Film
Mr Burton review - modest film about the birth of an extraordinary talentSaturday, 05 April 2025![]() Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he changed his name. This film directed by Marc Evans explains how it came about.PH Burton (played by Toby Jones)... Read more... |
Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural FranceWednesday, 02 April 2025![]() “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Yojimbo / SanjuroSunday, 06 April 2025![]() Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run... Read more... |
Restless review - curse of the noisy neighboursFriday, 04 April 2025![]() Horror comes in many forms. In writer-director Jed Hart’s feature debut Restless, it’s visited on middle-aged nurse Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) by thirtyish Deano (Aston McAuley), the superficially affable toxic male who moves in next door with two... Read more... |
Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängersFriday, 04 April 2025![]() The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the... Read more... |
Four Mothers review - one gay man deals with three extra mothersFriday, 04 April 2025![]() An Irish adaptation of Garcia Di Gregorio’s acclaimed 2008 film Mid-August Lunch, director Darren Thornton’s Four Mothers is the story of Edward (James McArdle) and his 81-year-old mother Alma (the excellent Fionnula Flanagan), who has had a stroke... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his apocalyptic musical 'The End'Tuesday, 01 April 2025![]() Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with the aftermath of the brutal anti-communist massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66. Those films addressed... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The SubstanceTuesday, 01 April 2025![]() “I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”Coralie Fargeat, writer, editor, producer and director of The Substance, is discussing the “visceral journey” and extraordinary... Read more... |
A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs villains againMonday, 31 March 2025![]() The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds and ends nicked from the local Hobbycraft. In A Working Man, Statham’s second collaboration with writer-... Read more... |
The End review - surreality in the salt mineFriday, 28 March 2025![]() The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced documentaries, is a surreal examination of a group of individuals isolated from the chaos of a collapsing external world. Sheltered (or trapped?) in an eerily... Read more... |
La Cocina review - New York restaurant drama lingers too longWednesday, 26 March 2025![]() La Cocina is one of those films that cuts an excellent trailer, succinctly delivering just enough characters, plot and visual flair to entice an audience that enjoyed recent dramas set in restaurant kitchens like The Bear, Boiling Point and The Menu... Read more... |
Blu-ray: LifeforceTuesday, 25 March 2025![]() Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to a mainstream Hollywood career a decade later, following the hit Spielberg collaboration Poltergeist (1982) with his biggest... Read more... |
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