Film
emma.simmonds
Speaking at the BFI's recent preview Jia Zhang-ke revealed that his surprisingly bloodthirsty latest is in fact, contrary to the shift it seems, the next logical step in his journey as a filmmaker: an amalgamation of his interest in personal crisis and his great love for the work of John Woo. Jia described A Touch of Sin as the film where he finally puts a "gun in the hands" of his beleaguered protagonists. It comprises four stories from the economic giant and human rights black hole that is modern China, each of which culminate in cataclysmic violence. With visuals inspired by traditional Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The classic Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu named a number of his films after the seasons, but he restricted himself to spring, summer and autumn. I don’t believe he ever titled one after winter - not that his work doesn’t touch on the closing of the year, and its associations with death. Re-released in a wonderfully restored print, An Autumn Afternoon turned out to be the director’s last film, made in 1962; the previous year had seen the death of Ozu’s mother (the director never married, and lived with her all his life), and Ozu himself would die a year later. But while there is sadness here Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Many films fuse humour with horror and many of those fail to be accomplished in either genre. Bringing fun to the scary often results in a clunkiness which neither raises laughs or goosebumps. The worst example might be the utterly awful Bloodbath at the House of Death, a 1984 film which teamed all-round showbiz eccentric Kenny Everett with veteran actor Vincent Price. What Price thought as he navigated his way through this stinker is not a matter of record, but he may have ruefully cast his mind back a decade to the contrastingly wonderful Theatre of Blood. Released in 1973, it is one of the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
As Literary Review's "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" recognises, there's not a lot that's funnier and more damaging to a story's credibility than an attempt to be sexy that falls flat or, even better, that misfires spectacularly. Some of the most famous movie duds - Showgirls, Body of Evidence, Boxing Helena, Colour of Night - which are beloved of course by a certain type of film enthusiast, this reviewer included, strive for smouldering and deliver mainly laughs. Which brings us to the latest example of inept eroticism: In Secret, debut writer-director Charlie Stratton's adaptation of Zola's 19th Read more ...
Jasper Rees
French cinema is full of long-term marriages hit by a meteor in the form of an attractive younger female. So there is a heavy sense of déjà vu to Before the Winter Chill. It also features another increasingly common trope of modern French film, which is Kristin Scott Thomas playing a perfect French speaker with an English heritage, and accent. So is there a twist? Sort of.Scott Thomas is Lucie (pictured below), the wife of a successful neurosurgeon Paul (Daniel Auteuil) who prefers to operate on brains rather than suffer the fate of his shrink friend Gérard (Richard Berry), who has to listen Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Films in which poetry is almost a character can often become bombastic, but there’s no danger of that in Bruno Barreto’s Reaching for the Moon, whose heroine is the repressed, rather quiet American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto): speaking loudly, we feel, was little in her character, even when she was in her cups (which she quite often is in this deluxe Brazilian English-language biopic).Barreto’s film is about Bishop’s complicated 15-year relationship with the affluent Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), who is the exact opposite of her partner – she’s forthright Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“At the time, I was bored, and I needed something to do,” Tara (Lindsay Lohan) says, trying to explain her participation in a film. “And now…I’m looking for something else to do.” And she gives a small, bottomless sigh. The notorious, bedevilled Lohan is the hot spot in Paul Schrader and Brett Easton Ellis’s chilly nightmare about love in Hollywood. Her Marilyn-style on-set unreliability led every pre-release story about their experiment in micro-budget, Kickstarter-funded cinema.Lohan’s recent homage to Marilyn’s last, nude photo-shoot aged 36 is here followed by a film in which the 27-year- Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Hayao Miyazaki's final film The Wind Rises is grand, sweeping and bursting with the kind of beautiful animation we've become accustomed to from Studio Ghibli (which celebrates its 30th birthday next year). Miyazaki delves into Japanese history with a soaring autobiography of aeronautical engineer Jirô Horikoshi, which also acts as a tribute to the writer Tatsuo Hori - who penned the original short story "The Wind Has Risen".The freedom and highs of creative expression and following your dreams are stylishly rendered through breathtaking flight sequences - first in Jirô’s fantasies Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two potential obstacles need navigating while considering Frank. First, despite what it initially seems, this is not an account of the life and times of Frank Sidebottom, the giant-headed character created by maverick musician Chris Sievey. Second, the attitude towards mental health issues exhibited by those close to Frank in the film makes for awkward viewing. Beyond these health warnings, the presence of Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal in this eccentric, touching film makes it more than a curiosity.As Frank, despite being masked by the disconcerting, big-eyed, blank-faced papier- Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Paths of Glory (1957) stars Kirk Douglas as a First World War colonel who's as fearless leading his poilus on a suicide mission as he is arguing for mercy for three of the survivors. A lawyer in peacetime, he defends them when they are tried as cowards before a panel of French officers who have no intention of exonerating them.Stanley Kubrick's fourth feature was adapted from Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel, which was inspired by the French execution of soldiers chosen arbitrarily to pay for the disciplinary failure of their unit during an attack in the Marne. In February 1915, at Souain-Perthes- Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
The growing pains of teenager Emanuel (Kaya Scodelario, best known for TV's Skins) are ably handled in Francesca Gregorini’s gentle and melancholy drama about grief, mortality and motherhood. Emanuel is obsessed with her mother’s untimely passing at childbirth and when new neighbour Linda (Jessica Biel), who bears an uncanny resemblance to her, moves in, Emanuel can’t help but become attached.In her second film (originally titled Emanuel and the Truth about Fishes) Gregorini proves she has a good ear for music with her mix of French pop (including the upbeat "Laisse tomber les filles"), Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The forces of death and life come up against each other in the strange, somehow impressive Slovenian war drama Silent Sonata. I say “Slovenian” only because director Janez Burger hails from there, and that’s where some of the filming took place (the rest was in Ireland, which was the major, but not the only European co-producer of the film), but the cast and crew are markedly international. And though we can see it’s a war situation loosely based on the former Yugoslavia, there’s no hint at what corner of that conflict it’s refering to.There’s a risk with such projects that the result becomes Read more ...