wed 30/04/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: director Leonardo Van Dijl discusses his sexual abuse drama 'Julie Keeps Quiet'

Pamela Jahn

"Julie's story takes place everywhere", says the writer-director Leonardo Van Dijl, whose psychological drama Julie Keeps Quiet has little to do with its sports milieu per se. "Uncovering systemic abuse often starts by listening to the silence and paying attention to the people who don't speak out."

DVD/Blu-ray: All We Imagine as Light

Graham Rickson

All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women in contemporary Mumbai; as shown by director Payal Kapadia, the city is arguably the film’s fourth major character. Kapadia eschews convention, her metropolis painted in muted colours with dark skies and heavy rain a constant.

Stelios review - Athenian rhapsody in blues

Hugh Barnes

The English title of a new film about the legendary singer-guitarist Stelios Kazantzidis, who popularised rebetiko, which is often called “the Greek...

The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben...

Adam Sweeting

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a super-...

The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp

James Saynor

Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our present age....

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April review - powerfully acted portrait of a conflicted doctor in eastern Georgia

Helen Hawkins

Dea Kukumbegashvili's second film is stylistically striking and emotionally raw

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest exotic opus, 'Grand Tour'

Pamela Jahn

The Portuguese director's comic melodrama takes a fantastical journey through Southeast Asia and the history of cinema

Neil Young: Coastal review - the old campaigner gets back on the trail

Adam Sweeting

Young's first post-Covid tour documented by Daryl Hannah

The Penguin Lessons review - Steve Coogan and his flippered friend

Saskia Baron

P-p-p-pick up a penguin... few surprises in this boarding school comedy set in Argentina during the coup

Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story - compelling portrait of the ground-breaking Irish writer

Markie Robson-Scott

Glitz and hard graft: Sinéad O'Shea writes and directs this excellent documentary

DVD/Blu-ray: In a Year of 13 Moons

Nick Hasted

UK disc debut for Fassbinder's neglected, tragic, tender trans tale

The Amateur review - revenge of the nerd

Adam Sweeting

Remi Malek's computer geek goes on a cerebral killing spree

Holy Cow review - perfectly pitched coming-of-age tale in rural France

Helen Hawkins

Debut feature of immense charm with an all-amateur cast

Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories

John Carvill

Fair-minded Woody Allen biography covers all bases

Blu-ray: Yojimbo / Sanjuro

Graham Rickson

A pair of Kurosawa classics, beautifully restored

Mr Burton review - modest film about the birth of an extraordinary talent

Helen Hawkins

Harry Lawtey and Toby Jones excel as the future Richard Burton and his mentor

Restless review - curse of the noisy neighbours

Graham Fuller

Assured comedy-drama about an ordinary Englishwoman turned vigilante

Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängers

Sarah Kent

Emotions too raw to explore

Four Mothers review - one gay man deals with three extra mothers

Markie Robson-Scott

Darren Thornton's comedy has charm but is implausible

Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural France

Graham Fuller

A deadpan comedy-thriller from the director of ‘Stranger by the Lake’

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

Pamela Jahn

The documentary director talks about his ominous first fiction film and why its characters break into song

DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance

Markie Robson-Scott

French director Coralie Fargeat on the making of her award-winning body-horror movie

A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs villains again

Justine Elias

A meandering vehicle for the action thriller star

The End review - surreality in the salt mine

India Lewis

Unsettling musical shows the lengths we go to avoid the truth

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

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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