KinoSis

Basil Dearden and the other boundless optimists involved in the production of this film apparently did intend The Assassination Bureau to make money. This is maybe not a motive you would naturally assume on seeing it now – it’s a kitschy period-costume action-comedy about a fin de siècle duel between gentlemen-assassins, based on a pulp novel Jack London couldn’t bring himself to finish. But it was the late 60s, so if we're looking for an explanation as to how this got made, possibly "it was the late 60s" will do. Consider the following for a naturalistic and plausible story. A suffragette in 1914 (Diana Rigg) hires an assassin (Oliver Reed) to voluntarily try and have himself assassinated by his professional killer colleagues. He’s the ring-master behind a wave of political bombings and assassinations or, to use today’s killjoy lingo, he’s a terrorist, but the film strenuously denies we should be worried about any of this, and to be quite honest, it doesn’t feel worth ar

Richard Burton’s contribution to the London-gangland genre might look as if it’s mainly of historical interest now, with its dated dialogue, rather fake looking violence, and a bad-lad cockney accent from Burton that just doesn’t work. Superseded in scary nastiness many times over since it was made, it stands denuded of any power to still shock us; happily, its being denuded lets us get a better look at it, and what it really has to offer a brave punter. Released in a whole year of dark violent fantasies on the screen (among others: Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Shaft, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Wake In Fright, The Devils, Duel - all 1971), Villain feels like it’s not quite part of that psycho-drama moment, but something more grounded and socially astute. Burton plays Vic, an East End gangster who can’t resist branching out to try something new and risky for his gang, namely, their first armed robbery. For the most part, the plot alternates between the crooks (a gormless pac

Does the will to live not dim a little whenever “The Nature of Daylight” starts playing? If I can just offer one helpful note to the producers of Hollywood and television: we hate this piece of music, it’s always been shit, stop using it. Apparently, Denis Villeneuve had wanted to make a science-fiction film since he began his career as a director - a career of, let's say, unpredictable choices - and settled on this: aliens land on Earth and the US Army press-gangs the world’s top linguistics experts into figuring out how to talk to them, so "we" don’t have to start a war. The experts, led by Louise (played by Amy Adams) don’t really have to be asked twice, what with it being the biggest event in history, although from the dour mood of the Army you would think it was latrine duty. SF fans might remember elements of this from Ian Watson’s novel The Embedding. So they put on their astronaut suits for protection and pop round to meet the new neighbours. The film then follo