Film
Nick Hasted's Top 10 Films of 2022Saturday, 17 December 2022
Audrey Diwan’s French abortion drama Happening was the year’s hardest but most luminescent watch, as a fiercely intelligent young woman fights for her future survival as an artist in 1963, when illegal abortion requires wartime subterfuge and bloody... Read more... |
Graham Fuller's Top 10 Films of 2022Friday, 16 December 2022
Empires rise and fall; every dog has its day. The increased awareness of and need for diverse voices – together with the series-driven streaming revolution – has made Hollywood less relevant now than it has been at any time since the industry... Read more... |
Saskia Baron's Top 10 Films of 2022Thursday, 15 December 2022
I struggled to find enough features this year for a top 10, probably because Covid’s long shadow made it harder for filmmakers to get interesting work on screen. But there are several documentaries with fascinating characters, untold stories,... Read more... |
Charlotte review - the story of artist Charlotte Salomon, murdered in AuschwitzTuesday, 13 December 2022
“Only by doing something mad can I hope to stay sane,” says Charlotte Salomon (voiced by Keira Knightley) to her lover, Alexander Nagler (Sam Claflin). “I feel it inside me, the same demon that’s haunted so many in my family.”Both are Jewish... Read more... |
Rimini review - crooner without a conscienceSaturday, 10 December 2022
The cartoonist Gerald Scarfe – or his equally mordant forebear George Cruikshank – couldn’t have drawn a seedier Eurotrash excrescence than the crooner, Richie Bravo, who dominates Ulrich’s Seidl’s Rimini.A hasbeen still purveying his Eighties-style... Read more... |
Hold Me Tight review - Vicky Krieps mesmerisesFriday, 09 December 2022
Mathieu Amalric's Hold me Tight (Serre moi fort) keeps springing surprises. Perhaps the first is the title. It sounds like an invitation to settle down with the popcorn to enjoy a light French film dealing with intimacy. Not even... Read more... |
The Silent Twins review - the tragic story of the Welsh teens who were sent to BroadmoorFriday, 09 December 2022
The fascinating story of the silent twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, who were incarcerated in Broadmoor for 12 years for minor crimes, has been told before, several times. There’s a 1986 BBC film by Jon Amiel based on Marjorie Wallace’s book about... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Cat and the Canary (1939) / The Ghost Breakers (1940)Tuesday, 06 December 2022
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, skilfully directed by Elliott Nugent. The death-trap mansion in the Louisiana bayous... Read more... |
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review - superb portrait of a vanished worldMonday, 05 December 2022
We hear the projector whirr as the mute 16mm film flows through the sprockets and on to the screen. For three minutes and a little longer we watch children and adults spilling out of buildings, intrigued by the novelty of a camera on their streets.... Read more... |
White Noise review - sprawling riffs on love and deathMonday, 05 December 2022
This is Noah Baumbach’s most capacious, overreaching work, corralling Don De Lillo’s novel of catastrophising, neurotic academia into a film jazzily dependent on rhythm, hooked on language and wildly diverse in tone.Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) is a... Read more... |
Directors the Dardenne brothers: 'To be living means to be fragile'Saturday, 03 December 2022
Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have made their home region of Liège the site of excruciating moral crises and crushing injustice. Their 12 masterful, double Palme d'Or-winning films act as parables for the embattled human soul.The... Read more... |
Tori and Lokita review - a masterpiece of humanist cinemaFriday, 02 December 2022
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes are Belgium’s national conscience. The brothers, who have been sharing the roles of writer-director-producer since their first film in 1996, make humanist dramas about desperate people trying to survive in a harsh world... Read more... |
