Category: Movie

Movie

Shiva Baby (2020)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 95 minutes
Synopsis: Impressive psychological dramedy about young adulthood
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: fascinating, often funny, great direction
What I don’t like about it: can be unpleasant, slow to build

Review:
A young Jewish woman caters a shiva with three unwelcome guests – her sugar daddy, her successful ex and a crying baby. Debuting writer-director Emma Seligman is a genius and the baby is used to incredible effect, their crying punctuating heavy moments for the lead character, and my favourite directing touch in this is how the baby isn’t shown and it becomes noticeable that the main character is avoiding looking at them, until she does and we get a radiant two-second insert of the little darling before she has a complete meltdown. Amazingly well-made.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): a baby screams most of the way through the movie, sex work, eating disorder

Holiday (1938)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 95 minutes
Synopsis: Charming classic romcom
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: fast-paced ‘screwball’ dialogue, that Grant/Hepburn chemistry
What I don’t like about it: it’s not much more than a transient Sunday afternoon movie

Review:
Cary Grant plays a free-wheeling young man who meets a snooty heiress and enters into a hasty engagement. She is captivated by his charm but believes she can change him by getting him a job with daddy as an executive, a fate worse than death for fun-loving Grant. Luckily, the heiress has a sister, Katharine Hepburn, who likes him just the way he is.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

McQueen (2018)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: NowTV
Length: 105 minutes
Synopsis: Documentary on Alexander McQueen
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the shows, the fashions, well-made documentary
What I don’t like about it: a sad story

Review:
This documentary covers the short life and career of Lee Alexander McQueen. An outsider to the fashion industry with a gift for spectacle and improvisation, Lee climbed fast as the industry sought an xtreme edginess in the late 90s. Sadly, he accepted a job with Givenchy and destroyed himself with the pressure, developing a drug addiction and an eating disorder before ending his life in 2010. This portrait gives due weight to his designs and creativity while also delving into his life and working methods, all wrapped in an effortful elegance that he would probably be very proud of.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): suicide, abuse, drugs

Nope (2022)

Where to find it: Not streaming
Length: 130 minutes
Synopsis: Horse ranchers have a close encounter
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: genuinely spectacular, some great shots
What I don’t like about it: makes no sense, a puzzle with a dozen missing pieces, frightfully paced, dodgy plot, poor lighting, references to better movies

Review:
See title.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, blood

Chocolate (2008)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: No UK streaming
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Muay Thai savant beats people up for an hour and a half
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: my #1 autism movie – silly, cool, fun
What I don’t like about it: probably a little offensive, the dub

Review:
This one has a slow start as we watch the forbidden romance of a Yakuza and a princess of the Thai underworld but this long diversion produces a child named Zen. Zen is autistic and spends most of her days eating Smarties and watching Ong-Bak over and over and over again, thus downloading kung fu like Neo in The Matrix. When her mother falls ill and requires money for treatment, Zen and her cousin set out to collect on mum’s many debts among Thai organised crime figures. Thrown at Zen are a gang of kathoeys and a final boss who, like herself, is autistic. Try to watch subtitled if you can because the autistic sounds are extra offensive in the dub.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, meltdowns, illness, sex (once at the start), injuries (real ones featured over the credits)

The Red Shoes (1948)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Britbox on Amazon
Length: 135 minutes
Synopsis: Beautiful ballet
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: gorgeous, serious, colourful
What I don’t like about it: long and pretentious

Review:
Featuring a thinly-veiled Ballets Russes, a Diaghilev-type takes full advantage of a young ballerina’s ambition, writing for her the ultimate prima role. Culminating in a 17-minute ballet that shows the conflicts between art and life and the demands put on dancers. It’s pretentious but it’s beautiful.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Love and Mercy (2014)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 2 hours
Synopsis: Biopic of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: well-acted and directed
What I don’t like about it: sometimes Hallmark-y, people either know the story or don’t really care

Review:
The lead role is played by two actors: Paul Dano plays Brian in the 60s and John Cusack in the 80s. The two narratives play out with relative ease, the first involving the recording of Pet Sounds and the failed recording of Smile, the second involving the tail-end of Brian’s involvement with Dr. Landy (played with villainous relish by noted ham Paul Giamatti) and the beginning of his relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks). Both lead actors are very good at playing autistic and scenes thoughtfully depict sensory pleasure and pain.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, psychiatric abuse

Keanu (2016)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Friends get into an adventure over an adorable kitten
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: hilarious, cute, better than it has to be, rewatchable
What I don’t like about it: nah it’s pretty great entertainment

Review:
One of my favourite comedies, this follows a stoner (Jordan Peele) who finds a kitten while grieving a breakup and ropes in his friend (Keegan-Michael Key), a mature straight-laced family man, when the kitten is stolen. The ensuing adventure leads them to pretend to be gangsters to wonderful comedic effect. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this movie.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, some violence, peril for the kitten but no harm

Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: No streaming
Length: 2 hours
Synopsis: A drag queen seeks love
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: Harvey Fierstein, dialogue
What I don’t like about it: it feels a bit long (the 4 hour play must be worse)

Review:
This play opens with a soliloquy about the lead’s longing to be coupled up, then shows us three of his main flirtations with love. Arnie Beckoff, Fierstein’s alter ego, works as a “female impersonator” in the parlance of the time and has various romantic and sexual misadventures, utilising his unique gift for face-contorting physical comedy. When he does find happiness, something gets in the way for him. Culminates in a wonderful rant at his mother and an eventual happy ending. Probably squarely in the ‘gay interest’ pigeonhole but worth a shot if you like talky plays.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): homophobia, assault, loss, guilty itself of some biphobia

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: All4 right now
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: The cast of Star Trek are mistaken by aliens for the characters they play
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: fun, good effects, better than it ever had to be
What I don’t like about it: honestly, nothing stands out – it’s just a fun ride

Review:
The movie opens on a sci-fi convention as we meet the cast of Galaxy Quest – Tim Allen as the brash captain and the actor who likes to believe he’s as daring as his character, Alan Rickman as a thespian disappointed by his typecasting as the alien sidekick, Sigourney Weaver as the useless token female (“My whole job on the show was repeating what the computer said!”), Sam Rockwell as the dispensable and forgotten red shirt – all taking wonderful advantage of their real-life parallels. Complications arise when aliens appear, led by a hilarious performance from Enrico Colantoni, to recruit the captain in their intergalactic war, having based most of their technology on old broadcasts of Galaxy Quest and believing only the crew of that show can save them.

The film leaves me impressed every time I watch it, not because it’s a great film really but because not a single aspect is phoned-in. The practical effects, costumes, acting, everything is lovingly considered and it adds up to the most fun you’ll have watching something Star Trek-related.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):