independent cinema
BallastSunday, 13 March 2011
The opening images have mighty symbolic heft. A boy dashing across a blasted wintry field compels a flock of birds to take to the air, hundreds if not thousands of them blackening sky and screen, squawking and flapping in cacophonous unison. Cut to... Read more... |
DVD: Winter's BoneSaturday, 05 February 2011
The timely arrival on DVD of Winter’s Bone as it heads for the Oscars ceremony gives a fresh chance to dwell on the film’s unshowy riches. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Ree whose father has disappeared, leaving her to care for an invalid... Read more... |
Easier With PracticeWednesday, 01 December 2010
Easier with Practice is a film about phone sex based on a short story that appeared in GQ magazine. It’s enough to make any right-thinking filmgoer not in the Will Ferrell/Chuck Palahniuk/American Pie core demographic head for another screen – any... Read more... |
Another YearWednesday, 03 November 2010
Mike Leigh's Another Year traverses the four seasons beginning with spring, and yet the mood is autumnal throughout. People don't sunbathe or picnic or build bonfires or for the most part respond in any particular way to the passage of time. Instead... Read more... |
CyrusThursday, 09 September 2010
At the same time, those of a certain generation will be curious to see Jonah Hill breaking free from the Judd Apatow stable, playing the overgrown kid, 21-year-old Cyrus, of the title. But outshining both the fellas is Marisa Tomei, who completes... Read more... |
Film: Beautiful KateFriday, 30 July 2010
Finding a cheerful Australian film these days is quite a challenge. Having discovered the particular affinity between Australia’s parched and expansive landscape and the genres of horror and misery memoir, the nation’s filmmakers have set about... Read more... |
Storyville: Leaving the Cult, BBC FourMonday, 05 July 2010
Joe, Sam and Bruce may be three callow teenagers from southern Utah but they’re still smart enough to realise that the only world they have ever known is wrong, deeply wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they make the hardest decision of their lives by... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Twilight in Tent CitySunday, 27 June 2010
The Los Angeles Film Festival would seem to have everything going for it. There's the perfect Californian weather, the vast number of stars who live and work in the city, and this year there’s been a glamorous new venue in downtown Los Angeles. The... Read more... |
True Stories: We Live in Public, More4Tuesday, 15 June 2010
With the last ever series of Big Brother dominating Channel Four’s schedules for the rest of the summer, the first TV screening of this Sundance Film Festival award-winner couldn’t have been better timed. Because the chillingly disconcerting “art... Read more... |
DVDs Round-Up 5Saturday, 13 March 2010
Two films with a East European flavour, Katalin Varga and Tales from the Golden Age, are among our March selection, which also includes the lovely, bittersweet Irish drama Kisses. Our US release (available worldwide, of course, by mail-order) is Wim... Read more... |
Film 2009-10: Boo for HollywoodTuesday, 29 December 2009
In 2009 Hollywood sank deeper into the trough that it has busily been colonising over the last decade. The year's twin peaks, the most keenly analysed awards, each seen as a bellwether of international cinema, were firstly Danny Boyle's Britpic-... Read more... |
St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's GoldThursday, 17 December 2009This film was never going to be nominated for any awards, but then it probably doesn’t need critical acclaim - the first reworking of the glorious 1950s Ealing Studios comedies (which were based on Ronald Searle’s cartoons), released in 2007, was... Read more... |
