Three Films Make A Post: They were divided by war. He united them in song.

The Choral (2025): This is the sort of very competently made, somewhat life-affirming drama that appear to only be made in the UK anymore. Some of its elements do strain historical believability a little – surely, the climactic choral performance is too modern(ist) in this context? – and there are a couple of scenes that don’t have the emotional impact they are supposed to have on me – the compassionate masturbation bit particularly comes to mind.

Otherwise, director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett evoke a time and a place and use this evocation to tell us something about people in times of social upheaval without it ever feeling didactic. Rather, this is done with grace, compassion, a sense of humour, and populated by actual characters brought to life by a brilliant cast – Ralph Fiennes really has quite a couple of years right now.

H Is for Hawk (2025): Staying in the UK, Philippa Lowthorpe’s adaption of an autobiographical book about a female academic (Claire Foy) who is avoiding coping with her grief about the death of her father (Brendan Gleeson) by hyperfocusing on training a goshawk contains one of the most believable portrayals of a real depressive episode I’ve seen in cinema – at least the kind of depression I have experience with (your symptoms may vary). Foy’s performance here is quite brilliant, nuanced and very human indeed.

Even though the film gets a bit too third act dramatic for real life in (surprise) its third act, this turns out not to be a film about a woman “getting over” mental illness by getting close to a bird as you’d probably expect, but something much messier, more complicated and more real that feels much closer to actual mental illness and the ways we cope with it than the easier version would have been. Which doesn’t mean this isn’t also full of perfect footage of a goshawk doing goshawk things, for just because the bird won’t save your life doesn’t mean it is of no import to it.

Reflection in a Dead Diamond (2025): Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet’s and Bruno Forzani’s project of reflecting and intensifying the beautiful surfaces of European genre cinema of mostly the 60s and 70s – though in this one, there’s also quite a bit of Louis Feuillade added to the mix – until they turn even more abstract and weird than they already are continues. As with any good reflective surface, these films can be used as a mirror of whatever thematic interest or interpretative approach you prefer – I’m particularly fond of reading this one as a critique of the gender politics of European super spy films that still really likes looking at swankily dressed or nude, hot people; or as a meditation on the aesthetical losses of aging.

Though, honestly, I mostly prefer to fall into these films as dreams of exceeding, perhaps excessive, beauty.

Three Films Make A Post: No man left behind.

Life After Fighting (2024): Lead actor/martial artist/director/producer Bren Foster’s directorial debut climaxes in forty minutes or so of incredibly impressive martial arts madness of the naturalistic, bone-crunching style, presented in a direct and visceral way. To get there, you have to work your way through eighty minutes or so of much too slow build-up, pointless side-plots, and scenes that – in classic indie tradition - never seem to want to end when they really should have ended minutes ago.

I do appreciate Foster’s willingness to go slow and actually ground his character emotionally – this certainly beats the “egomaniac martial arts asshole” you always fear in this kind of project – but there’s providing the ground for things, and then there’s scenes crawling by at a snail’s pace for no good reason.

The Heroin Busters aka La via della droga (1977): This Enzo G. Castellari joint with Fabio Testi (playing a character named Fabio in case he forgets) and David Hemmings as cops (well, Hemmings is playing an Interpol agent) on a rampage starts out pretty slow as well, but it doesn’t take more than half of its running time to gather its speed. Once it dies get going, there’s no holding its series of probably highly dangerous to stunt people action sequences back for even a second. There’s a manic, dangerous energy to Castellari’s action at its best, and here, he holds that level for the whole last act of the film, while doing much less feet-dragging than Foster’s movie before.

Land of Bad (2024): Despite the military-based version of the action film being my least favourite type – I dislike some of the sub-genre’s inherent assumptions even less so than those of vigilante films – it is difficult to find fault with the way William Eubank and a game bunch of actors (several Hemsworths, Ricky Whittle and Milo Ventimiglia in an actually good performance, as well Russell Crowe chewing scenery delightfully as the Man in the Chair) present a series of theoretically tired old clichés. In a style I find by now typical of Eubank, he leaves no cent of the budget not visible on screen, so there’s an always entertaining series of gunplay, explosions, unarmed combat and more explosions shown off in the most effective manner possible.

