Film Reviews by Alphaville

Together or apart, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin were fascinating people and cultural icons. Named after their notorious hit single, this unbelievable and typically outrageous 1976 film he made of her – a waitress falling for a homosexual garbage man – is little more than an excuse to show her naked. Ironically, the fact that it pushes boundaries while being at the same time amateurishly bad makes it fascinating to watch, so two stars for sheer effrontery.

After a static opening with Florence Pugh emoting in close-up on the phone for ages, it remains a stagey talkfest until the main characters move to Sweden after a long half-hour. At least we have some sunny outdoor scenes now, but it remains soooo slow. The plot, minimal though it is, gets sillier and sillier until it turns into The Wicker Man. If you liked that similarly over-rated film, you might find something to keep you awake here, otherwise don’t waste your time.

Hard to believe this sort of propaganda film is still being made in the 2020s. Even if you’re on the Chinese side, surely it must seem ridiculous. The snowy battle scenes are lavishly filmed by acclaimed director Tsui Hark, but the heroic Chinese soldiers are hammy cardboard cut-outs and the wooden American soldiers, obviously poorly directed, are a joke. There’s plenty of repetitive explosive action, but have pyrotechnics ever been so boring?

So over-stylised and irritating it’s impossible to watch. Visuals, dialogue, acting… unreal characters droning boring speeches to camera… nothing of interest happening… Couldn’t last more than fifteen minutes before hitting FF. How can anyone give this boring Emperor’s Clothes of a film five stars? One star for the Spanish set’s nice colours.

Terrific balletic wirework fight scenes with a supercool heroine, an intense floppy-haired baddie and a nerdy hero. Shame about the hero, who is hammy and off-putting. This makes the overlong between-action scenes boring, even childishly knockabout to begin with, but the character does evolve. In any case it’s the fight scenes that make the film worth the price of admission. Beautifully choreographed and directed, the climactic rumble lasts a whole 20 minutes.

They’re excavating in arctic Finland and strange things are happening. Who or what has slaughtered a whole reindeer herd? Who or what has stolen all the radiators from the village? Could it be a monstrous evil Santa Claus? Such is the novel premise for this early oddball film from writer/director Jalmari Helander (of Sisu fame). Filmed mostly from a child’s POV, it doesn’t really take off until halfway through its meagre 80min run time, but it’s worth sticking with. It gets even wackier as it progresses and the climax features some magical scenes in the snow.

Heroic warm-hearted Slovenians v evil Nazis bawling orders. This is like one of those old Russian films lionising Stalin. For its 75-minute length our hero partisans suffer in snowy woods and swap intermittent gunfire with the enemy while the commanding officer tells us in voiceover what’s going on and how he feels. It’s a travesty of a film that does disservice to the real events and people on which it’s based. At the end some of the real-life surviving protagonists appear to tell us how they really feel and that’s the only true, moving, poignant section of the whole film.

Superb and fascinating thriller with an evil master ‘hypnotic’ who can make anyone do or see anything. What if even the landscape isn’t what it seems? How does our hero cop Ben Affleck fight that? Can even the viewer believe what they’re watching unfold on screen? Poor reviews of this film seem to focus on the ridiculous premiss, but that didn’t hinder superhero films, The Terminator, John Wicke etc. Actor Robert Rodriguez’ first film as writer and director is an unexpected masterclass in plotting and pacing. No subplots, no schmalz, no time-fillers. From the very first scene, this is lean, mean film-making and it fairly rattles along, full of surprise action scenes and mind-boggling plot revelations. Sure, it’s all extremely silly, but you won’t be bored for a second. How many films can you say that about these days?

Nothing more than a hopelessly amateurish student project. Filmed in washed-out colour, it’s over-directed, over-acted and devoid of character or plot. The supposedly supernatural powers of the main high-school cardboard cutout are shown by nothing more than a few brief scenes of him twisting in the air. Lots of horrible gurning close-ups make you want to look away. The trailer is full of flash-bangs to entice the unwary, but you have been warned. This is probably the ugliest film you’ll ever see.

