Film Reviews by MN

but I couldn't finish this one. I wanted to check it out for myself despite the bad reviews but I found that I agreed with the majority of criticisms. The script and performances (particularly by the lead actor) are absolutely woeful, and the sex scenes themselves feel very disconnected and odd. It's very similar to Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs and fails in all of the same ways, but at least it had the distraction of a good bit of music now and then!

I remembered loving this film as a teen so decided to revisit some 15 years later and was surprised to find it to be quite poor. Sissy Spacek does quite well but almost all the other performances are ridiculously OTT, and none more so than Piper Laurie's religious fanatic mother who could have been dialled down by at least 50 percent. Brian De Palma's direction gives the film the feel of a 70s soft porn flick. A classic final scene of course but otherwise very silly and disappointing!

I came to this film after being mightily impressed by the director's debut Neighbouring Sounds and was excited to see where he'd go next. This film covers some similar ground but I found it less successful on the whole.

The film is a character study of a woman who obstinately refuses to leave her housing complex when developers have bought out the rest of the building to make way for an urban regeneration project. The lead actress' performance is mostly incredible and worth the price of admission alone, but the director does occasionally give her the freedom to go way over the top. Without spoiling anything, there is one metaphor hanging over the whole film which becomes far too laboured and kind of spoils the film somewhat. It starts slow, and at 146 minutes I feel it easily could have done with some trimming in the first half.

Still, it's an interesting piece and worth a watch, just lacking the subtlety of his debut.

I really enjoyed this but I'd say that I didn't expect it to be so horrifying, but then I have a deep-seated fear of things from the sea probably thanks to reading too much Lovecraft. If you saw Hadzihalilovic's last film Innocence (2004) then you'd have known what to expect - very short on narrative and character development but rich in allegory and symbolism. It's relatively short and that's probably in its favour. This type of art cinema is in short supply in this day and age so I'm glad this is out there.

I watched this because Koji Yakusho is one of my favourite actors but didn't really know what to expect. It turned out to be a delightful and at times laugh-out-loud comedy - very low-key, the kind of thing I'd probably watch of a sunday afternoon. It does go on a little bit too long and loses its way a touch in the final act but much of what is here is really heartwarmingly funny, and I usually run a mile from things like that, but this one is subtle and quietly observed.

I have to admit I don't much enjoy modern american horror so this was always going to be a gamble for me, but the premise sounded interesting enough for me to check out. It started well with a suitable slow, creeping dread but soon devolved into predictable jump scares and fairly well-worn horror cliches. Having tempted Brian Cox into the fold, I was hoping for more from the script - I winced seeing such an accomplished actor spouting pretty terrible horror movie dialogue.

I didn't get on with Clouds of Sils Maria but thought i'd give this a go. The film basically has two stories - maureen's life as a personal shopper for some kind of fashionista that we never hear much about, and maureen's other life as a self-styled medium trying to make contact with her deceased brother. Almost nothing is done to tie these two elements of the film together, and neither are explored in any depth. The dialogue is clumsy, there are a few instances of CGI ghosts which are laughably bad, Kristen Stewart's turn as the lead is never entirely convincing, and the less said about the final scene, the better.

On paper it sounded like my cup of tea - a slow burning, dreamy trek through a man's life and memories. I'm okay with a lack of conventional plot and I tend to prefer cinema which is more naturalistic, but I found so little to grasp onto here that I never got invested in it at all. I felt like there was something I was missing - some context or knowledge of Portuguese culture - that maybe would have helped. From the synopsis, it sounds like it features a character from a previous film (Colossal Youth), so maybe seeing that would have helped. By itself, I found it difficult to get anything out of unfortunately.

Without spoiling too much, I'd just say that the first 2/3rds of this film is an extremely creepy low-key horror film and at points I found it hard to keep watching because of the deeply insidious nature of it. If you know any of K. Kurosawa's work, you'll know he tends toward a more existential and slow-burning take on things and this is no different. There are no jump scares or action sequences, just a very unsettling atmosphere with a few terrifying moments.

That said, like many of his flims, it becomes completely ridiculous in its final third and that somewhat spoils it. Even so, I'd still rate this up there with the finest J-Horror films of its era.