Film
Kieron Tyler
Once open a time, all children would have blossomed into adults. Or, at least, have entered the adult world immediately after childhood. There was no intermediate stage. Then, in the 1950s, teenage was acknowledged as a distinct phase. Neither child nor adult, these young people had their own lifestyle, lingo and mores. Yet, as the film Teenage makes clear, this new section of society had actually emerged at the beginning of the 20th century but wasn’t recognised as such. Teenage’s cut-off point is the 1950s.Teenage explores teenage before teenagers were codified, as youth culture took shape Read more ...
theartsdesk
There are no awards, nor nominations. On the plus side there are no publicity chores either. And there is none of that contractual argy-bargy about billing. In this week’s Listed, there is no billing for the stars who show up on screen without prior warning. And it’s only the biggest stars can do this sort of thing: materialise in the narrative and give it a powerful shot in the arm. If properly deployed, the impact of uncredited cameo can be huge. Indeed, in the week the runners and riders for the Academy Awards have been posted, you could argue that the best performance of all – and perhaps Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Night of the Hunter is not recorded as having charmed critics when released in 1955, but its reappearance in cinemas means it can be seen for what it was: a dark, frightening and intense film which questions the nature of faith and what happens when evil comes to town.Central to the impact is Robert Mitchum’s creepy portrayal of bogus preacher, con man and serial killer Harry Powell. Without Charles Laughton’s sure-footed and distinctive direction framing this unforgettable performance, the film would not be as impactful as it is. Although almost 60 years old, The Night of the Hunter Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The 2014 Oscar nominations are out, and many of the expected awards-season favourites will be popping yet another champagne cork tonight (or, given that the nods take place at 5.30 am in Los Angeles, maybe over breakfast). But even as Cate Blanchett, Bruce Dern, and Jared Leto toast the further kudos that continue to come their way, let's spare a thought for such hopefuls as Emma Thompson (Saving Mr Banks), Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), and - most astonishingly - Robert Redford (All Is Lost), who lead the list of odds-on nominees who were left this morning at the starting gate.One wonders Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Filmmaking collective Radio Silence - who comprise Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who take on shared directorial duties for this film), Chad Villella and Justin Martinez (Devil's Due's executive producers) - shot to fame on the genre circuit in 2012 with the visceral and funny haunted-house sequence from found-footage anthology V/H/S. Presumably off the back of that they got a deal working with 20th Century Fox to make a feature-length horror film. Unfortunately, the final product is somewhat underwhelming, touted as the found-footage Rosemary’s Baby, Devil's Due lovingly pays Read more ...
emma.simmonds
It was Benjamin Franklin who said "money has never made man happy...the more of it one has the more one wants," and there is no shortage of examples of boundless greed and how an abundance of cash can upturn and empty lives. Based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker convicted of fraud, The Wolf of Wall Street gives us one such example. This is Martin Scorsese's 23rd narrative feature and with it he proves that, at 71, he's inarguably still got it, with a flamboyantly immoral tale very much for and of our age, which is apparently the most effing foul-mouthed film in the Read more ...
David Nice
The dishonourable parents call each other "fucking headcase" and "asshole" in front of the child rather than "nasty horrid pig" and "your beastly papa", but the essence remains of Henry James’s social comedy with queasy undertones. As transplanted by directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel from late Victorian London to contemporary New York, six-year-old Maisie – she doesn’t age, as she does in the novel, for obvious reasons – is still the shuttlecock rebounding from one careless divorcee’s racket to the other’s.Since the fragments of dissolution and dishonour are seen entirely through Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Crystal Fairy (or to give it its full, original name Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and 2012) is an endearing curio from odd-couple director and star Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera, who have teamed up for a double-bill of projects: the other one is the psychological thriller Magic Magic, currently scheduled for an April release. Silva describes Crystal Fairy as being about "the birth of compassion in someone's life"; it's a comedic drama, improvised by its cast and buoyed by character-sensitive direction and a pair of perfectly pitched, often squirm-inducing, performances.Silva is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Niko (Tom Schilling) just wants a decent cup of coffee. With this ambling excuse for motivation, he drifts through a day and night in Berlin, contriving to lose his girlfriend, driver’s license and college funding (Dad’s just discovered he dropped out two years ago). Coincidentally similar to Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, this black-and-white indie film about late-twentysomething urban ennui has touched a nerve in Germany, where it won six German Film Awards, as well as the European Film Awards’ European Discovery prize, and is still showing in Berlin a year after release.Writer-director Jan Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“There’s not much more I can do in action apart from explode,” says Sylvester Stallone with a grin on his face on being asked about the next step in his career. Following a video montage of the sweaty, musclebound action heroes Stallone is adored for (minus any clips from Rhinestone, his musical collaboration with Dolly Parton), a jolly and reflective Stallone took to the London Palladium stage in sharp suit full of sage advice and revelations about his writing process. From the centre aisle of the Royal Circle, Sly looked fit and healthy and, thanks to the entire evening also being projected Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a wealth of stories in Exposed: Beyond Burlesque, a highly articulate, visually flamboyant and finally moving documentary journey around the wilder edges of the performance genre. Director Beth B, a veteran of New York’s experimental film world, followed her eight subjects over the course of some years, and allows each of them to speak for themselves with full honesty and considerable humour, while at the same time creating a fluid picture of this “immediate, honest and sometimes brutal art form,” as British artist Mat Fraser describes it.They come from a range of backgrounds, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In one of the extras on the DVD release of Computer Chess, director Andrew Bujalski explains that the film came about after he realised how to marry two ideas which he had been conjuring with for a while: a then undeveloped interest in the period when computers were programmed to play chess, and a yen to make a film with vintage black-and-white video technology.An exercise then, Computer Chess is hardly about the film itself. Making it was a means to enact these ideas. It’s a knowingly meta film. It looks amazing and comes over as an authentic-seeming archive resurrection, with all who appear Read more ...