Christopher Machell
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DVD Review: Cover Girl
★★★☆☆ “Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.” Rita Hayworth’s pithy observation on the consequences of her most famous part could just as easily have been applied to her role in the 1944 musical Cover Girl. Hayworth is Rusty, a talented performer in a small-time dance routine, directed by her…
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DVD Review: Varieté
★★★★☆ Part romance-revenge story, part cautionary fable, E.A. Dupont’s Varieté is a sophisticated melodrama with a unique setting and gorgeous imagery courtesy of Karl Freund, master cinematographer of Metropolis and Dracula. Newly released as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series, the title is largely up to Eureka’s high standards. Three distinctive musical scores are…
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DVD Review: Metropolis
★★★☆☆ Japanese director Rintaro’s anime feature Metropolis, adapted from Osamu Tezuka’s 1949 manga, is a spectacular if tonally incongruous reworking of Fritz Lang’s 1927 original, with Rintaro’s Metropolis taking its cue from the Lang’s visuals and political and philosophical themes while distilling elements of the original’s plot and characters into something quite new. The most…
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Criterion Review: His Girl Friday
★★★★★ In arguably his best screen performance, Cary Grant heads the terrific His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks’ classic 1940 comedy about fast-talking journalist Walter Burns (Grant) and his morally circumspect schemes to win back his ex-wife Hildy (Rosalind Russell). As well as Walter’s better half, Hildy was also once one of the best journalists at…
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DVD Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
★★★★★ Robert Wiene’s expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most important films of the post-First World War era and has lost none of its strange and unsettling power in the near century since its 1920 release. Most noted for its abstract, angular set designs influenced by German expressionism, Caligari is…
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Criterion Review: Black Orpheus
★★★★☆ Orpheus, the master musician who could charm all living things with his lyre, is the subject of Marcel Camus’ sumptuous 1959 Black Orpheus, a retelling of the Greek myth that situates the story during the Rio de Janeiro Carnival in Brazil. Breno Mello plays the eponymous Orfeu, here rendered as a tram driver with…
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DVD Review: Assault on Precinct 13
★★★★★ The siege as a narrative device runs throughout John Carpenter’s work, but nowhere is it as raw and unvarnished as Assault on Precinct 13. The premise is exquisitely simple: the inhabitants of a Los Angeles police station must survive the night under siege from rampaging gangbangers whose only goal is to murder everyone inside.…
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Feature: Does Rogue One work as a standalone?
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Reportedly earning over $220 million in its first week, Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has garnered widespread praise from critics and audiences, arguably putting to bed any lingering doubts over the rejuvenation of the Star Wars franchise. Nevertheless, Rogue One…
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Film Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
★★★★★ Beleaguered prequels aside, there’s something about the Star Wars films that brings out the best in their directors: Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand and J.J. Abrams all produced career-best work with their instalments of the franchise. Now comes Gareth Edwards with Rogue One, the hitherto untold story of the rebels who stole the plans for…
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DVD Review: The Man from Laramie
★★★★☆ When director Anthony Mann cast James Stewart, star of cuddly classics It’s A Wonderful Life and Harvey, he saw a darkness underneath his lead’s fatherly screen persona, and it’s this darkness that drives Mann’s 1955 feature The Man From Laramie, a psychological western as concerned with the destructive forces of revenge, privilege and resentment…