Film Reviews by griggs

Your Name. is visually stunning and impressively imaginative — a story that springs from a worldview untouched by adult cynicism. It understands its teenage protagonists in ways most Western films don't and moves freely through time, space, and memory without hesitation. But despite all that, it left me cold. The emotional sincerity felt cloying, and I struggled to connect. It's not for me — though I admire what it achieves visually.

The 4th Man is Verhoeven's last Dutch-language film before he hit Hollywood, and it's a total wild ride. A deliriously stylish, psychosexual fever dream that blends Catholic guilt, homoerotic vibes, Hitchcockian suspense, and full-on weirdness into one spiked cocktail. Think De Palma on communion wine.

It follows Gerard, a booze-soaked, guilt-ridden writer who gets together with Christine, a mysterious widow whose lovers keep turning up dead. But the real joy isn't in the twists — it's how Verhoeven plays with religion, lust, and full-blown hallucination to properly scramble your brain.

The performances go big (Jeroen Krabbé oozes tortured flair), and the visuals — veering from artsy to gloriously trashy — are a total feast. This is cinema as psychosexual theatre: campy, classy, and completely unhinged. Verhoeven dares you to take noir seriously again. If you like your thrillers sexy, strange, and steeped in sacrilege, this one's divine.

The Quick and the Dead is a thrilling mash-up of spaghetti Western and horror, thanks to Sam Raimi's delightfully unhinged direction. His knack for tension and love of over-the-top spectacle inject real energy into this deathmatch shootout—without him, it'd be all guns, no bullets.

Sharon Stone is the clear standout—her character is written with depth, and she rises to the challenge. Gene Hackman wrestles with a script that leans hard into pantomime but just about reins it in. Young DiCaprio is a live wire, all charm and swagger, while Russell Crowe's casting and performance feel... peculiar.

It's all a bit silly, wildly stylish, and utterly enjoyable—as long as you don't go looking for meaning in the tumbleweeds.

Scanners isn't winning any awards for acting, but that's hardly the point. It's fast, gory, and weirdly charming in its chaos. Cronenberg brings enough madness to paper over the cracks, and the effects still hit hard. It's not perfect, but honestly, it's impossible to look away — and not just because someone's head might explode.

Yellow Submarine is a gloriously trippy oddity fuelled by breezy imagination and Beatles charm. It really shouldn’t work—the story’s paper-thin, the pacing’s baggy, and it often vanishes into pure self-indulgence—yet somehow, it pulls you along with a daft grin. The visuals are wild, and, of course, the songs are great. The whole thing feels like a cheerful fever dream. It's fun to experience once, for sure, but it's more a colourful relic than essential, life-altering cinema.?

Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is a thrilling sci-fi journey that effortlessly juggles humour, horror, and heart. It’s a rollercoaster of entertainment, not as weighty as Parasite, but an absolute joyride—brimming with energy and jaw-dropping production design that makes every frame pop. Robert Pattinson does his usual thing, blending charm with quiet torment, but the real stars here are Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette.

Ruffalo is on another level, playing the villain with a perfect mix of tech-bro arrogance and full-blown cult leader madness—part Trump, part Musk, part David Miscavige, and just unhinged enough to feel all too real. In today’s world, people will be projecting their least favourite political figure onto him for years. Collette, who’s way too often underused, goes full scene-stealer here, bringing a wicked stepmother-meets-pantomime villain energy that cranks up the fun.

Bong, as always, directs with masterful ease, balancing big ideas with blockbuster spectacle. Beneath the dazzling visuals and creeping horror, there’s real emotional weight too. Mickey 17 might not be Bong’s deepest film, but it’s a slick, endlessly entertaining sci-fi romp that promises to be rewatched and dissected for years to come.

Shock Corridor is a brutal, fascinating dive into America's cracked soul, stitched together with Fuller's sweaty, claustrophobic energy. The mental hospital setting isn't just grim — it's a gnawing, ugly trap that feels like it might pull you into the madness yourself. Fuller rages against a country buckling under a mental health crisis, racism, PTSD, nuclear dread, and the hollow cheapening of human life for fame. Its relevance to current social issues is striking, making it a messy, blunt, and completely gripping film — the sort that shakes you up, leaves you slightly rattled, and demands you sit with its raw, angry truths.

Drop starts promisingly enough, but it quickly runs out of steam. The second act is a slog—just the same argument on repeat, like a broken record bumping into itself. No one on a date would actually stick around for this nonsense. The final ten minutes go full bananas (kind of fun, I’ll admit), but by then, the damage is done. Meghann Fahy is the one saving grace, grounding it all with a performance far better than the script deserves.

Spring Breakers has plenty of ambition, but it’s a messy ride. On the surface, it’s all bikinis, booze, and bad decisions, but dig a little deeper, and there’s something genuinely dangerous lurking. It clearly wants to point the finger at the debauched American Dream. Yet, it misses by a long mark, ending up glamorising misogyny, toxic masculinity, and violence. Franco is properly terrifying as Alien, but even the Pussy Riot-inspired costumes can’t save the film’s confused message.

Santa Sangre is a gloriously demented circus of trauma, control, and religious rot. Jodorowsky throws everything at the wall — blood, elephants, armless mothers — and somehow, most of it sticks. The film’s symbolism is a proper Gen-X fever dream: growing up broken, realising your idols are frauds, and trying (badly) to claw your way free. It’s Psycho on a punk acid trip.

The circus imagery nails the feeling of life being an endless, grotesque performance, and the whole mother-son dynamic is pure, undistilled nightmare fuel. It’s messy, no doubt, and occasionally too up itself to land a real punch, but when it works, it’s unforgettable. Despite all the surreal madness, this is probably Jodorowsky's most accessible—the emotional through-line (trauma, control, liberation) is surprisingly clear under the chaos.

It's not quite a masterpiece, but it's definitely a one-of-a-kind experience. It's worth it if you like your films strange, sad, and a little bit stabby.

It is a sumptuous and beautiful film, but I can't help but think that Uber Eats would have been easier. Who’s doing all the washing up?

A Scanner Darkly is an odd but intriguing one—digitally shot then animated, giving it a woozy, off-kilter feel that suits the drug-fuelled paranoia. Without the raw footage, it’s hard to say what rotoscoping adds, but it definitely gives things a surreal edge. The story grips in parts, though it does drift. But the real issue? Linklater casting that Alex Jones again, even before his notoriety. It’s a baffling choice that totally breaks the spell.

Paprika is an absolute visual feast — even if, at times, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. It’s a beautiful, chaotic, mind-bending plunge into dreams and identity, bursting with imagination in every frame. The animation is incredible, full of surreal shifts and strange details that keep you hooked even when the plot slips out of reach. You can see how it’s shaped plenty of later live-action films — and I’m not just talking about Inception! A confusing but brilliant ride.

A strange, haunting watch. The plot’s simple enough, but it’s really the style that defines it—like flipping through a psychedelic Art Nouveau picture book set to jazz. Some of the slow pans are pretty striking, though they start to drag after a while. With so little dialogue or narrative drive, it becomes a bit of a slog—especially with subtitles competing for attention against the intense, surreal imagery. You’re always likely to miss something. Grotesque and more unsettling than sexy.

A delightfully strange bit of animation. The story’s straightforward enough, but it’s told with such surreal flair it feels like gatecrashing someone else’s cheese dream — the kind where everything creaks, groans, and moves just a bit too oddly. There’s barely any dialogue, but you hardly notice. The film speaks through sound, music, and the kind of visual detail that only comes from full-blown obsession. It’s eccentric, deadpan, and somehow weirdly moving.