juvenalian – harsh, critical and in service of a serious point – and Horatian – light, humorous and affectionate. In attempting to do both, David Michôd’s War Machine doesn’t quite succeed at either, never fully gelling into the absurdist War on Terror satire to which it aspires.Brad Pitt plays…
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Film Review: Detour
★★★☆☆ Detour is not exactly a remake of the 1945 film noir of the same name, but in making explicit reference to that film more than once, certainly owes it a debt of gratitude. Indeed, Christopher Smith’s teen neo-noir – think Brick in Vegas – is nothing if not a stylish and often gripping homage.High-school…
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DVD Review: Mulholland Drive
★★★★★ Originally conceived as a TV series à la Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive is David Lynch at his most Lynchian: baffling, disturbing and cinematic. Set in a surrealist Hollywood, the plot follows Betty (Naomi Watts) as she arrives in LA to embark on a career as an actress.No simple rags-to-riches tale of ingenues and showbiz…