Letterboxd — Your life in film

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

A Cold War comedy of misunderstandings, Top Secret’s terrific humour offers a fascinating contemporary British look at the communist threat, its silly story of a sanitary engineer who becomes mistaken for an international spy brilliantly handled in Jack Davies and Michael Pertwee’s gag-stuffed script. Smartly satirical in one moment, happily hysterical the next, it’s a movie that blends its many comic registers just about to perfection. What’s better yet is how beautifully shot a film it is, rich with noirish inspiration and therein excellently equipped to add atmospheric shadow to its constant laughs. They, always effective, are primarily delivered by George Cole, whose farcical yet believable leading turn grounds the film in a protagonist both ridiculous and relatable. The sly similarities made throughout between the operations and intentions of the war’s opposing sides are surprisingly sharp, and make all the greater the shame that this hidden gem has had little rediscovery.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

In the case of Borat and Bruno, the films and characters that launched Sacha Baron Cohen to stardom on both sides of the Atlantic, the bulk of the comedy—such as it was—came from the audacity with which the vulgarity and crassness was staged, and the sheer awkwardness that arose from the reactions of the public to this transgressiveness. The Dictator, by contrast, scripted and shot traditionally without the benefit of mockumentary realism, is little more than the most egregiously childish “humour” desperately spouted with increasing insensitivity across the course of a running time that feels ten times longer than really it is. Aggressively crude, the witless film excuses its consistent racism only by its inflated American stereotypes, mistakenly thinking that being offensive to all is somehow akin to being offensive to none. That’s not the case, and The Dictator’s persistent bad taste is just senselessly stupid, crass crap masquerading as boundary-pushing bravado.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Teen angst is a tricky subject to handle in any medium: an earnest effort can just as easily wind up seeming to support the problems of privileged youth as genuinely tapping into existential dread. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You knows this well, and just about manages to stay on the right side of the line, though several missteps threaten to see it cross over. Following the fortune of the disaffected James, cut off from his divorced parents and sister alike, it’s a movie that always means well but never quite succeeds entirely. A tangential scene featuring Aubrey Plaza, though by far the funniest the film has to offer, only goes to show just how disjointed and tonally erratic a film it is, its inability to marry darker thematic elements with sillier moments of comedy by far its biggest issue. An excellent cast headed by the young Toby Regbo does much to iron out the major problems.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Honing in on five specific case studies, teasing the utmost frankness from the characters it finds, Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke’s wonderful documentary Out Late profiles the experience of those who exit the closet toward the end of their lives. Standing both as embodiments of the repressive climate of their cultures in which they were raised and the more accepting atmosphere of today, these people speak openly and beautifully about the challenges of coming to terms with who they are, and learning that there’s nothing more important in life than being comfortable in your own skin. Often joyous to watch, Out Late also manages more than once to enrage, particularly in a segment where the devoutly Catholic neighbour of a lesbian couple speaks of her friendship with the two and then suggests they may be going to hell. Though dogged with a lacklustre aesthetic and confined by its brisk running time to overview, Out Late is a stirring and very important film.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Like the shock of being suddenly submerged in an ocean of ice-cold water, Alaskan writer/director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s feature debut is a striking experience, announcing the burgeoning filmmaker as one of the most visually talented and promising we have. On the Ice is a gorgeous work of art, its snowy vistas the perfect backdrop for a narrative hinged on tough moral questions. Shot with a nonprofessional cast in the Iñupiaq town where the drama is set, this is a formidable first feature with a stunning soundtrack to match its astonishing visual composition. It’s the most devastating shame, then, to find MacLean’s cast ill-equipped to do justice to the complexity of this morality play, their inexperience more a distraction than it is a benefit. Even the best, most beautifully shot story can be undermined by botched line delivery; though its multitudinous positives remain, On the Ice falls far short of the greatness it deserves.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Another oh-so-English comedy from yesteryear, It’s Never Too Late explores the intricacies of 1950s family life with its story of a housewife turned novelist who finds herself whisked away to Hollywood to work on developing a film adaptation of her first book. Taking the archetypal family, restrictive gender roles and all, and cracking it wide open, the highly witty film sets itself up for some insightful social commentary before largely resolving everything in an underwhelming finale that does a slight disservice to the story’s erstwhile sense of progressiveness. It is, at least, marvellously funny throughout, the interactions between its colourful cast—stuffed with memorably wacky characters across four generations—and the wild antics into which they’re thrown making for no end of effective comic material. Phyllis Calvert’s performance in the lead role is perhaps the film’s strongest suit, as witty as any other and somehow so sadly involving too.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

One gets the sense immediately in watching It’s All Over Town that narrative is not the sort of thing with which its writers are familiar, nor indeed would they approve of it if ever introduced to the concept. A madcap musical that only barely manages to string together its wonderfully deranged numbers, it’s an insanely enjoyable time that could easily double its 55 minute running time with no complaints from the audience. Released in 1963, it somehow manages to still be a little shocking in its best moments, the sexually-charged moments it delights in delivering often very naughty indeed. Featuring appearances from a number of the major up and coming British pop acts of the time, it shuffles from set piece to set piece with little concern for anything more than getting the audience caught up in the deranged revelry of its song and dance, a task which it’s expertly equipped to complete.

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand"

Very much a comedy of manners, Isn’t Life Wonderful! takes square aim at the affected airs of upper class Britons around the turn of the (last) century, using its sharp satire on times gone by as a means by which to reflect the social structure of its own time, the 1950s. Delightfully witty in the most English way imaginable, it’s narrated directly to the audience by the young son of a stiff-upper-lipped aristocrat whose alcoholic brother tries to win the affection of a visiting American heiress. Predominantly genteel comedy makes highly enjoyable this slightly outdated film, which nonetheless manages to entertain a modern audience with the sheer seduction of its strong wit. Primarily channelled through the laughably stereotypical Cecil Parker, the comedy makes a magnificent mockery of English entitlement, but never without the sharpest of smiles.