Film
Helen Hawkins
The inspirations for the directing debut of Benjamin Millepied, choreographer and dancer in Black Swan, are cited as Merimée’s novella Carmen and Pushkin’s narrative poem The Gypsies, the former better known as an opera guaranteed to raise the emotional temperature. Millepied has employed the brilliant Succession composer Nicholas Britell for some of the music; and, in the kind of tender-hearted beefcake role he has shown he can play so effectively, he has Paul Mescal. So why doesn’t this Carmen knock it out of the park?It seems to have taken three writers to craft the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Needy, truculent, and aggressive, an in-your-face stick of intensity and guilt-inducing melancholy, privileged young Amanda in Carolina Cavalli’s downbeat comedy is the girl no one wants to end up talking to in the kitchen at parties. So empathetic is Benedetta Porcaroli’s portrayal of this emotional aggressor, however, that it’s difficult not to root for her. Especially if, per William Blake, one’s bag is eternal night rather than sweet delight. Newly returned from studying in Paris, Amanda has been welcomed back into the matriarchal family’s bosom like a virus and is staying in a Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There are a few perils to saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as Janette Manrara discovered on this opening night of Disney’s anniversary arena jaunt. Trying to divide the Glasgow crowd into sections to sing the song, Manrara tripped over who was to sing what, something only notable because the rest of the evening was possessed of an almost overpowering slickness.Although the opening overture went all the way back to Steamboat Willie, nearly all of the set, which featured a full orchestra, a rotating array of singers supplied from the West End and a likeable, cheerful hostess in Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Devoted fans may not learn anything that new about Noel Coward from Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy, but they will doubtless see some new things. And those who know “the Master” only from his early plays, hardy perennials these days in British theatres, will marvel at the sheer range and volume of his output.Thompson has been given access to archive materials, including Coward’s home movies, by his estate, and these provide a welcome garnish to the bare bones of his CV. See Coward propelling himself on a lilo across the sea at the foot of his beloved Jamaican property. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Studio Canal’s restored print of the 1953 documentary The Conquest of Everest is so sharp, so clear that initially it’s hard to believe that we’re not watching a studio reconstruction. Skies, snowscapes and sunlit uplands glow; it’s only in the perilous final stages that things turn murkier.Do listen to the bonus interview with producer John Taylor, recounting his struggle to get the film financed after a tip off that a British attempt to climb Everest was imminent, and the mad rush to edit the footage against a very tight deadline. Poet Louis MacNeice’s hastily-written commentary, spoken by Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Gardener Narvel (Joel Edgerton) sniffs soil the way Blue Velvet’s Frank inhaled gas, finding erasure and release. Following Ethan Hawke’s priest in First Reformed (2017) and Oscar Isaac’s titular job in The Card Counter (2021), Paul Schrader’s latest driven protagonist verges on absurd, finding solace in pruning before deploying his secateurs with a prior, particular set of skills.Narvel is the head gardener at the plantation-style estate of aristocratic Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). He’s a middle-aged historian and philosopher of horticulture, keeping a journal at a monastic desk. “ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Tunisian lives unfold over a working day in Erige Sehiri’s debut Under the Fig Trees, with fig-picking the backdrop to furtive, sparking collisions between men and women. Love, liberation and oppression all take their turn under the sun as community is strengthened or challenged, and a society is subtly implied.Sehiri has a documentary background, and cast non-professionals from her Kesra setting. The naturalistic, improvised performances seem effortlessly real, but this isn’t prosaic non-fiction. The play of changing light and shade marking the day, the loving framing of beautiful faces Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Masterminded by writer-director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Spy Kids etc), Hypnotic is a speedy, twisty, riotously enjoyable thriller that seeks to bend your mind into impossible shapes while also delivering more than a few droll wisecracks. Ben Affleck, seemingly reinvigorated as half of "Bennifer 2", is bang on the money here as Austin PD detective Danny Rourke. When he’s called out to investigate a tip-off about a bank heist, he finds himself tumbling down a rabbit-hole where time, space and identity itself all get swirled in a kaleidoscopic blender.Already, things haven’t been going Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Full Time opens in darkness. All we can hear is the sound of a sleeping woman breathing. It’s one of the few quiet moments in a film that follows Julie (Laure Calamy) as she scrambles to manage her life. Divorced with two young children, she lives in a village and commutes to Paris. It’s still dark when she drops off her kids with an elderly child minder and it’s dark again when she picks them up after a long day’s work in the city. The radio relays news of train strikes and protests, her journey is a nightmare of crowded replacement coaches. Work is overseeing a team of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fridtjof Ryder’s debut feature made a strong impression at last year’s London Film Festival, and its cinema release ought to give the Gloucester-born director’s career a hefty shove in the right direction. Although that doesn’t mean that Inland is an especially easy-viewing experience.Ryder, who was only 20 when he shot the film in 2020, deals in silences and absences. There isn’t much of a narrative, more of a cracked mosaic of memories, impressions and lurking anxiety, but Inland builds a powerful atmosphere of loss and brokenness. The photography is ominous and watchful. Events seem to Read more ...
Justine Elias
Wandering the wrecked streets of Memphis in search of blues and rock history, two teenage Japanese tourists debate who and what’s better: Elvis Presley vs. Carl Perkins, the sleek ultramodernity of their hometown Yokohoma vs. the “vintage” charms of a nearly deserted Tennessee train station.He’s cool and poker-faced, she’s sweetly extroverted, but they’re young and in love, and no matter how much they argue, the road-tripping couple (Masatoshi Nagase and Youki Kudoh) discover America in a way that natives rarely do. And check out an exchange between her and a downtown denizen who asks for a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Life's journey is a challenge, and then some, for Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), the beleaguered Odysseus/Job (you choose!) equivalent figure at the savage heart of Ari Aster's new film Beau is Afraid. But imagine surviving unimaginable ordeals on the long road of existence only to be met at the end by the Broadway legend Patti LuPone?Some trips are worth the destination and, running a fully felt three hours, this film is one of them, if not for a final sequence that lets the Juilliard-trained LuPone let rip: we all know she played Eva Peron but on this evidence, I'd love to have Read more ...