A horror movie hasn’t made me cry for a while. BRING HER BACK creeps up on you, then pummels you with short, sharp shocks of nightmarish imagery before blindsiding you with incredibly vulnerable emotionality. Arriving to live with their new foster mum Laura (Sally Hawkins) following the sudden death of their dad, the troubled Andy (Billy Barratt). and the visually-impaired Piper (Sora Wong) have a major period of adjustment to get through. But it soon becomes apparent that the affectionate Laura has a dark side and it has something to do with her other foster child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) and her deceased daughter Cathy. The Philippou Brothers’ TALK TO ME was like a ghost train ride, thrilling and entertaining and just as likely to make you laugh and shriek at the audacity of it all. Bring Her Back is a more mature, sober but still mischievous affair, not always a fun watch but one that leaves its images and soulful message seared on your brain. SSP
Wicked: For Good (2025) Review
Insulate (2025) Short Film Review
Sam’s Noirvember 2025
Film 1 – Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). Fritz Lang’s final American film is a clever story well told, though somewhat lacking the mastery of style from his early career.
Film 2 – Le Samouraï (1967). Jean-Pierre Melville’s endlessly influential hitman noir is morally murky, suspenseful and largely built around how great Alain Delon looked in a coat and hat.
Film 3 – Laura (1944). Otto Preminger’s mannered but intriguing murder-mystery looks and sounds great, with striking performances from Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and a young, sexy Vincent Price.
Film 4 – The Breaking Point (1950). In the second, less famous but more faithful adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, Michael Curtiz trades in romance for grit to largely good effect.
Film 5 – The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). This knotty classic about murder, passion and the consequences of both is good-looking and well performed in an old-fashioned way (complimentary) that belies its twisted core.
Film 6 – While the City Sleeps (1956). Visually and thematically referring to Fritz Lang’s earlier work, here the German expat’s direction remains tightly controlled, though the script does too much telling rather than showing.
Film 7 – Naked Alibi (1954). A taut, dynamic and surprisingly brutal crime thriller with top-class work from Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame. As should be a given for everything I watch this month, it looks amazing too.
Film 8 – Out of the Past (1947). A soaring romance punctured by extreme darkness and cynicism that gets a lot of mileage out of Robert Mitchum’s physicality. Jacques Tourneur forever a master of atmosphere.
Film 9 – The Big Heat (1953). The best of Fritz Lang’s final career phase by some distance, this is a tough and uncompromising cops and gangsters picture with operatic flourishes.
Film 10 – Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948). This UK-set, US-shot postwar blackmail thriller doesn’t have many surprises in store, but is entertainingly played, particularly by Robert Newton at his slimy best. SSP
Bugonia (2025) Short Cut Review
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) 100th Anniversary Review
Sam’s 31 Days of Horror 2025
Frankenstein (2025) Review
Review in Brief: The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024/25)
Small wins for art are worth savouring, especially in an age when it is seemingly under attack from all sides. In the first cinematically released, all-animated Looney Tunes feature film that was thankfully sold to Ketchup Entertainment rather than being junked by David Zazlav’s Warner Bros, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza) fight to save their home, and then their planet, from an alien plot revolving around of all things, bubble gum. Considering the uphill struggle this one had to go through to get released, it’s almost disappointing that the final product is just a really good Looney Tunes movie. It doesn’t innovate beyond preserving the traditional cel animation style, it’s not about anything more than being silly, but it evokes the anarchic mischief of the best Looney Tunes shorts and celebrates top-notch vocal performances and talented craftspeople. SSP
Review in Brief: Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
If PREY proved that there is still plenty of life in the PREDATOR franchise, then animated anthology KILLER OF KILLERS offers more exciting new routes for it to take. Extraterrestrial predators face off against warriors from three of Earth’s time periods: a 9th century Viking, a 16th century samurai and a 20th century fighter pilot. Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) might have gone for the most obvious historical settings to slot in a predator to cause havoc, but he and his animators have a lot of fun playing with technologically asymmetrical combat formula and coming up with the elaborate bloody action sequences. Aside from a pleasing gag with a flintlock pistol, the film’s final stretch that brings all three stories together is a little underwhelming, but it’s enough to make you hope for further creative takes on the Predator universe. The standard has well and truly been set for Trachtenberg’s upcoming PREDATOR: BADLANDS. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 