peterkettle-904-444717 Reviews

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

It's all in the mind.

[10/10 · 25 May 2024]

The Banshees of Innisherin takes us into areas that touch on our mortality. Superb acting from Gleeson and Farrell. I love and rate this film hugely; I have watched it three times. It is a wrist slasher with a wide range. Dare I say it is Shakespearean? McDonagh takes us to the edge of the shore and then simply leaves us there. A comedy drama is what it is billed to be. But it is much more. Profound and moving, it is about our unknown inner selves, dark to light. I rate all the actors here. Colin Farrell has done nothing better and Brendan Gleeson should have got a gong or two. And the great Kerry Condon, so superb as Farrell's sister, and a complete contrast to her tough gangster In The Land Of Saints and Sinners. She was also in Mcdonagh's brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Barry Keoghan very good indeed with a character that could merely be performed as a caricature; here he suggests multitudes. The film has lyrical moments and true horrors and some beautiful music. It dares to leave the audience with unexplained mysteries. Just as Samuel Beckett and Shakespeare often do.

The Outfit (2022)

Pure Gripping Thriller

[10/10 · 6 May 2024]

A superb film. This gets top rating for pure entertainment and then some. It grips like a mental vice; you cannot escape until you see how it works out. Rylance carries it but he has a whole gang of support. The stunning script grows and spreads from a short treatise on tailoring to a classic thriller that you rarely see nowadays. I would rate this with the best Hitchcock maze of a plot. It is almost certainly too grown up and demanding for today's popcorn crunching punters. It envelops the bit in your head that wants to know what happens next. And it ends with you wanting to see it again. Anyone out there who fancies themselves as an actor should genuflect to Rylance and stick to the day job. Brilliant instant classic.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

DUNE, as dull as sand can be.

[2/10 · 13 March 2024]

Dune 2 is about as dull and depressing and hopeless as an epic film can be. No script made a prime mess of things. A hopeless but supremely well made chunk of cinema. And it is only worth seeing in a cinema if you must see it. A great music score - Hans Zimmer - and fabulous production values do not make a great film. Not a trace of character, wit, irony or charm. Everyone was starkly good or bad, and dull as dishwater. No nuance, no thrills. I did not want to know anyone in it, wanted to sleep with nobody, talk with them, or identify with any aspect of any character. It is as dull as Triumph Of The Will, and almost as fascistic.

Saltburn (2023)

Best Film!

[10/10 · 31 December 2023]

SALTBURN - BEST film for a very long time. Thrilling, funny and fierce. So refreshing to see new actors too. Emerald Lilly Fennell is an English actress, filmmaker, and writer; and she wrote and directed this masterpiece. It is partly parodic, and the reflection of Evelyn Waugh's Bridehead is consciously used. The script is stunning, and subtle. It illuminates human behaviour in the social classes and the erosion of that divide which is typical of the last seventy years. She has received many awards and nominations, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, one Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The movie is gorgeously shot, the actors are brilliant and intelligent enough to know they have a wonderful script to work with0. This is the best movie I've seen for a long time.

The End of the Affair (1999)

Wartime London...

[9/10 · 16 June 2023]

A depressing and yet brilliant film for most of its length, but it has a slack ending. With brilliant consistent acting from Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rae, this is a wonderful evocation of wartime London. Every actor in this film is impressive, which reveals how a director can be almost forensic about human characters. Jordan is subtle and insightful in this skilful adaptation, written by him and faithful to the Grahame Greene original novel. With James Bolam and Jason Isaacs, Deborah Findlay and a relative unknown Ian Hart, Jordan assembled one of those truly consistent casts.

Glass Onion (2022)

The Big Turkey

[1/10 · 30 December 2022]

Movie franchises are difficult and they need a solid directorial control. Knives Out worked because it had a script that was plotted and within the Country House format and it contained wonderfully crafted and finely nuanced performances. I anticipated much enjoyment with this second tale. But it fell flat at the start; it was built on the premise that more money makes it better. It was an extravagant attempt to spend huge amounts on sets and props without any plot or interesting dialogue. The cast played their characters with a uniform flatness. Cold, heartless, and unattractive in every way, nobody emerged out of this with any credit, except, maybe, one or two bits of action. The three people I watched this with yawned and sighed, and one went into a deep sleep. I forced myself to watch until the end; and I realised I cared for nobody in it. Most of the characters could have been better played by my local theatre club members and a better script could have been written on the back of an envelope.

