Film Reviews
FrancofoniaFriday, 11 November 2016
The Russian director Alexander Sokurov has never been afraid of tackling weighty, often philosophical issues head on, and his latest film Francofonia is as pioneering – and, some might say, unnecessarily uncompromising – as ever. It’s nothing less than a meditation on civilisation, its potential for preservation or destruction, and history, seen through the prism of Paris's Louvre. Stretching, and evading, the conventions of both documentary and fiction, it’s perhaps best considered... Read more... |
ArrivalThursday, 10 November 2016
While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, it’s faintly reassuring to imagine that there might be some intelligent life form out there beyond the stars that’s just waiting to land on our planet and make us all love one another – or swiftly put us out of our squabbling misery, once and for all. Read more... |
Nocturnal AnimalsFriday, 04 November 2016
Tom Ford steps up to the celluloid big leagues with Nocturnal Animals, a deeply disquieting film that resists classification Read more... |
The AccountantThursday, 03 November 2016
You could begin to wonder if The Accountant is part of a game of one-upmanship between Ben Affleck and his old buddy Matt Damon. If Matt can strike it big with Jason Bourne, the amnesiac super-lethal assassin, Ben can go one better – Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant and super-lethal assassin! Read more... |
A Street Cat Named BobWednesday, 02 November 2016
Cats on film. There are plenty of them. Elsewhere on the web you will find loads of listicles featuring top cats, boss pussies, big mogs, killer kitties, whiskers galore and other such. Cats get their biggest billing of all in the wonderful if anthropomorphic world of Walt Disney. It’s rare for a cat to be played by a cat in a film about a cat. Cat people will be purring, therefore, at A Street Cat Named Bob. Read more... |
The Light Between OceansTuesday, 01 November 2016
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander fell in love in real life while making The Light Between Oceans, which lends an extra dimension to a morose period weepie that needs every bit of excitement it can get. Reminiscent of the laboured celluloid romances of a bygone era that could once have starred Robert Taylor, the film is as vacuous as it is pretty, and if director Derek Cianfrance cut some of his stars' lingering glances, it would have the added virtue of being short.... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Paris BluesFriday, 28 October 2016
The original 1961 poster for Paris Blues trumpeted it as “a love-spectacular so personally exciting you feel it’s happening to you”. Would it were actually thus. Instead, it’s ponderous and features a cast so obviously “acting” that any verve implied by being filmed in Paris and set in the world of jazz is missing in action. Paris Blues is worth seeing, but don’t expect the pulse to quicken. Read more... |
Doctor StrangeTuesday, 25 October 2016
Aiming for the trippy qualities of The Matrix and Inception, Doctor Strange is possibly the most enjoyable Marvel foundation story since the first Iron Man, mixing wit with visual pyrotechnics. Benedict Cumberbatch plays supercilious neurosurgeon Stephen Strange (wholly unrelated to the New Romantic singer responsible for “Fade to Grey”). A virtuoso of the scalpel,... Read more... |
I, Daniel BlakeFriday, 21 October 2016
Most of the crime Ken Loach investigates with compassion and humour happens off-screen right at the start. As the opening credits roll, a woman’s voice with sing-song affability perhaps appropriate to a child, if not for its bureaucratic, box-tick chill, asks Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) a sequence of questions wholly irrelevant to his problem. Read more... |
Ouija: Origin of EvilFriday, 21 October 2016
A prequel to Ouija (2014), Ouija: Origin of Evil zooms back to a mid-Sixties Los Angeles that's all miniskirts, white PVC boots, splendid chromed-up Chevrolets and Studebakers and clangy garage-band pop music. Our hosts are widowed mom Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser, of Twilight fame) and her daughters Lina (Annalise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson). Read more... |
Jack Reacher: Never Go BackWednesday, 19 October 2016
Four years on from Tom Cruise's debut as Jack Reacher in Jack Reacher, here he is doing it again. Not a lot has changed. Cruise eerily continues not to age (does the Scientology robotics division know something we don't?), Jack Reacher is still the man from nowhere who mystically materialises when he's needed, and bad guys obligingly queue up to get their asses kicked and their noses broken. Read more... |
LFF 2016: Their Finest / BrimstoneFriday, 14 October 2016
Among the myriad global offerings at the LFF, the resoundingly British Their Finest ★★★★★ , about a group of film-makers working for the Ministry of Information in London in... Read more... |
InfernoFriday, 14 October 2016
Dan Brown is famed for calamitous language massacres that sell by the kerchillion to tone-deaf Renaissance cryptogram junkies. His sentences hurt eyes and his plots numb skulls. But one thing you can say for Brown is he checks facts like an obsessive-compulsive über-nerd. When the books are transplanted to the big screen, he gets less control over this stuff. The result, in Inferno, is unintentionally comical to anyone (which means pretty much everyone) who knows Florence. Read more... |
American HoneyThursday, 13 October 2016
“It’s a business opportunity,” explains Jake (Shia LaBoeuf) to dreadlocked, wild-child Star (Sasha Lane). She’s eyeing him up in the aisles of a Midwestern Walmart while he dances around with a rag-tag, stoned young crew to Rihanna’s “We Found Love”. “We go door to door. We sell magazines. Come with us.” Sounds an unlikely proposition. Read more... |
LFF 2016: Snowden / The Birth of a Nation / ArrivalThursday, 13 October 2016
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on thrillers like The Parallax View, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American political conspiracies, and inevitably he portrays CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and democratic accountability against the might of America's intelligence agencies. Read more... |
On the road with Bob Dylan: the mother of all rockumentariesWednesday, 12 October 2016
Dont Look Back is the Ur-rockumentary, the template for hundreds of hand-held rock tour films, a source of inspiration as well as a model to aspire to. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The...
Adrien Brody is on a roll. Following his Golden Globe and BAFTA Best Actor wins for his performance as László Toth in...
A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, ITV1 review - powerful d...
The story of Ruth Ellis’s execution in 1955 has found its own macabre niche in British folklore, and has been been the subject of several film,...
Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well...
Towards Zero, BBC One review - more entertaining parlour gam...
The BBC’s latest “cool” Agatha Christie adaptation has many...
Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed...
Mansfield Park, Guildhall School review - fun when frothy, c...
Let’s call it Jane Austen fit for the West End, but with opera singers. The fact that it also serves as a fun ensemble piece for students is also...
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the...
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk...
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Vi...
Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of...