Film Features

David Lynch: In Dreams (1946-2025)

Nick Hasted Sunday, 19 January 2025

David Lynch’s final two features mapped a haunted Hollywood of curdled innocence and back-alley eeriness. Mulholland Drive (2001) seemed the ultimate LA noir, till Inland Empire (2006) dug into deepest Lynch. The eighteen fallow big-screen years preceding his death this week show the loneliness of his vision in his medium’s conformist capital, which he nevertheless adored. “It’s kind of a trick in the light [that] is magical,” he said of his adopted hometown’s allure.

Best of 2024: Film

theartsdesk Thursday, 26 December 2024

Saskia Baron

Anora

Between the Temples

Io Capitano

Dahomey

Emilia Perez

Green Border

Io Capitano

Monster

A Normal Man

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

Documentary highlights from the 2024 London Film Festival

Saskia Baron Saturday, 26 October 2024

One of the many pleasures of the London Film Festival is the chance to see high-quality documentaries on the big screen. If lucky, these films might get a brief, specialist cinema release, but all too often non-fiction features are destined for TV. Seeing them projected full-size in the dark with a live audience sharing the experience is a far better way of gauging their impact than watching them alone in a living room.

The law's sick voyeurism - director Cédric Kahn on 'The Goldman Case'

Hugh Barnes Saturday, 21 September 2024

The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of two pharmacists, was known as “The Trial of the Century” – even though the century wasn’t over yet, as one of the prosecutors quipped.

The Micro Golden Age of Mid Eighties Fantasy Films

Justine Elias Saturday, 03 August 2024

“When we hear the formula ‘once upon a time,’ or any of its variants,” wrote Angela Carter in her introduction to her Book of Fairy Tales, “we know in advance that what we are about to hear isn’t going to pretend to be true. We say to children: Don’t tell fairy tales!’ Yet children’s fibs, like old wives’ tales, tend to be over-generous with the truth rather than economical with it.”

Best of 2023: Film

theartsdesk Tuesday, 26 December 2023

Numbers indicate if entries are listed in order of preference

Saskia Baron

Anatomy of a Fall

Broker

Fallen Leaves

Joyland

Killers of the Flower Moon

Otto Baxter: Not a F**ing Horror Story

Return to Seoul

St Omer

Scrapper

A Thousand and One

Powell and Pressburger: The Composers

graham Rickson Friday, 22 December 2023

Unlike, say, Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Michael Powell’s working relationships with musicians were cordial, particularly his collaborations with composers Allan Gray and Brian Easdale.

Powell and Pressburger: A Celtic storm brewing

Kristin M Jones Wednesday, 20 December 2023

“Nothing is stronger than true love,” a young laird says to a headstrong young woman in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), his voice heard above the sounds of wind and waves. She replies, “No, nothing.”

Comment

Michael Powell: a happy time with Bartók’s Bluebeard

David Nice Tuesday, 19 December 2023

In his final years Michael Powell mooted the possibility of a Bartók trilogy. He wanted to add to the growing popularity of his work on Bluebeard’s Castle, the deepest of one-act operas, an idea he had previously rejected of filming the lurid "pantomime" The Miraculous Mandarin and, as third instalment, not the earlier ballet The Wooden Prince but a film about the composer’s time in America and his return, after death, to Hungary.

Powell and Pressburger: In Prospero's Room

Nick Hasted Saturday, 02 December 2023

There’s a thread of bright magic running through British cinema, from Powell and Pressburger through Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman and Lynne Ramsay, and it’s wrapped around Jarman’s last home like fisherman’s rope.

Powell and Pressburger: the glueman cometh

Graham Fuller Saturday, 11 November 2023

The shop assistant turned World War Two Land Army girl Alison Smith, clad in a summer dress on the sabbath, steps through a glade onto a hilltop track above the village of Chillingbourne in Kent. It’s the same road once taken by medieval pilgrims riding to seek blessings or do penance at Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury Cathedral.

Powell and Pressburger: Spy masters

Demetrios Matheou Tuesday, 31 October 2023

Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell are, almost certainly, Britain’s greatest directors. Hitchcock was slightly older, and entered the film business earlier; in fact, Powell worked as a stills photographer on Hitchcock’s Champagne and Blackmail, in the late Twenties, shortly before making his own films.

Powell and Pressburger: Battleships and Byron

Hugh Barnes Saturday, 28 October 2023

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made a glorious run of movies from The Spy in Black (1939) to The Small Back Room (1949). Yet the duo’s reputation went into steep decline in the 1950s, and they began to encounter difficulty in securing finance for projects.

Michael Powell interview - 'I had no idea that critics were so innocent'

Saskia Baron Tuesday, 24 October 2023

Michael Powell fell in love with his celluloid mistress in 1921 when he was 16. It’s a love affair that he’s conducted for 65 years. At 81, he’s not stopped dreaming of getting behind the camera again. At Cannes this year he hinted at plans to make a silent horror film, but he’s reluctant to talk about it.

Martin Scorsese's 'Mean Streets' - a triumph of personal filmmaking

Demetrios Matheou Monday, 23 October 2023

Ask someone to pick their favourite moment from a film by Martin Scorsese, something defining.

Powell and Pressburger's 'The Red Shoes' - art and nothing but

Hugh Barnes Saturday, 21 October 2023

Nobody ever forgets The Red Shoes (1948) because it’s a movie that seems to change the way an audience experiences cinema. A story about a diverse group of individuals collaborating to make art, the film is itself a wonderful example of the process.