Philip Bagnall

Reviews

HeadStuff •

Dead Man’s Wire movie review | Dog Day Afterthought - HeadStuff

In his acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Paul Thomas Anderson cited the phenomenal quintet of films that made up the nominees for that same award in 1975. He mooted that their shared quality shows that the films this year needn’t compete amongst one another for attention and acclaim (though anyone who saw Frankenstein or F1 knows that simply isn’t true). The rebellious spirit of the likes of Dog Day Afternoon informed Anderson’s vision in One Battle After Another, but Dea...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Holy Days Review: Klutzy Convent Caper

Three great lead actresses and moments of emotion can’t save Holy Days from its broader comedy impulses.


Holy Days shouldn’t feel small when it has three big hitters on its call sheet. New Zealand, 1974: a run-down convent on the North Island is threatened with closure by developers, and the three remaining nuns are determined to stay. Sr. Agnes (Judy Davis, sporting a decent Irish accent) is disgusted by the lack of acknowledgement for her Order’s commitment to their flock, while Sr. Mary Cl...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

The Devil’s Hand (Blu-ray Review) – Out On A Limb

A desperate man buys a severed hand as a curio, and ends up selling his soul. The Devil’s Hand treads familiar ground, but Maurice Tourneur’s 1943 horror puts enough of a Gallic spin on the likes of The Monkey’s Paw to warrant a new lease of life on physical media. Despite being over 80 years old, it retains a creepiness that has influenced many films and directors since. 

It is a treat for a work by Maurice Tourneur to be revived on a home format. Despite having over 80 directing credits to hi...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

The Love That Remains (Film Review) – Love On Ice

The Icelandics were always bound to have a unique and quirky sense of humour. Alien to North Americans, but just too far adrift from the rest of Scandinavia, Iceland lies far enough removed from everywhere to evolve an artistic and comedic sensibility all its own. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find that its process of evolution was entirely convergent. The Love That Remains might play as too wry for some, but the ideas it touches on and the wicked humour on display have universal appeal. A...
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Calvaire (Blu-ray Review) – Thoughtful Torture

Apparently, it has become fashionable again to hate on the ‘cinema du corps’. Perhaps news from the real world feels so horrid some days that a brutal horror just isn’t called for. New French Extremity emerged in the early 2000s as the more thoughtful, but no less intense, European cousin of the American ‘torture porn’ subgenre. Where that class of films is largely interpreted as a tasteless response to the traumas of 9/11 and the Iraq War, its Francophone counterpart shoulders a deeper philosop...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros (Film Review) – In-Depth And Delicious

Dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant is often reserved as an experience, something to be savoured because the judges from the tyre company deemed it worthy. Since the three-star hierarchy was established by the Guide Michelin in 1931, few establishments have managed to garner the illustrious full three stars. Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros is an attempt to show the ambition and effort that goes into earning and maintaining such a reputation, as the Troisgros family continue to run three restau...
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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Movie Review | Rose Byrne Is One Tough Mother! - HeadStuff

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You opens on a close-up of Linda’s (Rose Byrne) face, and the camera is reluctant to leave her for most of the film that follows. Mothers are often put in an uncomfortable gaze by people who aren’t in their shoes, and Mary Bronstein’s brilliantly paranoid fable manifests that discomfort in terrifyingly vivid detail. Walk a mile in someone’s shoes to know them, they say. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You runs a marathon in Linda’s unsupportive flats while having a panic attack....
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Little Amélie or The Character of Rain | Dazzling Animation Treats Kids With Intelligence And Respect - HeadStuff

Animation is so often demoted to the realm of ‘children’s entertainment’, but Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is different. It knows it’s aimed at kids, and tells its story from a child’s point of view, but that doesn’t stop it from engaging with loftier ideas, centred on spiritual and human connection. In its opening sequence, a child narrates the story of her birth, and posits the idea that she is nothing less than God. Any parent of a newborn will tell you that their child becomes the...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (Film Review) – A Sweetly Conventional Tribute

“Sometimes a man gets carried away, when he feels like he should be having his fun
Much too blind to see the damage he’s done”
         – Jeff Buckley, ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’

Those lyrics could be about many men but, as becomes clear in Amy Berg’s It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, they were unlikely to be about the man who wrote them. Jeff Buckley (1966-1997) was a talent taken too soon, but by the end of this documentary, we don’t learn a whole lot more about him. A good man plagued by...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

The Straight Story (Blu-ray Review) – Lynch’s Road Trip To The Country

One happy trend to emerge from the passing of David Lynch last year was seeing people rediscover his entire body of work. His films are almost all held in the highest regard, but even this most singular of oeuvres has runts in the litter. 1999’s The Straight Story was critically acclaimed on release, but tanked at the box office. Some cited its relative conventionality as a possible problem, with its simple homespun charm falling between the towering gonzo behemoths of Lost Highway and Mulhollan...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

The Dead (Blu-ray Review)

At Christmastide, friends gather for dancing, dinner and an evening's entertainment. The party that forms the centrepiece of The Dead is convivial, but not celebratory. Palpable foreboding and regret haunts the dinner table, as guests reminisce on glories past, and worry about what the future has in store. John Huston capped his legendary career with this magnificent swansong. Directing literally from his sickbed, Huston creates one of the greatest final films, one that serves as a poignant acce...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review

Director Nia DaCosta follows Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later with The Bone Temple, a leaner, smarter, nastier sequel, the best of the franchise since the original.


Both were potent on those terms, but 28 Years Later saw returning director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland try to do too much. It proved more effective at its musings on the inevitability of time and death than when grappling with the aftermaths of Covid-19 and Brexit.


Watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, it’s clear that d...
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Hamnet Movie Review | Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s Sublimely Sad Shakespeare Story - HeadStuff

Hamnet opens on Agnes (Jessie Buckley) lying amongst the raised roots of a mighty tree in a forest glade. Enveloped in the greenery and birdsong, the image evokes memories of Millais’ painting of Ophelia drowning after Hamlet has driven her insane. The evocation is apt, as Agnes is more commonly known as Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare. In this image, director Chloé Zhao lays down her intent. This story is something more elemental and deeply felt than the usual biopic. Hamnet isn’...
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Marty Supreme movie review | Timothée Chalamet's ping-pong epic is a total smash! - HeadStuff

The fallacy at the heart of the American Dream is that working hard and nurturing one’s own talent will guarantee success. Marty Supreme sees poor Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) learn that this isn’t necessarily so. From the opening scenes, it’s readily apparent that Mauser isn’t mousy, his silver tongue helping him sell shoes to punters like ice to an Inuit. He may be able to flog clogs, but his larger dream of sporting glory is gonna take more than a quick turn of phrase to achieve.


After...
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L'Atalante (4K Review)

The legacy of director Jean Vigo (1905 -1934) stretches far beyond his meagre oeuvre. His tragic death from tuberculosis at the age of 29 has always added a layer of sadness to his films, as well as regret that he never got to make more. However, any number of revisits to his only feature film L'Atalante show that the sadness and regret are justified. Like Charles Laughton with The Night of the Hunter, it should have been one of the great debuts at the start of a long career, but it still stands...
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Desperate Journey Review: Parisian Hideaways

Though handsome and not without compelling moments, Annabel Jankel’s Desperate Journey tries to do too much within its modest means.


There’s little to Desperate Journey that’s unexpected, right down to its structure. The film opens on a group of Jewish prisoners caught in a bombing raid in Germany in 1945. We meet Freddie Knoller (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), who goes on to recount his story in flashback. Back in 1938 in his native Vienna, he experienced increasing antisemitic hostility as the...
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The Carpenter’s Son Review: Biblical Prequel

Lotfy Nathan’s The Carpenter’s Son finds little new to say about fatherhood or faith, rendering its attempts at solemnity and horror a snore.


Thomas, the best known doubter in history, is attributed as the author of the Infancy Gospel, an apocryphal text that describes paranormal and spiritual events in the life of the pre-teen Jesus. Such texts were intended as private supplements to accepted Scripture, to be used to enlighten and recontextualise the stories of the established texts. Apocryp...
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The Ice Storm (Blu-ray review)

The times, they are a-changin' in The Ice Storm, with the idealists of the early 1960s having moved out of the cities to raise children even more cynical than they were. A new Blu-ray release for this Cannes prizewinner from StudioCanal highlights its emotional potency almost thirty years on. Despite the forecast promised by its title, it revels in its unlikely warmth and hope.
The Ice Storm treads the same ground as the likes of The Graduate and American Beauty, capturing middle-class malaise a...
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The Running Man movie review | Edgar Wright's flashy remake runs out of puff long before the finish line - HeadStuff

Glen Powell is making all the right moves to become an old-school, bona fide movie star. Even if we’re not making them anymore, he’ll almost certainly be one. An appearance by Tom Cruise, the real running man, at Powell’s latest world premiere feels like an endorsement in that direction. This is in spite of Powell’s choices of scripts, which often involve him obscuring his looks for the plot. Powell is front and centre in The Running Man, which forces his charisma into the faces of his audience....
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

Hilary And Jackie (Blu-ray review)

Indisputable talent. Unintended repression. Profound longing. Heartbreaking tragedy. The relatively brief life of Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987) featured all the elements of a two-tissue Sunday afternoon weepie. That's more or less what you get with 1998's Hilary and Jackie, though screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce and director Anand Tucker try to make it stand out from the rest of its boilerplate biopic kin.
Hilary and Jackie charts the main events of du Pré's life from childhood to death, but i...
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Park Avenue (Film Review)

No matter how successful a career an actor has, they often end up focusing on set paths they rarely get to transcend. A lifetime of treading the boards rarely allows for interludes into television or film, and vice versa. Fiona Shaw has enjoyed an illustrious stage career, punctuated time and again by smaller roles in notable films, from My Left Foot to The Tree of Life. Her more recent success in television (A BAFTA win for Killing Eve; an Emmy nomination for Fleabag) has brought Shaw to a wide...
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Silent Friend - FILMHOUNDS Magazine

Friend opens with footage of a seed, bursting open and bringing forth shoots. It's a remarkable process, one that we take for granted in our more dynamic lives. Ildikó Enyedi's film operates in a similar way. Telling three stories that look and sound simple on the surface, each one branches out in unexpected ways, until all find their full expression in the shadow of a tall tree that's older than all of us.
Enyedi's latest film is an ambitious attempt to find common ground across time. It finds...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Kenny Dalglish Review: Long Live The King

Asif Kapadia’s Kenny Dalglish is a heartfelt tribute to the Scotland and Liverpool legend, albeit lacking the bite of his best work.


This lad from Glasgow who made good on the promise he showed from his youth seems an unlikely subject for a documentary from Asif Kapadia. The Academy Award-winning director has cornered the market on cautionary tales, but he locates enough tragedy amongst the talent in Kenny Dalglish to play to his strengths, and a compelling (if unremarkable) portrait emerges....
Loud And Clear Reviews •

La Grazia Review: Anything but Graceful

With La Grazia, Paolo Sorrentino attempts to steady his ship after Parthenope, but rehashes familiar imagery and themes in a drab production.


This means it has more in common with Loro or Il Divo, but where they had sufficient bile to match their style, La Grazia is far too cosy and sentimental to make its points. Sorrentino has gotten away with a lack of bite in his material before, but even his signature style lets him down here. A newly-found self-consciousness drains the film of the direc...
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