Film Reviews
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3DWednesday, 16 September 2009
Chances are you have either read the 1978 illustrated children’s book this film was based on, or have read it to your offspring, in which case you will know it’s a charming story told with frequently absurdist humour and visual invention - perfect inspiration for an animated film in 3D. |
Film: BirdwatchersWednesday, 16 September 2009The tourist cruise boat chugging up the Amazon pauses for another photo opportunity. A dozen or so tribesman with clay-daubed faces and loincloths are discovered posed like a tableau: a colourful addition to the rainforest fauna. The boat marks time for a beat till the natives, glowering resentfully, fire off a stream of half-hearted arrows. Then it quickly revs up and motors on. But wait: a reverse angle shot shows the action from another perspective. The rubberneckers barely out of sight, the... Read more... |
Fish TankFriday, 11 September 2009
It is, as the best cinema should be, always all about the image. Andrea Arnold's films are born, she says, with just this: a visual imprint - strong, unsettling, inexplicable. The stories then slowly unfurl in her mind from that starting point. On paper, they sound grim: the director goes for terse, no-nonsense titles, and her working-class world seems at first unforgiving. Read more... |
Dorian GrayWednesday, 09 September 2009
Oscar Wilde was once bossing a high-society drawing-room with swishes of his rapier wit when someone else had the temerity to mint an aphorism. “I wish I’d said that,” intoned the great man. Back came the devastating retort: “You will, Oscar, you will.” Read more... |
Film: AdventurelandWednesday, 09 September 2009
Superbad was a modern-day coming-of-age comedy with inexplicable 1970s trimmings (the title, groovy credits sequence, Richard Pryor references and so on). Now its director, Greg Mottola, has made a period piece proper in the form of Adventureland, set in the mid-1980s in a cheesy, dilapidated Pittsburgh theme park where the rides make you throw up, and the stalls are rigged against any customer hoping to win more than a dying goldfish. |
9Tuesday, 08 September 2009
Another year, another animated film which plonks us down into the ruins of civilisation. After WALL-E , it's the turn of 9, but this time the causes of the apocalypse are not ecological; it's the fault of big bad machines which, like the ones in The Terminator and The Matrix franchises, have turned against us and reduced our cities to rubble. Read more... |
Julie & JuliaTuesday, 08 September 2009
If you tried to cross chefs, romantic comedy and cyberspace, you might end up with a YouTube video of Nigella Lawson recreating the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally. As much fun as that would be, it would hardly justify two hours of screen time. That’s where Julie & Julia comes in. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Wicked review - overly busy if beautifully sung cliffhanger
"No one mourns the wicked," we're told during the immediately arresting beginning to Wicked, which concludes two hours 40 minutes later...
Akram Khan, GIGENIS, Sadler’s Wells review - Now 50, Khan re...
London-born Akram Khan has come a long way in a 35-year career. From performing as a young teen in Peter Brook’s production of The ...
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Pema Tseden's final film Snow Leopard is a Chinese Tibetan-language drama that addresses wild animal preservation. It serves as a kind of...
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From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool...
Hannah Scott, Worthing Pavilion Theatre Atrium review - fill...
London-based singer-songwriter Hannah Scott has warned her next song may reduce us to tears. It is, she says, inspired by events following the...
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This Dickens classic is an annual treat, or a Christmas trial – depending on your point of view. At the...
Mediha review - a brutalised Yazidi teen comes of age with a...
The plight of persecuted minority groups around the world seems to be growing worse. As one form of response, a non-fiction film like Mediha...