Film
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One review - buckle upThursday, 06 July 2023
After 27 years and half a dozen instalments of a franchise predicated on its ability to up the ante on itself to ever more dizzying heights of ingenious, character-driven, genuinely heart-in-mouth action, the killjoy or cynic may well be lining up... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Western ApproachesTuesday, 04 July 2023
Writer-director Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944), a Technicolor tour de force partly shot in turbulent seas by Jack Cardiff, is a stirring World War II story documentary that demonstrates the bravery, resilience, selflessness, and collective... Read more... |
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review - a baggy, finally poignant finaleSaturday, 01 July 2023
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revived Thirties adventure serials’ simple thrills, a George Lucas notion adrenalised by Spielberg. Its hero Indy Jones wasn’t built for depth or pathos, and the struggle to find reasons for his return notoriously sank... Read more... |
Mother and Son review - 20 years with an erratic maFriday, 30 June 2023
In French, this film is called Un petit frère (“A little brother”), and for once it may be that a film’s English title is an improvement on the original. The fitful and fragmented second feature by Léonor Serraille is about a multi-tasking migrant... Read more... |
La Syndicaliste review - a star outshines her conspiracy thriller scriptThursday, 29 June 2023
On the face of it, La Syndicaliste (aka The Sitting Duck) is a conspiracy thriller that runs along familiar tracks: clever woman begins to suspect dirty dealings at a very high level in the high-stakes industry she works for and lands herself in a... Read more... |
Hello, Bookstore review - a documentary with shelf lifeWednesday, 28 June 2023
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Le Mépris (Contempt)Tuesday, 27 June 2023
It’s an odalisque to arouse envy in Titian, Boucher, Ingres, or Manet.Filtered amber, white, and blue lights successively bathe Brigitte Bardot, crowned by that golden cloud, as she asks Michel Piccoli, her co-star and screen husband in Jean-Luc... Read more... |
The Super 8 Years review - Nobel laureate’s meditative self-portrait from home moviesSaturday, 24 June 2023
The French auto-fiction writer Annie Ernaux, now 82, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature last year; now a fascinating new facet of her creative life has been released via her home movies.With her now grown son David Ernaux-Briot (who was... Read more... |
Asteroid City review - desert dreamsFriday, 23 June 2023
Multi-media meta-layers land fast in Wes Anderson’s 11th film, overriding reality. Here’s Bryan Cranston’s portentous Fifties TV host (pictured below) in black-and-white, boxed Academy ratio, documenting rehearsals for a televised play, whose... Read more... |
No Hard Feelings review - nothing about this queasy comedy feels quite rightThursday, 22 June 2023
Last year Jennifer Lawrence won critical plaudits for her war-trauma drama Causeway, which seemingly signalled a bold new direction for her career, but how she got from there to No Hard Feelings is a bit of a mystery. Nothing about it feels quite... Read more... |
Blu-ray: I Am WeekenderTuesday, 20 June 2023
Pinned eyes stare from a frozen husk of a face as a clubber comes down, cradled high over London on a window-cleaner’s perch. Director WIZ’s 18-minute video for Flowered Up’s rave epic “Weekender” (1992) takes you on the E’d up odyssey of Little Joe... Read more... |
The Flash review - back to DC, unremarkablySaturday, 17 June 2023
Superhero movies are the nearest equivalent to American holiday parades: they come along with noisy, bright regularity, and crowds either flock to them, many eager persons deep along the sidewalk, or flee to quieter neighbourhoods.The Flash, yet... Read more... |
