Film Reviews Blog

This page only shows films that have a review. By default in date order of reading with newest at top

Saturday 24th May 2025

USA 2018

Running time: 82 mins

Echo in the Canyon

Director : Andrew Slater

Film Summary :
LA Laurel Canyon music scene 65-68 presented by modern musicians

Rated by rogerco, DVD proj @ home on 24 May 2025

Review Summary :
Interesting but a bit limited, Part archive, part interview, part rehearsal, part concert - a bit of a mish-mash



Wednesday 7th May 2025

Average rating from 2 reviews

France 1974

Running time: 133 mins

Nada

Director : Claude Chabrol

Synopsis extract :
French leftist revolutionries kidnap US Ambassador in a brothel and then discover the state is ...

Reviewed by rogerco, DVD proj @ home on 07 May 2025

Seeing it again for at least 3rd time

Watched again. Had forgotten twists towards end. Greatly enjoyable and possibly more nearly topical than ever - it is coming.




Saturday 22nd March 2025

France 2006

Running time: 126 mins

Tell No One

Director : Guillaume Canet

Film Summary :
Young doctors wife murdered - 8 years later perhaos she is still alive

Reviewed by rogerco, DVD proj @ home on 22 Mar 2025

Shades of Hitchcock

Good story with some appaerent holes. Classic hictchcock as our hero gets implicated in the two murders and goes on the run from the police while also being pursued by the bad guys.

Eventually a good cop realises he is innocent




Saturday 8th March 2025

Argentina 2009

Running time: 129 mins

The Secret in Their Eyes

El secreto de sus ojos

Film Summary :
Reitired court investigator writes a novel about an old case that has troubled him and continues the investigation to find out what happened afterwards

Reviewed by rogerco, DVD proj @ home on 08 Mar 2025

Excellent thriller very well resolved

Gripping from the opening scenes of Esposito exploring his memories as he struggles to write asnd visiting his old boss - who is still working and then the gradual exposition of what happened 20 years earlier and how they eventually caught and broke a confession out of Gomez by Irene goading him about his inferiority - and then the unexpected release and his presumed employment as a hired killer for the deep state, Epiosito's colleagues murder in his flat and his exile to a remote outpost.

Then in the present they track down Morales (the victim's husband) and discover no trace of Gomez. Eposito visits Morales, also in self imposed exile to a remote town, and discovers him living alone with a photo of his wife. He eventually confesses that when the investigation failed he tracked down Gomez and captured and killed him

Driving away something doesn't ring true to Epiosito and he circles back and watches Morales house until he sees him carry food and water to a barn. Inside he discovers Gomez still alive and serving a real life sentence for his crime in solitary silence - Morales does not speak to him.

Eposito leaves and resolves to seek his own closure with the murdered colleague, who he now realises was killed because he told the killers that he was Eposito, and Irene - which ends the film with her smile. 




Saturday 1st March 2025

Finland 1990

Running time: 79 mins

I Hired A Contract Killer

Director : Aki Kaurismäki

Film Summary :
Man hires a contract killer to end his life after loosing his dead-end job, but then discovers he doesn't want to die.

Reviewed by rogerco, DVD proj @ home on 01 Mar 2025

Review Summary :
People smoke a lot and talk little in scenes of tatty poverty - its a Kaurismäki film.

Kaurismäki's take on 80's London

He succeeded in finding the remaining seediest parts of London undergoing the Thatcher change for this engaging tale of a man trying to shake off the killers he himself hired.