wed 02/04/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural France

Graham Fuller

“Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his deceased mentor Jean-Pierre, the film’s ambiguous ending suggests he might still share it with the widow, Martine (Catherine Frot).

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his apocalyptic musical 'The End'

Pamela Jahn

Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with the aftermath of the brutal anti-communist massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66. Those films addressed how people lie to themselves in order to live with guilt and trauma. Oppenheimer's first fiction film, The End, is a radical continuation of the same idea.

DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance

Markie Robson-Scott

“I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”Coralie Fargeat, writer,...

A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs...

Justine Elias

The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds and...

The End review - surreality in the salt mine

India Lewis

The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced documentaries, is a surreal examination of a group of individuals...

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La Cocina review - New York restaurant drama lingers too long

Saskia Baron

Struggles of undocumented immigrants slaving in a Times Square kitchen

Blu-ray: Lifeforce

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's frenzied, far out space sex vampire epic

Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychological thriller feels shallow

Saskia Baron

Immaculately crafted family drama aimed at international art house audiences

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review - a portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz

Saskia Baron

Scenes from a seemingly picture-perfect marriage

The Alto Knights review - double dose of De Niro doesn't hit the spot

Adam Sweeting

Barry Levinson's Mafia saga drifts gently into the sunset

theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on 'When Autumn Falls'

Nick Hasted

The modern French master reflects on ageing, useful lies and country secrets in his new slow crime film

Santosh review - powerful study of prejudice and police corruption

Helen Hawkins

Sandhya Suri tackles the caste divides and misogyny of Indian policing

Flow review - come the apocalypse, cue the animals

Saskia Baron

The Oscar-winning animated creature feature somehow doesn't work

Opus review - the press trip from hell, starring John Malkovich and Ayo Edebiri

Markie Robson-Scott

Mark Anthony Green directs a confusing commentary on celebrity culture

theartsdesk Q&A: Indian star Radhika Apte on 'Sister Midnight'

Pamela Jahn

The actor on her breakout screen performance capturing the frantic pulse of Mumbai, and living and working between London and India

All Happy Families review - unhappy in their own way

John Carvill

Indie comedy-drama tackles toxic masculinity in the post-#MeToo era

Black Bag review - lies, spies and unpleasant surprises

Adam Sweeting

Steven Soderbergh's spy drama is cool, cynical and sometimes very funny

Sister Midnight review - the runaway bridegroom

James Saynor

Goats, vampirism and weird marriage in a madcap Mumbai

theartsdesk Q&A: Raoul Peck, director of the documentary 'Ernest Cole: Lost and Found'

Pamela Jahn

Peck analyses his approach to the anti-apartheid photographer's work and to his methods as a political filmmaker

Blu-ray: The Barnabáš Kos Case

Graham Rickson

Witty and stylish Slovak black comedy, alarmingly prescient

Bonhoeffer review - flawed biopic of a saintly man of courage

Sebastian Scotney

This film about the pastor accused of conspiring in the Hitler assassination plot raises more questions than it answers

Twiggy review - portrait of a supermodel who branched out

Markie Robson-Scott

The face of 1966: Sadie Frost's documentary captures Twiggy's extraordinary versatility

On Falling review - human cogs in a merciless machine

Graham Fuller

Mesmerising drama about a gig economy worker at the end of her tether

theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The Brutalist'

Pamela Jahn

The much-garlanded actor on what playing the architect László Toth meant to him

Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's grisly, blackly comic sequel patents a surreal Texas zone all its own

Oscars 2025: long day's journey into 'Anora'

Matt Wolf

'Anora' creator Sean Baker wins four trophies in a night full of firsts - and a second trophy for Adrien Brody

The Last Showgirl review - Pamela Anderson stars as a middle-aged Vegas dancer

Markie Robson-Scott

Gia Coppola's third feature is atmospheric but disappointing

Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy

John Carvill

Gus Van Sant's non-judgmental indie classic about a gang of narcotics addicts

The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up

Nick Hasted

Oz Perkins’ Longlegs follow-up plays Stephen King's killer toy for bloody laughs

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

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