Typical OTT Sion Sono extravaganza. This one’s a hip-hop musical with rapping gangsters and troubling sexual violence, shot with a restless camera in streets that look like a colourful fairground. The visuals, as usual, are stunning, but as a viewing experience it’s more of an elongated and uninteresting rap video than an absorbing drama. You might want to skip to the climax, which fills the whole last quarter of the 2hr run-time. It’s a stylised no-holds-barred rumble involving all the players, brutal yet playful at the same time. Only Sion Sono…

Visually striking action movie set in the atmospheric landscapes of Lapland, where an indestructible Finnish ex-commando (eat your heart out, John Wicke) sets about despatching evil English-speaking Nazis. As long as you can stomach spurting blood and flying limbs, this is black-humour OTT action with little dialogue, plot or even pacing to get in the way. Sure, the English-speaking Nazis are pantomime villains and there’s no way our hero would survive some of the scrapes he gets into. Go with it. Director Jalmari Helender does wonders with his budget and you never feel short-changed by the visual effects. Perhaps it’s only a 3-star film, but it deserves an extra star for ambition. The DVD has a couple of interesting features about the shoot and the effects, during which the director promises never to make a film with two people arguing in a room. Right on. British film industry please take note.

Hats off if you make it to the end of this load of over-praised arthouse baloney. Well done if you even make it through the pre-credits sequence without zapping. An old woman strikes poses, stamps her feet and flails her arms in the Chihuahua desert. In Spain it’s called dancing. Some similarly unimpressed bloke arrives and shoots her. If only it was meant to be funny. As for the rest of the film… Sullen cardboard characters move from one longueur to another interrupted by prancing around various floor spaces. And what makes it even worse is the incessant heavenly choir score. Where’s that bloke from the pre-titles sequence when you need him? To see how to film flamenco, watch Caros Saura’s exciting 1981 film Blood Wedding.

Take a social-realist feminist trope – downtrodden wife – and have her become obsessed with sex. Yes, it’s a Sion Sono film as only he can make them. Given the subject matter, even the title is provocative. Expect gratuitous nudity, outrageous sex scenes, gruesome exploitation… Don’t watch this one with your granny. Take the opening scenes. A woman’s body is found (yes, it’s also a Kafkaesque murder mystery), but the head and legs belong to a mannequin. Cut from a much longer film to a mere 144 minutes for the international market, this won’t be for all tastes. Some may find it depraved. It’s not always easy to watch and contains too many repetitive sex scenes, which slows the pacing. Not one of Sono’s best, but his films are never less than startling, which you can’t say of many films these days.

Hard to know what to make of this big-budget comic fantasy. In a world of wizards and monsters there’s no rhyme or reason to any of the plot or the characters. Our quartet of heroes and heroines have to break into a vault protected by the Arcane Seal of Mordenkainen using the Helm of Disjunction etc. Yeah, right. At first the humour lands flat, as though everyone is trying too hard too make the whole thing work. But stick with it and eventuality all the insanity may well bludgeon you into submission until its inventiveness and throwaway comedy begins to get to you. Or am I just losing it?

Picking up where Chapter 3 left off, newcomers may find the plot confusing. Who cares? The plot is nonsense and irrelevant anyway. It’s overlong and a slow starter, but when it gets going it delivers. The one drawback is that, with Donny Yen joining Keanu for the ride, they’ve made him blind and their fight early in the film is a damp squib. The film really hits paydirt in its second half when the action moves to Paris. The fight in an over-crowded nightclub, complete with waterwall and electronic dance music is a beautiful visual spectacle worth watching more than once. That’s followed by mayhem around the Arc de Triomphe in crowded traffic and a Serge Leone Italian western tribute at the Sacre Coeur. All beautifully shot. More, please.