Film
Blu-ray: The Devil's TrapTuesday, 15 March 2022
Released in 1962, František Vláčil’s The Devil’s Trap (Ďáblova past) is the first in a loose trilogy of historical epics, the second instalment of which (Marketa Lazarová) is often cited as among the greatest of all Czech films.Shorter and sparer... Read more... |
William Hurt, great Hollywood contrarian, has died at 71Sunday, 13 March 2022
No actor had a classier time of it in the Eighties than William Hurt, who has died at the age of 71. Ramrod tall, blue-eyed and aquiline, with a high forehead swept clear of thin fair hair, he was a brash decade's intelligent male lead. Those years... Read more... |
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone review - can it pull you back in?Sunday, 13 March 2022
The relative runt of the Godfather litter was hacked out in a Las Vegas casino, as Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo worked up scenarios for an assignment taken on for the money. Coppola the inveterate cinematic gambler, crippled by the dashing of... Read more... |
Great Freedom review - love behind bars in GermanySaturday, 12 March 2022
A story of forbidden love, Great Freedom takes place almost entirely in a prison. The film's background is encapsulated in the word “175er/ hundertfünfundsiebziger”, still to be found in German dictionaries and collective memories as a... Read more... |
A Banquet review – horror, done beforeFriday, 11 March 2022
One feels, or perhaps hopes, that if she could have avoided it, first-time feature director Ruth Paxton might not have started A Banquet as she ultimately did: with Holly Hughes (Sienna Guillory) arduously scrubbing the frame of her... Read more... |
Master Cheng review - slight but soothing Finnish-Chinese romanceThursday, 10 March 2022
There’s a long tradition of foodie romances proving art-house cinema hits – think of Babette’s Feast, Tampopo, and Chocolat. Sadly, it’s unlikely that Master Cheng, a gentle and very slow Finnish-Chinese coproduction about a chef from Shanghai... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Sun Shines BrightTuesday, 08 March 2022
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the John Ford scholar Tag Gallagher quietly observes in the penetrating – and deeply moving – video essay he contributes to Masters of Cinema’s Blu-ray disc of Ford’s 1953 masterpiece The Sun Shines Bright. It’s... Read more... |
The Batman review - lean and mean, yet againFriday, 04 March 2022
Robert Pattinson’s Batman is lean and aquiline, his Bruce Wayne an obsessive recluse. Matt Reeves’ reimagining is similarly handsome and cerebral, much like his genre craft on the Planet Of The Apes franchise. But superhero reboots have become... Read more... |
Rebel Dread review - generous documentary portrait of punk-reggae legend Don LettsThursday, 03 March 2022
Don Letts, the film director, musician and DJ responsible for so many of the iconic images of punk and reggae artists, executive produced this documentary portrait. The result is a warm and generous chronicle that occasionally veers on the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: SouthTuesday, 01 March 2022
There is little denying that the Antarctic continent is no longer possessed of the allure that it once was. By all accounts, particularly those unspoken, Antarctica has been betrayed, usurped, eclipsed.Beyond the sober walls of research laboratories... Read more... |
The Duke review - a new feelgood classicSaturday, 26 February 2022
The Duke, directed by the late Roger Michell (1956-2021), is a delight. At its heart is a towering, defining performance from Jim Broadbent and an unforgettably surprising role for Helen Mirren.Broadbent plays a real-life character, the... Read more... |
Cyrano review - a heady cinematic ValentineThursday, 24 February 2022
Edmond Rostand’s familiar story of ventriloquised love becomes a sensual, sacrificial tragedy, in Joe Wright’s heady cinematic Valentine, adapted by screenwriter Erica Schmidt from her own stage musical, with music by members of The National.The... Read more... |
