Reviews by Anton Bitel

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Mission: Impossible III (2006)

  Review preview for Mission: Impossible III

  Fans of the first two films are likely to find the agent's journey of the heart an unwelcome distraction.

  The Ethan Hunt franchise gets personal, while chasing a psychopathic arms dealer half way round the globe.
• 
  Slither (2006)

  Review preview for Slither

  Accompanying the ample gore of Slither is dialogue that, without ever resorting to cheap gags, or deviating from the integrity of the story, is laugh-out-loud funny.

  Alien spawn turns a small Southern town into a monstrous menu.
• 
  Don't Come Knocking (2005)

  Nostalgia for the old times as age resurrects emotions and lost lovers for a legendary film star.
• 
  Lemming (2005)

  Review preview for Lemming

  Moll can hold his own, offering in Lemming a death-defying leap into the angst-ridden psyches of the modern couple.

  A French angle, with David Lynch references, to the surreal underbelly of bourgeois marriages.
• 
  The Squid And The Whale (2005)

  Review preview for The Squid And The Whale

  A strangely static affair - more a revealing family photo than a moving picture.

  Breaking up is hard to do - especially for the kids.
• 
  The Ordeal (2004)

  Review preview for The Ordeal

  A blackly twisted alternative for anyone fed up with the standard Christmas movie fare.

  A passing crooner is kidnapped by a loony in the woods.
• 
  My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

  Review preview for My Neighbour Totoro

  My Neighbour Totoro is a true family film, both about, and for, families and while it is wholly concerned with good, decent, likeable people (as well as endearing rustic entities), it somehow avoids saccharine sentiments or a pat resolution.

  Magical film about two girls who have adventures with the forest spirits they encounter. Twenty-fifth anniversary re-release.
• 
  Inside Man (2006)

  Review preview for Inside Man

  One of the tricksiest, most tautly plotted rollercoaster rides through the thriller genre since The Usual Suspects.

  Spike Lee takes on the heist genre.
• 
  Transamerica (2005)

  Review preview for Transamerica

  These characters could so easily have been turned into figures of ridicule, but instead they are taken entirely seriously and presented as rounded individuals whose sexuality and gender are only parts of a more multi-faceted identity.

  A pre-operative trans woman takes an unexpected journey after discovering she has a son.
• 
  Hostel (2005)

  Teen backpackers get more than they bargain for in sex-fuelled horror.
• 
  An American Haunting (2005)

  Review preview for An American Haunting

  So flagrantly derivative are its set-pieces that it is a struggle to find anything original in the film at all.

  A 19th century Tennessee ghost story, "based on true events"
• 
  V For Vendetta (2005)

  Review preview for V For Vendetta

  In making V a symbol of vengeance, valiance and victory, V For Vendetta does for a letter of the alphabet what Kill Bill did for the colour yellow.

  In the near future, Britain is a fascist state into which a mysterious, masked terrorist dares to fight fear with flames
• 
  The Proposition (2005)

  Review preview for The Proposition

  Cave's screenplay is full of rich incidents, impossible moral choices and, most of all, complex characters, brought to grimy life by the excellent ensemble cast.

  In the 1880s, an Australian outlaw is offered a pardon if he tracks down and kills his psychotic elder brother.
• 
  The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

  Review preview for The Hills Have Eyes

  A master class in the art of the remake.

  A family fall foul of mutants in the desert.
• 
  The Child (2005)

  A petty criminal decides to sell his own child on the black market. Will it be the catalyst he needs to grow up himself?
• 
  Syriana (2005)

  Review preview for Syriana

  Multi-faceted, open-ended and provocative, Syriana is a film whose many parallel scenes, recurring motifs and curious ironies offer plenty of fuel for thought.

  A high-octane thriller for adults that exposes US dirty tricks in the Gulf oil business
• 
  Stay (2005)

  Review preview for Stay

  Not so much a thriller, with an unexpected twist, as a schizophrenic character study, a portrait of the artist as a disturbed young man, still exercising his creative imagination to the very end.

  A psychiatrist tries to stop a young man committing suicide on his 21st birthday.
• 
  The Fog (2005)

  Review preview for The Fog

  Unnecessary and unnecessarily bland remake of what few would in any case regard as one of Carpenter's best films.

  Fog wafts over a small town bringing revenge with it.
• 
  Date Movie (2006)

  Scary Movie scribes take on the rom-com, with lavatorial enthusiasm
• 
  Godzilla (1954)

  Review preview for Godzilla

  The special effects in Roland Emmerich's 1998 remake may have been bigger and better, but what it lacks is the chilling seriousness of the original.

  The original Japanese monster lizard movie - Ban The Bomb!
• 
  The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes (2005)

  Review preview for The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes

  Like Jan Svankmajer, the Quays blend live action and animation to create a surreal hermetic vision that is as beautifully seductive as it is chillingly inaccessible. T

  Meglomaniac doctor brings together a piano tuner and a dead opera singer for his grand operatic masterpiece.
• 
  Aeon Flux (2005)

  Futuristic sci-fi post-animated superagent is acrobatic in her desire to save paradise from reactionary forces.
• 
  Good Night, And Good Luck (2005)

  Review preview for Good Night, And Good Luck

  Good Night, And Good Luck proves that it is still possible in the cinema, if not in television, to inform without being boring and entertain without condescending.

