America
Blu-ray: Marlene Dietrich at Universal 1940-1942Sunday, 07 March 2021
Her glory years as the muse of Josef von Sternberg long gone, Marlene Dietrich had been labelled “box-office poison” and was sulking on the French Riviera when the producer Joe Pasternak summoned her back to Hollywood to star opposite James Stewart... Read more... |
Moxie review - likeable if confused high school comedyWednesday, 03 March 2021
A teen comedy with a thematic difference, Moxie has enough memorable moments to firmly establish comedian Amy Poehler as a director worth reckoning with in what is her second film, following Wine Country in 2019. Telling of the teenage Vivian's... Read more... |
Judas and the Black Messiah review - powerful biopicFriday, 26 February 2021
One of the sadnesses of covid is that films like Judas and the Black Messiah have been held over for release in the hope that cinemas will reopen. Immersive, intense features like this deserve to be seen in a darkened theatre with no... Read more... |
To Olivia review - Keeley Hawes rises above brainless biopicFriday, 19 February 2021
Sure, Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but is that any excuse for a film quite so saccharine? He of all challenging and complex men, with a temperament to match, seems an odd subject for the sort of weightless, paint-by-numbers... Read more... |
Music review - a few music videos cobbled togetherFriday, 19 February 2021
What did Sia want to achieve with Music, her deeply confused first stumble into filmmaking? The reclusive Australian has enjoyed years of global fame for a successful music career. Was it never enough?Music is about an autistic girl called Music (... Read more... |
Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This review - first novel goes beyond the internetTuesday, 16 February 2021
This is a novel, says Patricia Lockwood in her Twitter feed, about being very inside the internet and then being very outside of it. At first, I thought the title referred to aspects of the internet and its disappearing history, as in, “'MySpace was... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan StorySunday, 07 February 2021
In the autumn of 1975, Martin Scorsese was finishing Taxi Driver, Bob Dylan began his Rolling Thunder Revue tour, and Orson Welles’ F for Fake premiered in New York. Welles’ manipulation of found documentary footage of art forger Elmyr de Hory into... Read more... |
Bliss review - simulation or real life?Friday, 05 February 2021
Bliss gets off to a powerful start. Stressed-out Greg Wittle (an endearing Owen Wilson) is in his office, trying to do several things at once: draw his dream seaside home in great detail; talk to his daughter; renew his painkiller prescription by... Read more... |
Malcolm & Marie review - actorly grandstanding in beautiful black and whiteFriday, 05 February 2021
Do you want to spend 105 minutes trapped in a house with two people arguing, or do you already feel that your life under lockdown is quite quarrelsome and claustrophobic enough? If your answer is the former, then Malcolm & Marie is the... Read more... |
Album: Foo Fighters - Medicine at MidnightFriday, 05 February 2021
The massed rock audiences which caused Dave Grohl’s old band such angst have fuelled the Foos. This tenth album was finished early in their 25th year, with a celebratory lap of 2020 festivals booked. Now these are anthems without an audience,... Read more... |
The Capote Tapes review - lush portrait of the louche writerSaturday, 30 January 2021
"A candied tarantula" is one of the many great descriptions of Truman Capote that light up this conventionally made but enjoyable profile of the American author most famous for Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. Written and... Read more... |
Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today review - can America avoid the fire this time?Tuesday, 26 January 2021
I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that familiar to readers in Britain, perhaps not even to black readers in Britain – just as, for a time at least, it seemed that Martin Luther King, a much more visible figure in black history... Read more... |
