Film
ryan.gilbey
The raucous young lads swaggering down the streets of a charred, deserted town could be the Lost Boys in an African production of Peter Pan. Some are in their late teens, others are no older than 10 or 11, but most are decked out in fancy-dress garb and accoutrements which suggest a recent dip in the dressing-up box.One is sporting a Santa Claus hat, another a pair of wings; there is a crash helmet, beads, a neon-red wig. These are child soldiers in an unspecified modern African country, and they are wearing whatever they have managed to steal from their victims as they’ve rampaged from one Read more ...
sheila.johnston
A rubicund major-general leaps up from his desk, scrunches up his face in concentration, breaks into a run and belts towards the office wall, intending to race through it. Sadly, in this opening sequence of The Men Who Stare at Goats, he falls flat on his face, and so does the joke; so does the whole film, actually, come to that. It has an unrivalled comic premise and a terrific all-star cast including George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey. What's not to like? Well, the script, the script and the script - and those three things, as Alfred Hitchcock once famously Read more ...
sheila.johnston
It would be an understatement to say that the auguries weren't good for Wes Anderson's first animated movie, the world premiere of which opened the London Film Festival last night. The distributor - Twentieth Century Fox, by a neat coincidence - was coy about screening it to critics, the trailer (below) was teeth-grindingly unfunny and an uncommonly candid feature in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week reported deep tensions on the film's London set.Apparently Anderson didn't take a shine to the idea of a year in Blighty and instead went to ground in Paris, airily stating that, having set Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Terry Gilliam set toupees a-flutter with a feisty piece in the Sunday Times about the pandemonium surrounding the release of his new film, firing off broadsides at Tracey Emin and gossips who spread malicious rumours about the late Heath Ledger, and deploring the bureaucratic bloat which he reckons has capsized the BBC. “I’m good at being angry – it’s an occupation,” he growled.It was reminiscent of the younger Gilliam who masterminded his own school of satirical collage with Monty Python, when weekly deadlines forced him to run on boiling adrenalin. But it’s a shame a bit more of this Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
A familiar Herzogian weirdness was on display at last night's Herzog documentary double bill. And not all of it was cinematic. The organisers of the Herzog retrospective had matched up out-of-the-way venues to specific Herzog movies, and these movies to suitable companion acts. Last night’s two documentary portraits of American evangelicalism, Huie’s Sermon and God’s Angry Man, were separated by a live gospel choir, which cajoled and corralled the audience into spiritual, vocal and happy-clappy fervour. It totally out-Herzoged Herzog and transformed a night of edgy, recherché cinephilia Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“You’ve no idea how boring everything was before I met you.” As written by Nick Hornby and spoken by Carey Mulligan in An Education, these words of gratitude come after a moment of stillness in which Jenny, Mulligan’s character, reflects on her experience as a 16-year-old schoolgirl taken on a social joyride by a 35-ish hustler, David (Peter Sarsgaard). It’s Twickenham in the early Sixties, the age of austerity's not yet over, and they’re sitting in his Bristol outside her house at night. She tells him she sometimes thinks he’s the only person who’s done anything in “this whole stupid Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Russians are prone to ask the big questions, and among them, resonating periodically and patriotically, from film studio corridors to the Kremlin itself, is, "What is the state of our national film industry?" A partial answer is provided by a fleet of films in three forthcoming British festivals. And the forecast? Much darkness visible. But a rare chance to see five classic Soviet musicals from the 1930s to the 1940s on the big screen in Britain does something to brighten the picture.Film professionals here in Moscow seem an unusually cliquey lot (unless it just goes with the territory). Read more ...
theartsdesk
After theartsdesk's round-ups of new music and classical releases on CD, this week we offer our choice of the most interesting new releases on DVD of recent films, and also of box sets and re-issues. Not forgetting this month's stinker. The selection was made by Anne Billson, Ryan Gilbey, Sheila Johnston, Jasper Rees and Adam Sweeting. Click on a DVD cover to find it for sale. DVD of the Month Sleep Furiously, dir. Gideon Koppel (New Wave Films)by Jasper ReesThe wider world is possibly not aware of such a thing as Welsh cinema. The Principality’s export drive has produced several Read more ...
ryan.gilbey
Woody Allen has made four. Christopher Guest starred in and co-wrote the best one of all time, then directed some damn fine examples of his own. Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais have built their careers and reputations on them. Now the Uttoxeter-born writer-director Shane Meadows has thrown his hat into the mockumentary ring with Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, the profile of a bitter, weather-beaten and entirely fictional roadie.The filmmakers have been careful to point out in interviews that Le Donk himself (real name: Nicholas) was cooked up many years ago by Paddy Considine, the actor who Read more ...
anne.billson
Just when you thought vampires had lost their bite, along comes Korean director Park Chan-wook with Thirst. It's a loose adaptation of Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin in which the adulterous lovers also happen to be drinkers of blood. They suck, they fuck and they kill, and, in the event of a vampire death-match, they would surely make mincemeat out of a toothless teen idol like Edward Cullen. Twilight this is not.The leading man is Song Kang-ho, one of the better-known Korean actors in the West thanks to his enjoyably broad performances in The Host and The Good, The Bad, The Weird (in which, Read more ...
anne.billson
Your friends never learn. No matter how many times you tell them you don't look on going to the cinema as a social activity, they still insist on dragging you along with them. And even though you've told them a hundred times that, after a hard day's writing about Béla Tarr the only film you can even consider watching afterwards is District 9, they still call up and say things like, "Hey, let's go and see the latest Michael Haneke," or, "What do you say to Hunger?" or, "How about that new Iranian film?"The usual arguments ensue. They say, "But Mr McCritic gave it five stars and four smiley Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Staycationers who didn't make it to their favourite Greek isle this summer may constitute a ready-made audience for Driving Aphrodite, the travelogue masquerading as a film that has opened just in time to tap into a collective desire for sun, sand, and the odd drop of retsina just as the nights are beginning to draw in.Others will merely roll their eyes at the predictability of it all, from the boorish stereotypes of Mike Reiss's script to the feel-good ending that lands our lovesick heroine, My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos, in a big fat Greek clinch. (Oops, I gave it away, but c'mon Read more ...