The character bits are clichéd but also just work, so there’s enough emotional backing to the violence. If you squint and look at the film in the right light, you might also see it as a mild critique of the detached ways of modern technological warfare in some scenes, of course in between the film milking modern technological warfare for the funnest possible action.

Revolver (1973)

Vito Cipriani (Oliver Reed), an ex-cop, is now working as the vice governor of a prison in Milan.

He has recently married Anna (Agostina Belli) and both are mentally still in their honeymoon period. So it is no surprise that it hits Cipriani hard when his wife is suddenly kidnapped. The kidnappers don't take long to make contact with him. Their proposition is simple, either Cipriani somehow makes the escape of the small time crook Milo Ruiz (Fabio Testi) possible, or Anna dies.

At first, Cipriani does his best to beat the identity of the man's secretive benefactors out of Ruiz, but the criminal is either an extremely good liar under duress (believe me, you do not want to kidnap Oliver Reed's wife) or just doesn't know who would want him freed.

Cipriani doesn't dare to go to the police without any clues to the identity of his wife's kidnappers, and so hasn't any other choice than help Ruiz escape.

The ex-cop is no fool - he hangs on to Ruiz as his only means to get his wife back. Unfortunately the kidnapper's aren't as professional as their boss would like them to be, or Cipriani's involvement in the affair would end here, with the criminal in their hands and Anna back home. Alas, they don't bring her.

Various action set pieces lead Cipriani and a rather relaxed Ruiz to France where both men must agree on a truce if they want to survive the affair they have stumbled into, an affair that turns out to be much more difficult and a lot more political than the men ever could have expected.

 

Revolver begins as a very tight cop movie with less time for self-righteous speeches and more sympathy for the criminals than usual. Just when you think you have it figured out as an extremely slick if not very original variation on typical buddy movie tropes, the film throws you a curveball and goes and turns itself into a pessimistic early 70s conspiracy thriller of the highest caliber. The ending of the film is frightening in its consequence - the best in people is just another angle to be used against them; there is no escape from the system, while even the price it pays you for selling out in the end turns out to be just another kind of lie.

Of course some nice bits of stunt-writing and a pessimistic view on society and human nature don't necessarily make for a good film. Fortunately, Revolver has a lot more to offer, for example a driving soundtrack by Ennio Morricone and very solid English dubbing with Oliver Reed doing his own voice work (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if he had rewritten some of his dialogue - you usually don't hear such sensible use of the word "fuck" in Italian dub-jobs; that Reed, he knew how to curse).

Sergio Sollima's direction is something of a revelation - I knew his qualities from his Spaghetti Westerns, but in my experience most Italian genre directors have two, at best three genres they are really good at (unless we are talking about people like Bianchi - that's more a case of having different degrees of suckitude in different genres), and there was just no guarantee of police movie/conspiracy thriller being one of Sollima's strong ones. I like to be wrong in cases like this.

Sollima does an incredible job of keeping the tempo of the film high, while at the same time moving effortlessly from the action to character moments in a way that should make most of the hacks in the action genre cry.

The main actors are also doing a terrific job. Naturally, Reed does his shouty bits and chews some scenery, but has his acting ticks well under control this time, turning himself into a bundle of spit, intensity, barely controlled violence and plain desperation. This kind of acting often brings the danger of just stomping over the other actors with it. Somehow, Testi holds his ground with a much more laid back portrayal of the rather sympathetic crook who in the end turns out to have a much stronger conviction to truth than Reed's man of the law.

This is as highly recommended as possible.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,action,thriller,conspiracy,oliver reed,fabio testi,sergio sollima,reviews