Film
Funny Pages review - comic-book confidentialSaturday, 17 September 2022
Shortly after the art teacher who thinks he’s a genius jumps on a table naked to be sketched, only to meet a sticky end, high school senior Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) sets out to start his brilliant career as an underground cartoonist.From this... Read more... |
Moonage Daydream review - sensory bombardment and secretsSaturday, 17 September 2022
Watching Bowie for the only time in what turned out to be his last tour in 2003, I wanted glamour and mystique, Ziggy preserved. Instead here was ordinary bloke Dave, badly dressed in faded jeans and a mismatched top. The beautifully sung, committed... Read more... |
Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022)Thursday, 15 September 2022
Paris, 16 March 1960 – and cinema ruptured. The first public screening of the 29-year-old Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, A Bout de Souffle, breathed life into an arthritic medium, announcing a new world of possibility.Its story, of a French petty... Read more... |
Crimes of the Future review - Cronenberg looks backWednesday, 14 September 2022
Crimes of the Future is a nostalgic return to classic Cronenberg, a comforting catalogue of body horror and fleshy biosynthesis, paranoid plots and shadowy cabals. Sharing a title with his 1970 debut, the director is still fascinated by our physical... Read more... |
See How They Run review - a whodunit pastiche set in Fifties LondonFriday, 09 September 2022
A starry cast headed by Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell doesn’t quite manage to bring this lavish, light-hearted period pastiche to life, though it looks good – nice cars, lovely costumes, a quasi-Wes Anderson vibe – and there are mild chuckles... Read more... |
Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD: The PianoTuesday, 06 September 2022
Jane Campion’s enigmatic, triple-Oscar-winning film looks as beautiful as it did when it was released almost 30 years ago. Holly Hunter (you can’t help thinking she’s been underused ever since, give or take her performance in Campion’s Top of the... Read more... |
Three Thousand Years of Longing review - be careful what you wish forSaturday, 03 September 2022
Before there was cinema, there was story-telling around the fire with those who could spin the best yarns, conjure the most vivid visions, winning the love of their audience. George Miller has been bringing innovative and entrancing stories to the... Read more... |
The Forgiven review - the shelterless skySaturday, 03 September 2022
John Michael McDonagh’s acerbic tragedy of manners and morals sees West meets East, in a literal car crash of sloppy behaviour and messy intentions.Alcoholic doctor David and blocked children’s author Jo (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) are... Read more... |
Meeting Gorbachev review - Werner Herzog offers a swansong tributeWednesday, 31 August 2022
You react differently to Meeting Gorbachev knowing that the film’s subject was on occasions brought to its interviews from hospital by ambulance; his interlocutor, Werner Herzog, doesn’t mention that fact, of course, anywhere in the three encounters... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Desire / All My Good Countrymen - Two films by Vojtěch JasnýTuesday, 30 August 2022
Hailed by Miloš Forman as “the spiritual father of the Czech New Wave”, Czech film director Vojtěch Jasný’s long career began in the early 1950s and spanned five decades. All My Good Countrymen (Všichni dobří rodáci), based on a screenplay... Read more... |
DVD: WayfinderSunday, 28 August 2022
Road movies in England work better by foot. Slowing down finds the scale to explore our small island, tramping Chaucer’s pilgrim paths, not Kerouac’s roaring highway.Visual artist Larry Achiampong’s debut feature accordingly sends its heroine from... Read more... |
Her Way review - turning tricks for her son's sakeSaturday, 27 August 2022
Marie (Laure Calamy), the efficient fortysomething sex worker protagonist of the French drama Her Way, doesn’t have life easy, but she calmly works the badly paid street corners of Strasbourg because she can choose her clients, some of them long-... Read more... |