  The integrity of journalism is pitted against the politics of the Cold War in Fifties America.
• 
  Manderlay (2005)

  Review preview for Manderlay

  Be warned: this Great Dane backs up his satiric bark with a vicious bite.

  Whether it is right to enforce democracy upon those who remain slaves.
• 
  Chicken Little (2005)

  A story of misfits who save their high school (and the world) from alien invasion.
• 
  Proof (2005)

  Review preview for Proof

  Offers a convincing demonstration of the theorem that good writing and sensitive performances can equal an engaging and nuanced piece of cinema.

  The mathematics of personal relationships, confused by an equation of madness.
• 
  Lady Vengeance (2005)

  Review preview for Lady Vengeance

  Beautiful, riveting, intelligent and surprisingly responsible.

  Revenge is ugly and intricately planned in South Korea. Now out to own as part of the Vengeance Trilogy box set.
• 
  Assassination (1964)

  Battle for supremacy in 19th century Japan, as America attempts to open trade routes.
• 
  Pulse (2001)

  Review preview for Pulse

  The combination of subtlety and indeterminacy makes for an uncanny treat.

  Facing the apocalypse, as a secret website devotes itself to the terrible isolation of ghosts and the parable of techno terror.
• 
  Walk The Line (2005)

  Review preview for Walk The Line

  This film, with its slavish obedience to the genre's tropes, risks making Cash seem all too ordinary.

  Johnny Cash biopic that feels the lurve.
• 
  Grizzly Man (2005)

  Werner Herzog examines the psyche of Timothy Treadwell, a man who lived and died with bears.
• Porco Rosso (1992)

  Anime adventures of a flying pig, Italian Fascists, pirates and an American contract killer between the wars in Europe.
• 
  Hidden (2005)

  Review preview for Hidden

  Hidden is no conventional mystery and viewers searching for straightforward answers to the questions that it raises are likely to be disappointed.

  What dark secrets lie behind the mysterious video stalker?
• 
  Long Weekend (1978)

  Review preview for Long Weekend

  A creepy one-off.

  Getting back to nature for a sophisticated Sydney couple upsets the animals.
• 
  Jarhead (2005)

  Review preview for Jarhead

  It is to the film's great credit that its politics remain subtle.

  Waiting for war, with Albert Camus, in Operation Desert Shield.
• 
  Cry Wolf (2005)

  A Halloween stalker in an orange ski mask might , or might not, be the invention of campus japesters in a Scream-style slashfest.
• 
  Breakfast On Pluto (2005)

  Review preview for Breakfast On Pluto

  The quirkily personal and explosively political always seem to be dancing under the same mirrorball.

  An Irish transvestite, searching for the mother who abandoned him, is caught up in terrorist violence and hilarious goings on in London.
• 
  Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

  Review preview for Night Of The Living Dead

  Though shot on cheap black-and-white film stock, NOTLD was the film that would turn the whole horror genre blood red, with its innovative use of graphically realistic gore effects.

  Film that set the template for the modern zombie movie.
• 
  13 (2005)

  Review preview for 13

  An impressively noirish moral fable.

  Man becomes sucked into a potentially fatal gambling ring.
• 
  Barefoot Gen (1983)

  Review preview for Barefoot Gen

  The film's real power rests in its portrayal of the Hiroshima bombing not from the point of view of politicians or the military, but through the eyes of a humble Japanese family.

  Animation outlining the evils of the atomic bomb as told through the eyes of a young boy who survives the Hiroshima attack.
• 
  Barefoot Gen 2 (1986)

  Sequel charts the further adventures of the plucky schoolboy in post-nuclear bomb Japan.
• 
  The Producers (2005)

  Review preview for The Producers

  Despite the odd moment when its extravagant routines spill out onto the streets of New York, for the most part the film feels trapped within its stage origins.

  Mel Brooks comes full circle as his film-turned-Broadway-musical is turned back into a film.
• 
  Whisky (2004)

  Review preview for Whisky

  For all its austerity, Whisky never fails to surprise and intrigue.

  A comedy from Uruguay that tackles the absurdities of solitude and the pretense of a marriage.
• 
  Kings And Queen (2004)

  Review preview for Kings And Queen

  Despite its considerable length, it avoids overstaying its welcome.

  The complex examination of madness, love, psychological growth and unresolved feelings within relationships.
• 
  King Kong (2005)

  Review preview for King Kong

  In Kong, Jackson's technical crew has created a beast that is at once terrifying, magisterial, sympathetic and thoroughly believable.

  Peter Jackson revisits his favourite film in a great remake.
• 
  Sunrise (1927)

  Review preview for Sunrise

  Murnau's film bridges the gap between the era of silent cinema, and of the talkies.

  A man is seduced by a flapper who wants him to murder his wife.
• 
  Nightmare Alley (1947)

  Review preview for Nightmare Alley

  The real highlight of the film is Walker's turn as the femme fatale, Lilith.

  The rise and fall of a con man in one of the darkest film noirs of the American genre.
• 
  Doom (2005)

  Review preview for Doom

  Unfortunately, screenwriters David Callaham and Wesley Strick have got just about everything wrong in their adaptation.

  A futuristic Marines vs monsters video game adaptation.
• 
  Tickets (2005)

  Review preview for Tickets

  The trans-European train on which the film's sections unfold is the perfect setting for such a synergistic venture.

  Three international film directors take a train to Rome and tell stories of love, loss and the beautiful game.
• Hearts And Minds (1974)

  Documentary expose of Vietnam-era US politics.