The Sunset Limited (2011 TV Movie)

Words, Words, Words

[10/10 · 17 March 2022]

A dialogue between two men without animosity but who look across at each other with a whole divisive void between them. The middle class tenured professor, Tommy Lee-Jones, with a lifetime in intellectual pursuits, shares the night with a man in a New York housing Project apartment. This black man, Samuel Jackson, has saved the academic from suicide under the Sunset Limited train. And this highly educated man may well have been a friend of Murray Gell-Man at M. I. T. - he is used to discussing the connections between nature at its most basic level and natural selection, archaeology, linguistics, child development, computers, and other complex adaptive systems; a world where certainties are always challenged and are never wholly certain. Is this Cormac personified? CM was certainly a friend of Gell-Man, and had access to MIT lectures, and even had a room of his own where he could work. Tommy Lee Jones plays the academic who is used to thinking about the scale of the universe and the diversity of quantum physics. And here he is, in the Projects, conversing with the certainties of a man of simple basic faith, played brilliantly by Samuel Jackson, a man unread and yet certain; a man who may have read only one book in his life, the thumb indexed copy of the Bible which lies on a circular table. The two men circle around the table a little, around the tenement room, and the rain beats against the window and then it grows light and dry. And they separate and they get - nowhere. And yet they have been everywhere.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

REMARKABLE and beautifully scripted.

[10/10 · 20 February 2022]

This is a stunning 'unknown' movie, to me. That makes little sense, does it not? I mean, a stunning film is surely something award winning and special, yes? NO! A stunning movie is the one you buy for a £1 in a charity shop; and you never heard of it but it has three people in it you like. You play it and it knocks you out. A slam dunk. Killing Them Softly is remarkable for doing justice to the subtle and brilliant script. Good writing is then illustrated by impressive performances. The two work together in perfect harmony. The writer is Andrew Dominik, a New Zealander. Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins are outstanding; again, because of the script. A great movie.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Perfect, utterly perfect

[10/10 · 2 February 2022]

I absolutely love Macbeth, arguably the Shakespeare with (proportionately) the most quotations. This production was so moving I cannot imagine it better done. The theatrical photography is another aspect I liked. Coen has not attempted to horrify the viewer with blood and madness. It is calm and the text is KING. Macbeth needs a limited stage; it is such an internal play. Too many productions gore it up. This film is fresh; it presents the play FIRST. It even makes perfect sense with the witches, all three played by one woman, a brilliant Kathryn Hunter. Enough said; this is stunning.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Perfect Wes

[10/10 · 6 January 2022]

This is a charming and great film - superbly crafted, as ever by Wes. A pair of young lovers flee their Rhode Island town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them; couldn't be simpler. But, unusually, their bodies are not discovered chopped up, or sexually abused. The two kids find each other, he a misfit in the scouts and she a bit of a tart in her school; she wears make up and stuff. Also it is unusual because of the music that distinguishes this simple tale. The musical arrangements include various works by Britten and Hank Williams and some original stuff as well. The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra, in the Bernstein recording, and Noyes Fludde dominate the soundtrack. Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Larry Pine, Harvey Keitel, Bob Balaban and Frances Dormand, all of them used to working with Wes, swing it along. A kind of fairytale, with no malice. Love it all, as Bernstein said about music.

The Irishman (2019)

The Very Very Slow Irishman

[3/10 · 11 May 2021]

A bad film is possible for any director; nobody gets it right every time. This is a yawningly BAD film. I could go on. And on. And on. Because that is precisely what this pedestrian heap of self indulgence does. I think I stayed awake for most of it. I began to construct a little mechanical toothpick machine, made out of a fine boxwood. I thought of what might be going on soon when the lockdown is over and done with and I can go into a bookshop again. I remembered a speech from Richard III, where he goes on about getting lost in a thorny wood. And was that bluebell wood we walked through this afternoon so much more interesting than this turgid exercise in how to spend money on a movie production without doing it well. And now I am going to bed.

The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Checkmate In Seven Moves

[10/10 · 10 November 2020]

Wonderful. Exceptionally so. Gripping and dramatic; no violence; freedom from cliche. Exemplary direction and acting. Exciting chess movies are rare and this is surely the best and most unexpected Netflix triumph. Beautifully captured period details, brilliant settings. I could go on. Watched it in two sessions then a second viewing next day because my wife had missed most of it. It's so great I then downloaded the book, by an author unknown to me but most of whose novels were made into films, which I am familiar with. William Trevis wrote The Hustler, with Paul Newman brilliant in the lead role, and its sequel, The Color Of Money. Trevis also wrote The Man Who Fell To Earth, filmed with David Bowie. This is a Netflix production which must win awards; acting, writing, direction.

