Larry Oliver Film Reviews

Still courtesy of Sony Pictures (UK) Until Barbie , the most financially successful film directed by a woman was Hi, Mom , the feature debut of writer-director-star Jia Ling, which, if Chinese box office figures are to be believed – and Box Office Mojo stopped endorsing them – grossed $841.7 million, dominating the 2021 Chinese Spring Festival holiday period. Three years later, Ling is back, with Yolo , loosely inspired by Masaharu Take’s 2014 film, 100 Yen Love , about a woman in her thirties who takes up boxing. Yolo requires Ling to physically transform herself into a competent-looking boxer. In the dazzling finale, Ling’s character Du Le Ying, goes three rounds with a professional, the second round of which is filmed in a continuous two-minute shot (in women’s boxing, rounds last two not three minutes). You don’t want her to win so much as survive. Yolo performed impressively at the Chinese box office, grossing $479.4 million, after opening in February 2024. It did less well in ...

Still courtesy of A24 Films (US) / Lionsgate (UK) Five years after her notable debut, Saint Maud , that took audiences into the delusional mind of a tortured, lonely, self-sacrificing nurse, director Rose Glass is in more cheerful mood with her long-awaited follow-up, Love Lies Bleeding , a film set in the late 1980s that pays homage to Thelma and Louise . She casts Twilight star Kristen Stewart, recently seen as Princess Diana, in a sharply contrasting role, as Lou, a gym manager first seen with her hand down a blocked toilet. Co-writing the script with director Weronika Tofilska, whose credits include the television series, Baby Reindeer , Glass explores the love at first sight romance between Lou and Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a body builder with a dark past who is on her way to Las Vegas on her way to a contest. Lou introduces Jackie to steroids, which has genuinely unexpected consequences. Glass’ mood is relative. The catalyst of the drama is domestic abuse. Lou’s sister, Beth (Jen...

Still courtesy of  Bleeker Street (US) / Focus Features / Universal Pictures (UK) Set in the maybe-not-so-distant future, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s feature, I.S.S. , is a confined space, zero gravity suspenser about three Americans and three Russians aboard the International Space Station who are given separate sets of orders when the world ignites below them into World War Three. The Americans are ordered to take control of the space station ‘by any means necessary’. The Russians are told not to expect any more Uber Eats. It is just as well that the crew on board did not rely on Dr Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) and colleague Christian Campbell (John Gallagher, Jr) for news from home. ‘How are relations between our two fine countries?’ Kira might reasonably have been asked. ‘I don’t know. I was too busy getting used to powdered food,’ she may have replied. Nick Shafir’s script doesn’t generate many laughs, but it does neatly play against our expectations. The film doesn’t re...

Still courtesy of Vertical Releasing (US) When it comes to French history, I confess to regnal ignorance. Why so many Louis when two is enough? (‘Louie Louie’, sung by The Kingsmen.) I am grateful to writer-director-star Maïwenn for introducing me to Louis XV (1710-1774), as portrayed in her film Jeanne du Barry , a lavish spectacle in which the titular courtesan enchants the King in pre-revolutionary France. I also appreciated the exchange, ‘This is barbaric.’ ‘No, this is Versailles’, which counts as so bad it’s … bad. At one time, French films split the credit between scenario and dialogues. Here, among the screenwriters Maïwenn, Teddy Lussi-Modeste and Nicholas Livecchi, no one takes responsibility. But then there isn’t much dialogue, which works to the film’s advantage. Writers such as Moliere have spoilt us. We expect wit from French costume dramas. Here, we just get fashion – nouvelle Vogue rather than French New Wave. At one point, Jeanne (Maïwenn) attracts the comment, ‘she’...

Photo: Dean Rogers. Still courtesy of Studio Canal (UK) There isn’t a word called ‘bioxploitation’ but maybe there should be to refer to films like Back to Black . These are movies that get punters through the door by virtue of their subject, famous pop stars what died too young, that get greenlit to reignite interest in their subject’s back catalogue, maybe make the surviving family a few quid and that. The subject in question is London-born and bred (oy, oy) singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, who had two hit albums, won five Grammys, and died in her pink-walled, half-decorated home in 2011, aged 27. We should be moved – I packed extra tissues – but there wasn’t a wet eye in the house. Like many people of a certain age, I lived through Winehouse’s decline and fall in real time. She was the subject of numerous newspaper headlines, tottering incoherently towards the gutter. Her unhappiness was evident, but what was the cause? The film, written by Matt Greenhalgh and directed by Sam Tayl...

Still courtesy of A24 Films (US) / Mubi (UK) For her eighth film as writer-director, Priscilla , Sofia Coppola re-tells the true story of young Priscilla Beaulieu’s relationship with the controlled and controlling pill popper, Elvis Aaron Presley, singing star and icon, characterised in the movie by a twitchy leg that, when he sits down, never stops moving. Constrained to some extent by being unable to use Elvis’ tunes – he is only shown performing a Jerry Lee Lewis number, ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ – Coppola concentrates on the limited viewpoint of her titular protagonist, who first is introduced to Elvis in 1958 and, after spending some time with him at parties hosted in his house while he is on military service in Wiesbaden, Germany finds herself left behind then summoned by him, then left behind and so forth. Referring to her as Cilla or ‘Satnin’ – weirdly the nickname Elvis also gave to his late mother – the star attracts and repels Priscilla in equal measure until she final...

  Still courtesy of Orion Pictures (US) / Warner Bros (UK) There is a school of thought that a film writer-director follows a critical and modest box office hit with a literary adaptation. It worked for Greta Gerwig with Little Women . There is a further school of thought that you follow it up with a tale of two childhood lesbian best friends who start a high school fight club to get laid. Wait, what? No one really had Bottoms , co-writer-director Emma Seligman’s follow up to Shiva Baby , on their bingo card, because who plays bingo anyway since the pandemic? At any rate, Seligman’s reunion with co-writer-star Rachel Sennott, puts one in mind of Gerwig’s reteaming with Saoirse Ronan – except that Ronan didn’t get punched in the face as one of the March sisters, which would have made for a very radical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel, and not, in my humble opinion, a successful one. The title, Bottoms , isn’t explained – it actually doesn’t appear until the end of ...