independent cinema
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor-Director Karl MarkovicsSunday, 22 April 2012
It’s not so very rare for actors to be given a shot at directing their own film. It happens slightly less often that they find financial backing to work on their own script. What makes Breathing, which opened this week in the UK, such a... Read more... |
BonsaiTuesday, 27 March 2012
One of the most refreshing aspects of current Latin American cinema, most evident in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, is a particular brand of off-beat romantic comedy – one with echoes of the literate and quirky US independents of the Eighties and... Read more... |
Ken Russell ForeverFriday, 09 March 2012
Ken Russell fans within reach of the capital will have a surfeit of goodies from tomorrow as London films clubs in the Scala Forever network open a tribute season devoted to the iconic British film director, who died last November.The season not... Read more... |
Don't ThinkThursday, 02 February 2012
The Chemical Brothers have long had one of the most vital shows around. It’s a visual spectacular that can only be likened to peak-time Pink Floyd or Jean-Michel Jarre, yet precision-tooled, without the bombast of those acts. Their long-term visual... Read more... |
DVD: MelancholiaFriday, 20 January 2012
Although Lars von Trier’s latest boasts a few mainstream stars (amonst them, Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland) and the director himself has described the film as having not only having a Hollywood aesthetic but also - horror... Read more... |
Margin CallWednesday, 11 January 2012
Margin Call, a smart, taut and brutally frank portrait of the money game, asks a lot of its audience. A movie about traders as, if not quite good guys, then at least rounded guys? It’s not a trick Oliver Stone ever managed to pull off, and he tried... Read more... |
The Slap, BBC FourFriday, 16 December 2011
While the rest of the country has been busy discussing the knitwear of Denmark’s answer to DCI Jane Tennison, I found myself bereft of anyone to share my unbridled enthusiasm for this Australian adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The Slap. Even... Read more... |
WreckersTuesday, 13 December 2011
There's quite a bit to admire in DR Hood's debut feature. There's the cast for a start, headed by nascent superstar Benedict Cumberbatch alongside Brit-dram It-girl Claire Foy. Beguiling, too, is the piece's setting in the fenlands of East... Read more... |
Another EarthTuesday, 06 December 2011
Another Earth begins, like many more reliable but less ambitious films, with a life-changing event. A young astrophysicist is involved in a collision. Climbing unharmed from her vehicle, she finds a woman and child dead by her hand. Four years later... Read more... |
Welcome to the RileysWednesday, 16 November 2011
As supremely silly as they are, the Twilight movies are made watchable by Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan, whose combination of fidgetiness and aloofness puts me in mind of James Dean’s Cal Trask and Jim Stark. If not as virtuosic as Dean (... Read more... |
The AwakeningFriday, 11 November 2011
Rebecca Hall gets slapped about - and more - during The Awakening, a putative ghost story that lands one of this country's most able and appealing actresses in many a tricky physical but also psychological spot. Whether audiences will go the... Read more... |
JunkheartsThursday, 03 November 2011
British film-makers tend towards bipolarity. Where French cinema is broadly speaking about the middle classes, we tend to get films about one thing or the other. The national fixation with the past supplies stories about how the nabobs of yore lived... Read more... |