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Unconvincing but watchable...

[8/10 · 1 July 2019]

Gone Baby Gone is a strange mishmash; it begins brilliantly, the acting is mostly superb, the detail convincing, dialogue great. Dennis Lehane wrote the novel it was based on and perhaps the sprks in the script originated there. But the denouement - or the entire last third of the film - didn't hack it. Maybe it worked more convincingly in the novel but it ran out of steam and seemed too contrived. This film is - dare I say it - entertaining and almost great in parts; but the whole doesn't make it. Ben Affleck's brother is a slightly better actor than his brother; but he is similarly 'dull' and he does not carry the movie as his character is required to do. His tough act in the bar didn't convince me. The film leaned heavily on better actors; Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Monaghan, Titus Welliver, and everybody else are outstanding enough to carry the less than watertight story. A cameo by Edi Gathegi almost steals the show for me; and Michael Kenneth Williams, who I seem to remember in The Wire?, is brilliant. But ultimately this film is not as convincing as Mystic River, but it is still Lehane enough to get me hooked.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Stan Lee; Wagner; Raganarok...

[7/10 · 18 May 2019]

Avengers Endgame. This was the first time I've seen one of these blockbusters in a cinema and the difference - with the latest digital sound and vision - is remarkable. As I watched the unfolding of this three hour of whizz bangs groans and creaks and blasts I was reminded of A S Byatt, which rather surprised me. Ragnarok of course, but it was the underlying Powysian magic of Byatt that led me to seeing something of Wagner, too. I know this sounds pretentious but I am merely giving my thoughts an hour or so after seeing this in the cinema. This is epic and grand mythmaking, and the film thrilled me more than I can say. As a fan of myths, opera, SF and wild fantasy it poured into my head with relentless pleasure. By no mens a great film it is undeniably an entertainment. Having avoided most of the Avengers movies I cannot compare. This was an enjoyable mess.

In a Valley of Violence (2016)

Simply as bad as it gets

[1/10 · 16 May 2019]

A really bad movie. It uses the talents of good actors who are required to deliver bad dialogue and the whole effort is a poor example of direction and story. In A Valley Of Violence is simply too trivial to write about and did no service to the careers of Ethan Hawke or John Travolta. The bad continuity is unforgiveable; the lack of basic logic is merely stupid.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Horror Western...

[10/10 · 26 March 2019]

Bone Tomahawk is a western written and directed by S. Craig Zahler, and it is a film that made me think of Cormac McCarthy. Instead of savage tribes of Indians, Mexicans and white vigilantes we had a wordless group of primitive troglodytes. Unthinkingly cruel to themselves as much as others, they blind women and impregnate them, drive bone whistles into their own throats to make signal calls; they are casual cannibals. It is a peculiar and powerful film, with an original blend of horror. There are admirable performances from Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins (always brilliant), Patrick Wilson and Matthew Fox. A Western for sure, but with a highly original take on an old genre. If the Western is constantly declared dead it is as constantly resurrected. Along comes Missouri Breaks, The Unforgiven, True Grit, No Country For Old Men, or The Homesman. I still dread anyone taking on Blood Meridian, but Bone Tomahawk has some of that mighty book's power and essence. I was mesmerised by it. Horror western? Certainly, I was peeping through my fingers a few times.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Funny, witty, brilliantly acted.

[10/10 · 8 March 2019]

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. When the author Lee Israel, played brilliantly by Melissa McCarthy, became a writer who no longer seems to have readers - because her work falls out of step with current tastes - she turns creativity to deception. She forges letters by other writers; Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Noel Coward, Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder, journalist Dorothy Kilgallen and many others. Her part henchman is a gay Englishman, Richard E Grant. The Director is Marielle Heller, the writers are Nicole Holofcener, and Jeff Whitty. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant are outstanding, with solid support from Jane Curtin, (3rd Rock), Dolly Wells - another fine English actress - Stephen Spinella and others from that seemingly endless pool of great actors that exist in America. I must read the book. A very fine film, brilliantly crafted in all departments, funny, moving, and wrongly passed over for awards.

