Film
Oppenheimer review - epic and enthralling study of 'the father of the atomic bomb'Thursday, 20 July 2023
With a track record that includes Memento, Dunkirk, Insomnia and Inception, Christopher Nolan is not a filmmaker who could be accused of a lack of ambition, but even by his standards Oppenheimer is a staggering achievement. Its three-hour running... Read more... |
Barbie review - uneasy blend of farce and feminismWednesday, 19 July 2023
The prologue to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie augurs well. A gaggle of young girls in a rocky desert are playing with doll-babies while enacting the mind-numbing drudgery of the early 20th century housewife. Then a new godhead arrives, a giant pretty blonde... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Twilight (Szürkület)Tuesday, 18 July 2023
Early editions of Swiss novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1958 novel The Pledge carried the subtitle “Requiem for the Detective Novel”, the writer’s point being that murder cases can take years to solve (if at all) and that those doing the... Read more... |
A Kind of Kidnapping review - claustrophobic class-division satireSaturday, 15 July 2023
A Kind of Kidnapping is a low-budget British comedy with a neat premise and satirical view of class and politics in the midst of a cost of living crisis.A young couple struggling to make ends meet and facing eviction from their squalid flat come up... Read more... |
Medusa review - stylish, smart, seriously strange Brazilian satireSaturday, 15 July 2023
“There are sex maniacs out there, sodomites, murderers, suicidal people, and communists on the loose! I vote for a curfew!” This fabulous explosion of anxiety, from a teenage girl who we’ve seen beat other young women to a pulp for no good... Read more... |
Isabelle Huppert and director Jean-Paul Salomé: 'Cinema is about a little trade, a little business'Tuesday, 11 July 2023
Isabelle Huppert is French cinema’s icon of icy transgression, from Bertrand Blier’s outrageous Les Valseuses (1974) to Paul Verhhoeven’s Elle (2017), in which her character Michéle denies rape’s trauma, instead seeking out her rapist for... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Inland EmpireTuesday, 11 July 2023
Searching for a coherent narrative thread in David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006) is probably futile, so it’s best to begin with the movie’s nervy central performance by Laura Dern in multiple, overlapping roles as “a woman in trouble”... Read more... |
The Damned Don't Cry review - a Moroccan mother and son on the marginsFriday, 07 July 2023
British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s second feature is a departure from his first, the brilliant and disturbing Lynn + Lucy of 2020. That was set on an Essex housing estate; this one takes place in Morocco.Like Lynn + Lucy, it’s beautifully... Read more... |
Shabu review - documentary-drama about youngsters in RotterdamFriday, 07 July 2023
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first... Read more... |
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One review - buckle upThursday, 06 July 2023
After 27 years and half a dozen instalments of a franchise predicated on its ability to up the ante on itself to ever more dizzying heights of ingenious, character-driven, genuinely heart-in-mouth action, the killjoy or cynic may well be lining up... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Western ApproachesTuesday, 04 July 2023
Writer-director Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944), a Technicolor tour de force partly shot in turbulent seas by Jack Cardiff, is a stirring World War II story documentary that demonstrates the bravery, resilience, selflessness, and collective... Read more... |
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review - a baggy, finally poignant finaleSaturday, 01 July 2023
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revived Thirties adventure serials’ simple thrills, a George Lucas notion adrenalised by Spielberg. Its hero Indy Jones wasn’t built for depth or pathos, and the struggle to find reasons for his return notoriously sank... Read more... |
