fri 21/03/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

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

Saskia Baron

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for his pioneering use of colour in the 1960s when only black and white images were taken seriously as an art form. My European Trip: Photographs from the Car,  his debut show at MOMA in 1968 was a breakthrough.  Hugely successful gallery shows around the world and countless books have followed. 

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

Adam Sweeting

The power struggle between New York crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello is one of the foundational stories of the American Mafia, though perhaps asking Robert De Niro to play both of them was a trifle over-optimistic.

theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on...

Nick Hasted

François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of writing and...

Santosh review - powerful study of prejudice and...

Helen Hawkins

Held up by the censors in India though screened at Cannes and nominated for an International Oscar, Sandhya Suri’s 2024 film Santosh serves as a...

Flow review - come the apocalypse, cue the animals

Saskia Baron

I so wanted to like Flow. I’d heard good things from usually reliable critic friends who’d seen it already and told me it had enchanted them and...

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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

I'm Still Here review - powerful tale of repression and resistance

Demetrios Matheou

Brazilian director Walter Salles reflects on his country’s dark history under dictatorship

Blu-ray: Golem

Graham Rickson

This Polish 1979 Meyrink adaptation is a visually striking dystopian drama

Captain America: Brave New World review - talking loud, saying nothing

Nick Hasted

Muddled filler between Avengers films which hardly deserves Harrison Ford

Memoir of a Snail review - deliciously offbeat Australian animation

Katie Colombus

A darkly whimsical stop-motion masterpiece examining the shells we create for ourselves

To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle

James Saynor

A slick tale of two refugees striving and surviving in Athens

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review - older, sadder Bridget has started ditching the ditz

Helen Hawkins

Michael Morris's deft direction produces a maturer kind of romcom

theartsdesk Q&A: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' - 'It became a question of self-respect'

Nick Hasted

The exiled filmmaker on authoritarian minds, reluctant radicalism and Iran's future

Blu-ray: High and Low

Graham Rickson

Akira Kurosawa’s multi-layered Japanese noir, brilliantly plotted

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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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

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Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review - a portr...

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for his...

The Alto Knights review - double dose of De Niro doesn'...

The power struggle between New York crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello is one of the foundational stories of the American Mafia, though...

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François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of...

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The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the bill, yet the...

Santosh review - powerful study of prejudice and police corr...

Held up by the censors in India though screened at Cannes and nominated for an International Oscar, Sandhya Suri’s 2024 film ...

Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet review - Shakespeare without...

1965 was a year of change in Britain. It saw the abolition of the death penalty and the arrival of the Race Relations Act. It was the year of the...

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Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many interwoven strands of the...

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