Film
20th Century WomenFriday, 10 February 2017
It would be easy to dismiss this sweet, wayward film as Michael Mills’s self-indulgent love letter to his mother, who raised him alone in California after his father moved out, but it’s subtler and more complex than that. This is an ensemble piece,... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Black Society TrilogyFriday, 10 February 2017
Mixing up your yakuzas and your triads can be a bloody business, as Takashi Miike’s films show in the goriest detail. The title of the earliest work in his “Black Society” trilogy, Shinjuku Triad Society from 1995, says it all – a Chinese... Read more... |
FencesThursday, 09 February 2017
Fences is one of the best-known works by playwright August Wilson, part of his Century Cycle of plays exploring 100 years of black American history, and it won him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987. Wilson died in 2005, but further... Read more... |
Taxi DriverTuesday, 07 February 2017
Travis Bickle’s Manhattan is long gone, and except for those nostalgic for its grindhouses and their exploitation fare, few surely regret its passing. It’s been years since any modern-day Travis could cruise in a yellow taxi along the erstwhile “... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actress Emily WatsonTuesday, 07 February 2017
Emily Watson made her remarkable debut in Breaking the Waves (1996). In Lars von Trier’s grim parable, Watson plays Bess, an ingénue from a remote religious Scottish community who, when her husband is paralysed on an oil rig, perpetuates their... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Cover GirlTuesday, 07 February 2017
Eureka’s restored print of Charles Vidor’s 1944 musical Cover Girl looks and sounds astonishingly vivid, especially when watched on Blu-ray. Would that everything were so simple: despite a starry creative team, the film makes for frustrating viewing... Read more... |
Toni ErdmannFriday, 03 February 2017
There aren't many films that at (nearly) three hours in length leave you wanting more. But such is the hypnotic grip cast by Maren Ade's Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann that its final image seems as much the prelude to something as a closing note on... Read more... |
DVD: The WailingFriday, 03 February 2017
In the extras on the DVD release of The Wailing, South Korean director Na Hong-Jin says, “Every genre of film has its own strengths and weaknesses. By combining many genres you could say that I was able to build and emphasise the strengths, while... Read more... |
LovingThursday, 02 February 2017
Loving is not just a love story, it’s also the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple from Virginia who got married in 1958. Richard was white, Mildred was not, and because interracial marriage was banned in Virginia, they were both... Read more... |
GoldTuesday, 31 January 2017
Matthew McConaughey has already had a go at hunting for gold (on film, at any rate) in 2008's Fool's Gold, where he and Kate Hudson were on the trail of a sunken Spanish galleon full of treasure. Critics were unsympathetic ("excruciatingly lame" was... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Raising CainTuesday, 31 January 2017
It has Brian De Palma’s greatest shock ending since Carrie, and an Alec Guinness-worth of John Lithgow psychopaths – yet 1992’s Raising Cain is rarely remembered among the director’s best works. I last came across it midway through, late at night on... Read more... |
10 Questions for Barry Jenkins, director of MoonlightMonday, 30 January 2017
Twelve months ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was the focus of an intense campaign on social media. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite protested the lack of recognition for black talent at the 2016 Oscars. This year the picture looks a... Read more... |
