Film
Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The BeginningSunday, 22 December 2024
There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleasure Garden (1926), Easy Virtue (1927), Champagne... Read more... |
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review - an old foe returnsWednesday, 18 December 2024
It’s difficult to believe that the last stop-motion Wallace and Gromit short graced our screens way back in 2008. Describing the pair’s new outing as a return to form is unnecessary: this duo never lost it in the first place.Wallace & Gromit:... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Three Wishes for CinderellaTuesday, 17 December 2024
Three Wishes for Cinderella (Tři oříšky pro Popelku) is one of Czech cinema’s best-loved pohadky, or "fairy tales".Director Václav Vorlíček and blacklisted screenwriter František Pavlíček (credited under a pseudonym) tone down the story’s... Read more... |
Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes review - a Hollywood legend, warts and allSaturday, 14 December 2024
It might be a push to call this documentary a feminist slant on Humphrey Bogart, but it wouldn’t quite be a shove. Northern Irish filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson’s work has often concerned itself with identity and gender politics, and her narrative here... Read more... |
Sujo review - cartels through another lensSaturday, 14 December 2024
It’s not often we hear barely a single gunshot in a movie set amid Mexican drug cartels, but that may be the way it is for people who actually live amid Mexican drug cartels.In Sujo, Mexico’s bid for the next foreign feature Oscar, we experience... Read more... |
Queer review - Daniel Craig meets William BurroughsFriday, 13 December 2024
Judging by a Sunday Times interview last weekend, Daniel Craig now enjoys wearing brilliantly-coloured sweaters and extraordinary trousers, very much like a man running as fast as possible in the opposite direction to James Bond. He has goodbye-Bond... Read more... |
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review - a middling return to Middle-earthThursday, 12 December 2024
Lauded by Auden, detested by Edmund Wilson, the Tolkien sagas have divided many from childhood onwards: for kids, they’re not quite pulpy enough to be the first choice for a Halloween costume, for grown-ups not quite literary enough to be literary.... Read more... |
The Commander review - the good ItalianTuesday, 10 December 2024
Patriotic Italian films set during the Fascist war effort are understandably rare UK releases. Submarine commander Salvatore Todaro (Pierfrancesco Favino) was, though, an honourable warrior-poet who director Edoardo De Angelis seeks to separate from... Read more... |
Nocturnes review - the sounds of the rainforest transport you a remote region of the HimalayasMonday, 09 December 2024
If you suffer from lepidopterophobia, this film will either cure your fear of moths or push you over the edge. Warning: the screen is often filled with moths of every shape, size, colour and pattern while the sound of flapping, fluttering and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson on 'Rumours'Saturday, 07 December 2024
Somewhere in Germany, G7 conference leaders including German Chancellor Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and US President Wolcott (Charles Dance) repair to a gazebo to collaborate on a “clear, but not so clear” communique addressing an unnamed, possibly... Read more... |
Merchant Ivory review - fascinating documentary about the director and producer's long partnershipSaturday, 07 December 2024
“Shoot, Jim, shooot!” Simon Callow does a fine impression of producer Ismail Merchant desperately trying to get director James Ivory to bring urgency to the proceedings.The received wisdom was that Ismael thought Jim was going to bankrupt Merchant... Read more... |
Grand Theft Hamlet review - intriguing documentary about Shakespeare as multi-player shooter gameFriday, 06 December 2024
On July 4, 2022, one of the most unusual performances in Hamlet’s lengthy and much travelled CV took place: an in-game stream for players of the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto (GTA).This piece of "videogame theatre" was the brainchild of two out... Read more... |
