Film Reviews
The WondersWednesday, 15 July 2015![]()
Somewhere in rural Italy around the border of Umbria-Lazio and Tuscany, a family is trying to make the best of trying circumstances. Their mainstay is the production of honey. They have sheep. There are blackberries on their land. But money is short. Despite the fact that her irascible German father Wolfgang is seemingly in charge, it’s actually 12-year-old Gelsomina who runs the show. Read more... |
13 MinutesTuesday, 14 July 2015![]()
The plot to assassinate Hitler that everyone knows about was on 20 July 1944. It had its Hollywood moment in 2008 with Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Von Stauffenberg. That film unfortunately arrived on the coattails of Downfall, which has since made all Anglophone portrayals of the Third Reich look dismally bogus. Read more... |
Love & MercyFriday, 10 July 2015![]()
The pop-genius-as-self-destructive-lost-soul biopic is this year’s genre du jour. We’ve already had documentaries on Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, while coming down the pike are dramatised bios of NWA, Hank Williams, Elton John, and, again, Cobain. Read more... |
P'tit QuinquinThursday, 09 July 2015![]()
When least expected, comedy has come stumbling into the work of French auteur Bruno Dumont. In his seven films to date, from the Cannes-winning Humanité of 1999 through to the stark Camille Claudel 1915 from two years ago, the director, frequently working with non-professional actors, has marked out a distinctive territory defined by its bleakness and emotional intensity. Read more... |
Dear White PeopleTuesday, 07 July 2015![]()
US films about and aimed at African Americans broadly fall into two categories: gangsta life in the ‘hood action flicks and broad comedies, the latter niche dominated by Tyler Perry, who does for Black Americans what Mrs Brown does for Irish women. Dear White People, on the other hand, is a sophisticated social satire in the vein of Spike Lee’s early She’s Gotta Have It or Bamboozled. Read more... |
Terminator GenisysFriday, 03 July 2015![]()
Oh Arnie. For two terms Arnold Schwarzenegger retooled himself as the Governator who could save California from debt, drought and Democrats. By the time his term ended, the Californian exchequer was reduced to rubble. A bit, in fact, like the Golden Gate bridge at the start of Terminator: Genisys. When the Terminator said he’d be back he wasn’t wrong. But this time he’s leading a project that’s only pretending to destroy California’s infrastructure. Read more... |
AmyThursday, 02 July 2015![]()
“I don’t think I could handle it, I think I’d go mad.” It’s the sort of answer given by anyone asked how they’d react to fame. With the possibility looming of recognition beyond jazz circles, Amy Winehouse, who was then not so well-known, responded with something which could have appeared trite; the humble words of an aspirant not wanting to seem too big for her boots. Read more... |
She's Funny That WayFriday, 26 June 2015![]()
If Peter Bogdanovich – remember him? – weren't there in the credits, Woody Allen would seem the unmistakable director of She's Funny That Way, the way too intermittently funny trifle that calls to mind such far superior Allen paeans to the New York stage as Bullets Over Broadway and finds leading man Owen Wilson adopting Allen's mannerisms throughout (as well Wilson might, having led the cast of Midnight in Paris). Read more... |
Station to StationSaturday, 20 June 2015![]()
Station to Station documents the transcontinental American rail trip taken by a group of musicians, visual artists, and performers in 2013. Local artists and marching bands also contributed to the series of "happenings", often enhanced by light shows and pretty effects, which included rock concerts staged at each of the 10 designated stops on the westward journey. Organised by the artist Doug Aitken, the marathon must have brought the contributors and audiences much pleasure. Read more... |
Mr HolmesFriday, 19 June 2015![]()
In 1998, Ian McKellen starred in Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, an account of the final days of the ailing and tormented film director James Whale. Echoes of it are discernable here, where Condon has recruited an older McKellen for a carefully-crafted depiction of the imaginary dotage of Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective. Aged 93, the doddering sleuth struggles to... Read more... |
The BurningThursday, 18 June 2015![]()
A group of gunmen are roaming the Argentine rainforest jungle, terrorising local farmers in order to obtain the rights to their land. One farmer follows an ancient custom, praying to spirits to send a saviour. When a young stranger strolls bare-chested and barefoot out of the jungle, the farmer assumes his prayer has been answered. Read more... |
EntourageWednesday, 17 June 2015![]()
Some people are irritated by Entourage’s superficial depiction of Hollywood as a bro fantasy world, but this is like condemning a soufflé for not being a roast chicken. For those like myself who enjoyed Entourage the television series, Entourage the movie will be very much the kind of thing they like, since it is essentially a feature-length version of the long-running HBO/Sky Atlantic show; non-enthusiasts, however, may find it shallow, shambolic, sexist, and smug... Read more... |
Les Combattants (Love at First Fight)Tuesday, 16 June 2015![]()
A twist on the battle between the sexes and the romance which blooms after the dust has settled, Les Combattants pitches the reticent Arnaud into the path of the intimidating Madelaine. While the outcome is never in doubt, true love is only achieved after navigating a few bumps in the road, most of which result from Madelaine’s feelings that she and the world in general are at war with each other. Read more... |
London RoadFriday, 12 June 2015![]()
So many plays and musicals are adapted from films (Bend it Like Beckham is up next) that it comes as something of a throwback to find a film that takes as its source an acclaimed musical play. The sheer fact that there is a movie of London Road is doubly extraordinary when one considers that the widely acclaimed theatre production from 2011 was anomalous even as a stage show, let alone transposed to the screen. A piece of verbatim theatre conceived very much without take-... Read more... |
Jurassic WorldFriday, 12 June 2015![]()
Jurassic World opens on a close-up. The smooth creamy surface of an egg is shattered by a claw attacking it vexatiously from within. In no time at all a scaly little critter is peeping out at us. It took a mite longer for the latest in the Jurassic Park franchise to hatch. The last film was 14 years ago and this fourth instalment seems to have been on the development slate almost ever since. Now that it's here at last, what’s new? Read more... |
The Damned: Don't You Wish That We Were DeadThursday, 11 June 2015![]()
What Wes Orshoski’s new documentary points out, above everything, is how much pop success relies on an ordered narrative and an easily understood package. First-wave British punk band The Damned, on the other hand, wrote as many great songs as their peers, but their career has been a mess of random creativity, changing line-ups and dreadful business decisions.... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

Following a tradition that reaches back to the The Who’s Tommy, bands and musicians with serious artistic ambition have created rock...

Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’...

The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs...

“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events...
Back in 2009, there were Ben and Wystan on stage (Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art). Last year came Ben and Master David Hemmings (Kevin...

In 2012, an eight-hour long version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby...
The English title of a new film about the legendary singer-guitarist Stelios Kazantzidis, who popularised rebetiko, which is often called “the...

There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher;...

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...