Film Shapes

With The Square in 2017, and now Triangle of Sadness , Ruben Östlund has joined a select group of directors who've won the Palme D'Or with consecutive films (Billie August and Michael Haneke being the others, though nine directors have won twice). Rarified air. Add 2014's Force Majeure and that makes up a critically lauded hat trick. With only Force and Triangle to go on (I've been meaning to see Square but, shit, I've been meaning to do loads of stuff), Östlund seems to be furrowing a mildly provocative, fluffy bête-noire niche for himself, not fully blown Von Trier, but it's early doors. The title refers to the space between your eyes and the top of your nose, and has something to do with modelling pouts, as far as I could tell. The leads, Harris Dickinson (Carl) and Charlbi Dean (Yaya) are gorgeous, young fashion models - Yaya is also an 'influencer', which is the reason they find themselves on a luxury super boat, fraternising with other disgust...

Criminally, this is only Martin McDonagh's FOURTH feature, but it's vying with In Bruges as his best yet. In fact, were it not for the uneven mess of Seven Psychopaths , he'd be on a brilliant run, including Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri . The Banshees of Inisherin reunites Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in a story of two mates, Colm and Pádraic, on an Irish island in the 1920s, trying to deal with some friendship issues. In a nutshell, Colm decides one day that he's had enough of his mate and his attempts to keep Pádraic at arm's length become increasingly.....inventive. Farrell and Gleeson are brilliant; Pádraic's outburst in J.J.Devine's public house is a super scene, and I reckon this film might be the highpoint of his gathering storm as a genuine talent. His esoteric choice of films going back a few years are indicative of this - probably since 2015's The Lobster , and running through The Killing of a Sacred Deer , The Beguiled and...

Return to Seoul is a quietly moving drama, written and directed by Davy Chou, a Cambodian/French filmmaker. It runs through a few years in the life of Freddie, played by 'plastic artist', Park Ji-Min. She's Korean by birth but was adopted out to a French family as a baby and at the start of the film, finds herself back in Seoul. On the face of it, she's there simply because a flight to Tokyo was cancelled, but we get an inkling that the desire to reconnect with her biological parents is working its way to primacy. Freddie can't speak Korean when she first arrives so she latches onto a young woman who works in the guest house she's staying at, Tena (Guka Han). The relationship is a curious one - polite, caring Tena seems to find chaotic Freddie fun....until she doesn't. At one point, during a spiteful night out, Tena tells her something like, "You're the saddest person I've ever met" and this 'slash and burn' style threatens to dera...

First up - great title, Violent Night . Combine these words on the poster with a bedraggled, blood-encrusted Santa Claus, chewing a candy cane like Eastwood chewed his cigar, and you've done half the job of selling the film. It also helps that it's a riot of inappropriateness - vomit, piss and (reindeer) shit all occur within the first few minutes, with the blood and gore soon to follow. Season's greetings to all! David Harbour plays Santa, disenchanted and ready to hang up the sack, when he drunkenly stumbles into a criminal heist situation at a luxurious mansion. The unimportant upshot is the family matriarch, Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D'Angelo), has illegally ferreted away a stash of millions in her vault, which boss wrong'un, Scrooge (John Leguizamo) has sniffed out (how? again, not important). The heart, and the cheese, of the film rests with Gertrude's granddaughter, Trudy (Leah Brady) and, to a lesser extent, her separated parents, Jason and Linda (Ale...

Kompromat (shorthand for Compromising Material) is a serviceable near-thriller, based on book about the true story of Yoann Barbereau, a French national who spent more than a year on the run, trying to escape the Russian authorities. It opens with a cliched forest chase, then a '5 months earlier' title card, leading into the 'how did we get here' backstory. The film has its ups and downs until the climax, where it reaches its nadir, thanks to some overwrought symbolism and mawkish emotion, not helped much by the swelling score. Gilles Lellouche plays Mathieu Roussel, the Irkutsk director of the Alliance Francaise organisation. He lives in this Siberian outpost with his not-best-pleased wife and young daughter until one day when he's arrested for a trumped up charge of publishing child pornography. The reason for this fit-up isn't quite explained - is it suspicions of spying or petty revenge? Maybe something else entirely? Perhaps we're meant to be as cluele...

The Menu is a great satire on the haves and the have-nots, set in an exclusive island restaurant called Hawthorne. Ralph Fiennes is the chef, Slowik, who at first, seems like a snobby, arrogant kitchen-maestro, but has deeper...issues. He's, as always, excellent, giving us more to chew on than pure sociopathy. Nicholas Hoult plays Tyler, a foodie twat, seemingly oblivious to the creeping danse macabre taking place. But it's ultimately Anya Taylor-Joy's film. She's Margot, Tyler's date for this once in a lifetime culinary event, though she appears to have her reservations (I promise that's the first and last food or restaurant pun in this write-up. My apologies.) Margot is the audience conduit and Taylor-Joy brings the gusto and a feisty 'no-shit-taken' attitude. John Leguizamo is spot-on casting as the actor to whom Fiennes says something like, "Your face has irritated me for a long time" regarding a terrible film he was in. It's the perfe...

A new Marvel film isn't quite the drawcard it once was. Aside from the Doctor Strange multiverse film, Phase 4 of the MCU hasn't really delivered anything of much quality. There were moments in Black Widow and Shang-Chi , even Eternals at a stretch, but the crackers from Phase 3 seem a long way back. Now, SPOILERS AHOY, but presumably Kev Feige and his acolytes hadn't expected Chadwick Boseman to pass away at the age of 43, causing the need for massive rewrites (or a reimagining at any rate). Incidentally, they probably chose the best way to deal with an actor's unexpected death. It was nicely handled, a fitting tribute to Boseman. The beginning was a deviation from the usual action splash, in order to make way for the sombre, but zesty funeral scene. It was an authentic tear-jerker too, if the young German & French international students in the cinema were anything to go by. So, here's a film choc-full of grief and loss, which is only amplified by the mirror...