They Shall Not Grow Old (II) (2018)

A sobering and wonderful documentary

[10/10 · 6 February 2019]

A shattering and mind altering piece of film making. A documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of the end of that war; that is one way of describing it. Until now we have watched the contemporary footage with it's jerky black and white silent newsreel footage, with everything sped up. This has always distanced the viewer from the reality. Reality has always been smudged and blurred. Peter Jackson has added sound; using lip readers, reports and letters he has given these soldiers voices. Actors with regional accents allow us to hear their words. There is no cynicism or sentiment. The lads were there to do a job and most of the quotes are positive and accepting despite experiencing conditions almost beyond endurance. The job had to be done. Everyone should see this overwhelming film. Peter Jackson worked with the BBC and the Imperial War Museum to create this stunning film, using every digital trick. And most of it has been colorised. Sections of it look suddenly contemporary. Regional accents bring diaries, documents and letters to life. This is inevitably a mind changing look at WW1, and it is astonishing and deeply moving. This should be awarded an Oscar.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

A fine and dandy anthology

[10/10 · 2 December 2018]

The Coen Brothers latest masterpiece is a somewhat complicated anthology of the West. It is only somewhat 'real'. The Ballad Of Buster Scraggs is unconventional enough to elicit mixed reviews; is that because it is episodic, and the six stories are not directly linked? Reviews that are mixed get me antsy, so I settled down and let myself go. I loved it, unreservedly, and will see it again for sure. From one story to another, one song to another, from Tom Waites and Brendan Gleeson to James Franco and beyond this was a film in sections that thrilled with its words and its brilliant performances. After sitting through a few dull dramas, which even when well done still seem dull, it's such a pleasure to be entranced by the Coens again, back on best form. Witty, shocking and brimfull of great performances this film is another great display of script and imagery. These elements combine to make a magical film. Joel and Ethan are in their finest form in this gorgeous fantasy. I have now watched this for the fourth time and dare to say it's a masterpiece. The great Coen Brothers! How do you write a simple letter of thanks to the Coens? Such praise gets treacly, and opens you up to the charge of being a crawler. But I am sincere; I do feel enormous gratitude. Take this compendium of perfection, Buster Scruggs. Praise is earned in every possible department. I regale friends with my admiration but often you'll get a disclaimer who says, as one responded to me recently, 'The Coens? Yeah, they're good most of the time, but what about Burn After Reading? Didn't work.' To which I said it was slightly leaning towards a curate's egg but I loved it. Brad Pitt and the great John Malkovich knocked me out. So how do you thank these guys? Take Buster; every tiny little shot is pleasing, or moving, or astonishing. Why didn't it win medals? (Or did it? I must check) I would have given all six stories an individual Oscar. Crafts, from acting, to sets, to locations and costume were celebrated for every stitch and component. Anyway, and incidentally, SAUL RUBINEK is revealed, in the final macabre tale, as surely the perfect Poirot. Watch it, and see if you agree. A kind of Canterbury Tales of a movie, funny, touching, and entrancing.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Is David Lean the worst 'Great' Director?

[2/10 · 27 November 2018]

Is David Lean the most overrated director in cinema history? I ask because he seems to be in my estimation. Dr. Zhivago is all show and no tell. And I remember in my student days I was the only one who hated Lawrence Of Arabia. I realise I have never been what you'd call a conformist. But although I quite liked Great Expectations, and Hobson's Choice, it seems that as soon as Lean got loads of money he screwed up. Kwai is a dreadful film, Ryan's Daughter even worse, Zhivago is a travesty of a good book, and Passage To India is execrable. But Lawrence is simply one of the worst films I know. Even Peter O'Toole couldn't survive this director's terrible work.

