tue 08/04/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

Blu-ray: Yojimbo / Sanjuro

Graham Rickson

Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle, and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.

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

Helen Hawkins

Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he changed his name. This film directed by Marc Evans explains how it came about.

Restless review - curse of the noisy neighbours

Graham Fuller

Horror comes in many forms. In writer-director Jed Hart’s feature debut Restless, it’s visited on middle-aged nurse Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) by...

Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind...

Sarah Kent

The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he...

Four Mothers review - one gay man deals with...

Markie Robson-Scott

An Irish adaptation of Garcia Di Gregorio’s acclaimed 2008 film Mid-August Lunch, director Darren Thornton’s Four Mothers is the story of Edward (...

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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

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

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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