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Chungking Express (1994)
What a difference a day makes.
Filmmaker(s): Wong Kar-wai

Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.

Discontinuous experiments in this film, and I took some trouble in sorting them out. The first thing you'll notice is the discontinuous camerawork, accentuated by low (never high) angles and strobeflashframes. This element by itself is sophomoric filmschoolism. Then you have the plot tags and storyline. The...


Published June 17, 2025
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Hit Man (2023)
He's not a killer, but he can pretend.
Filmmaker(s): Richard Linklater

A mild-mannered professor moonlighting as a fake hit man in police stings ignites a chain reaction of trouble when he falls for a potential client.

Explicitness Kills I have learned about effective introspection in film is that the least acknowledged is the most effective. Two extremes may be “Under the Skin” or “Pillow Book” or even “In the Mood for Love” at one successful end and this at the other....


Published June 17, 2025
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Spellbound (2024)
Experience a twist on happily ever after.
Filmmaker(s): Vicky Jenson

When a powerful spell turns her parents into giant monsters, a teenage princess must journey into the wild to reverse the curse before it's too late.

The Divorce Cartoon one excellent element of this that gives it a two. Whoever designed the blocking/ staging is someone I want to meet again. The way the scenes are ‘shot’, mostly just beyond what a camera can do, and the way the aggressive editing...


Published June 29, 2025
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A Sweet Journey (1980)
Whant woman talk about when men aren't around
Filmmaker(s): Michel Deville

Two lifelong best friends spend a weekend at a secluded cabin. Through intimate conversations and silent moments, they explore their deep understanding of each other's personalities and desires.

In the Story makes their own decision on when the narrative intrusion is morally clean. Assuming that the film is about some emotional event among people, the question is if are we viewing to add to our soul, aor are we viewing to take something...


Published June 30, 2025
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Murder by Death (1976)
By the time the world's greatest detectives figure out whodunnit... you could die laughing!
Filmmaker(s): Robert Moore

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

Simple Mind Games mystery is like no other narrative device because it challenges the viewer to a duel. You the viewer or reader are invited to outguess the detective character, the crook and even the writer. But since the created world depends on the writer,...


Published July 19, 2025
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The Residence (2025)
132 rooms. 157 suspects. 1 dead body.

A brilliant, eccentric detective must solve a murder in the White House residence — where the staff and guests at a state dinner are all suspects.

Layers history of film centres on an understanding of noir and how it has become a game between filmmaker and viewer. Central to that is the detective story. The pinnacle of that genre is Agatha Christie but no film has translated well until now. I...


Published July 21, 2025
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Penn and Teller Get Killed (1989)
What more do you want?
Filmmaker(s): Arthur Penn

The "bad boys of magic" go over the edge in this mind-blowing, role-switching comedy murder mystery set in the dizzying world of Atlantic City casinos. In a TV interview, Penn mentions his idea of a fun practical joke: "I wish someone were trying to kill me. It would give focus to my life, excitement. I'd be like James Bond." Twenty million people hear him. One decides to deliver a punchline he'll never forget. Made by people who thought Psycho was a comedy, Penn & Teller Get Killed (they also wrote the piece) features Caitlin Clarke as the femme fatale and David Patrick Kelly as the Edgar Allan Poe-esque nutcase with a new mission. Arthur Penn, known for hip masterpieces like Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant and Little Big Man, directs with roller-coaster pacing and subversive intelligence.

Genuine is an absolutely unwatchable film, featuring two by then seasoned performers and directed by one of our greatest filmmakers. The basic idea is that the two magicians play tricks on each other, and toward the end you aren’t sure when dangerous things are genuine or...


Published July 29, 2025
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The Gentlemen (2019)
Criminal. Class.
Filmmaker(s): Guy Ritchie

American expat Mickey Pearson has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.

Movie Scripts likely Ritchie’s best. It has his comic characters oscillating between real and unlikely. It has a fully created world, less exotic than Wick’s but more accessible. Super-snappy dialogue. But most of all, it has the double, triple, quadruple con in layers, where the top...


Published August 1, 2025
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The Warped Forest (2011)
Filmmaker(s): Shunichiro Miki

Settle into your chair and be transported to a place both familiar and alien; where a giant shop-girl can barely fit in her store, there's a weird green pod in every bedroom, and terrifying wood nymphs provide a heartbroken woman with the anatomically correct fruit everyone seems to covet. In the end we are left, like Alice, with the Red King's conundrum: are we dreaming them or are they dreaming us?

Nipple Dreams is quirky, erotic from an unusual direction, and quite sad until the end. I see some few summaries on the web, very few, and they get it all wrong. The narrative is not quite non-linear, but needs some untangling. The black and white scenes...


Published August 27, 2025
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Red Notice (2021)
Pro and cons.

An Interpol-issued Red Notice is a global alert to hunt and capture the world's most wanted. But when a daring heist brings together the FBI's top profiler and two rival criminals, there's no telling what will happen.

Cleopatra’s Omelet formula film with no merit whatever. Three highly paid characters more or less being themselves, which doesn’t add to much. There is some travel, and some action as per what the bosses like. Enough viewers seem to as well. Ms Gadot is pretty...


Published September 1, 2025
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