Widows (2018)

A SOLID DISPLAY OF GREAT ACTING AND DIRECTION

[10/10 · 16 November 2018]

Widows is the best film I've seen this year so far. Maybe the year before that too. Elizabeth Debicki doesn't steal the film but she nearly does. New to me, this 6'2" Australian actress is extraordinary. But she doesn't dominate because everybody in the film is great, which reveals the skill of the director, Steve McQueen. He also wrote the screenplay with Gillian Flynn, basing it on the Lynda La Plante British tv original. A truly great movie I must see again. And again. And the dog! It nearly skewers the best acting role all by itself. Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson, and Colin Farrell all play brilliantly but in support of Viola Davis, Carrie Coon, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki, who dominate. And another wonderful woman, Sade, sings a great song near the end. Hans Zimmer again underpins the film with his growly score. What a wonderful film, and I am mystified it has attracted such negative comments.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Confusing but great comedy

[10/10 · 4 October 2018]

What do you do when you come across a weird movie with great credentials; a film which you can't quite wrench your way out of? And a movie from the Coens no less... I'm talking about Burn After Reading, and it's probably the best film I've never understood. After making one of the best chase movies ever - and one of the BEST ever movies in any genre - in cinema history, No Country For Old Men, the Coens turned back to comedy; they seem to do this often. And what they also did was typical; they approached some of the best actors in the world and threw them into this great spooks movie. It's as if some demented chef was running a fast food franchise joint, and is convinced it's the best restaurant in the known world. Malkovich, Dormand, Pitt, Clooney, Swinton, J K Simmons and Richard Jenkins deliver a pitch perfect screwball script, and that potent skill base delivers the viewer a richly satisfying comedy. Ain't we lucky. I shall have to buy this on Blu-ray!

Mystic River (2003)

Close to being a masterpiece.

[10/10 · 11 July 2018]

This Clint Eastwood directed film, 'Mystic River', is based on the brilliant novel by Dennis Lehane. The word 'stunning' gets overused but the performances by the cast were little short of that. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins deserved their Oscars; Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne; Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney; and a knockout range of fine American actors prove again how deep is the talent in the American movie business. Eastwood's no nonsense direction pushed the narrative along with concision and craftsmanship; he is a master of the subtle 'who did what' drama, such as this, and I bet it came in under budget and on time. (IBDM says $25m budget, box office $157m). My wife and I were gripped by this story of a generation growing up and coalescing later in a Boston suburb. The real Mystic River is seven miles long. It lies to the north of Boston and flows approximately parallel to the lower portions of the Charles River. It flows from the Lower Mystic Lake and travels through the Boston-area communities of Arlington, Medford, Somerville, Everett, Charlestown, Chelsea, and East Boston. The river joins the Charles River to form inner Boston Harbor. And that brought me to Robert Lowell and his Charles River poem, for no good reason other than the sheer quality of the original book, this film and that wonderful poem... All three are superb.

The Bookshop (2017)

Incompetence all around.

[1/10 · 6 July 2018]

A film that unbelievably has won awards; and a film that a first year film student would have rejected. It was shallow, incompetent, uninvolving, without a script, and with a wholly absent sense of shape. No pace, no drama, no direction. The Book Shop is a superb novel, but it has been made into a trite and boring film, without emotion or skill. The people who made this should be blushing with shame; they could not even get the books on the shelves right; several were recently published Penguin hardback editions, some were plainly and utterly WRONG. For instance, the wonderful Pentagram series designed for Faber didn't come out until the 80s, yet several are seen here. Few things were managed correctly; even the postman wore a laughably inaccurate uniform. A sluggish and entirely mistaken film, uncomprehendingly made by bunch of amateurs. Two good actors - Bill Nigh, Patricia Clarkson - were wasted. I want my money back please. This was 1959 without any evocation of 1959.

The Limehouse Golem (2016)

There will be blood and some guts...

[9/10 · 4 July 2018]

The Limehouse Golem is a startling and successful film adaptation of the 1994 Peter Ackroyd novel, 'Dan Leno & The Limehouse Golem'; a murder mystery framed within a story featuring real historical characters - Dan Leno of course, but Marx, played brilliantly if briefly, by Henry Goodman. George Gissing is depicted, and it is set in an authentic seeming recreation of Victorian London. It has Olivia Cooke, a startlingly good actress who is new to me, Nicholas Wooderson, Bill Nighy - a superb performance as John Kildare, an investigating 'detective' before there were such people - and Eddie Marsans; all reliably good; Douglas Booth plays Dan Leno with conviction, another actor new to me. Clive Russell playing a small role as a jailor, does so with his usual distinction. But it is Olivia Cooke who shines in her central role with Nighy; she can be fierce and powerful while seeming to appear utterly still, and her scenes with the great Nigh are not eclipsed by him. The script is superb, written by Jane Goldman, and I wonder if there was any collaboration with the book's writer? It is certainly an exciting adaptation of a great novel. It was outstandingly directed by Juan Carlos Medina, who is another 'unknown' to me.