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mike-09368
Reviews
Sibyl (2019)
Disappointing
Having watched and been enthralled by Triet's superb Anatomy of a Fall featuring an excellent Sandra Hüller, I sought out their previous shared feature Sibyl with some excitement; only to be sorely disappointed. Here the oblique and allusive style fails to entrance or in fact even entertain. The image for me is of that carefully constructed style aimed perhaps rather over thoughtfully like a hammer at an intricately fashioned nail...... and being brought down well wide of the mark. Sadly much less than the sum of its parts. Complexity for it's own and not the story's sake. Cloyingly erotic rather than sexy I'm afraid, and emotionally flat.
Holy Spider (2022)
Breathtaking.
For me this film doesn't put a foot wrong. I was literally out of breath after watching it. Performances, especially the lead, cinematography, music and narrative plus the way all these crucial threads are drawn together, are sheer perfection. Holy Spider is an edge of the seat story of murder and ruthless violence, it is a compelling political drama, an appalling insight into 'religious' obsession and an insight into the way a person can become undermined and diminished, become obsessive and dangerous as a consequence of such an obsession. By being coaxed by the director into allowing, by marvelling in, the way he allows these various levels to be revealed Holy Spider became for me a unique delight.
Chloe (2022)
Mm 🤔
If you want a TV programme, produced with the superlative restraint of a very good independent movie and with performances that on occasion live up to that movie then this absorbing thriller should just about do it for you.
It's very original and production standards are top notch, it shows without telling and really does have something to say but in the end it under performs. It could, however have been a genuine tour de force in the event of perhaps only an actor or two in the group having been encouraged to show their chops by taking the script and helping make an admirably allusive storyline feel more real and preventing their and all characters turn into what occasionally feel like ciphers.
Inside No. 9 (2014)
Remarkable
Almost embarrassed to admit that it took me until the very last episode to finally discover this series but then it meant I had the joy of being able to go back and glory in what came before. The real achievement is in what the writing manages to pack in in only thirty minutes, the apparent restraint of hilariously and frighteningly convincing characters and a beautiful formula that never fails to deliver. Some episodes are sheer genius others just extremely clever but not one has disappointed or failed to.make me laugh out loud or left me breathlessly anticipating the next one.
Sometimes Always Never (2018)
Quirky, stylish yet with genuine substance
There is an almost surreal air to this film, which at first I found disconcerting: the editing and the photography a little like good, but not perfect, animation; the performances, somehow awkwardly theatrical. Nonetheless, as we learn about the characters: their backstory and motivation, the reasons all begin to make delicious sense. Could it be something to do with father Alan's ( Bill Nighy) insistence when younger upon, for instance, buying his sons Revell rather than Airfix models and playing the cheap substitute for, rather than the genuine Scrabble - a game of which provoked one son to vanish and leave brother (Sam Riley) feeling both bereft and unable to fill the place in his father's life. Is the furniture in the house stylishly, yet incongruously from the 1970s to remind everyone what the everyday world may have looked like when brother Mike disappeared?
A beautifully paced and framed film. Wonderful performances, from Nighy, Riley and Alice Lowe as his wife. Tim McInnerny, Jenny Agutter and, briefly, Alexei Sayle, provide those awkward, yet somehow consistent characters; 'misfits' who make our key characters, and us realise that nobody's life is really that strange.