Film
Dune review - awesome display of sci-fi world-buildingWednesday, 20 October 2021
I’d venture that Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic is an almost perfect adaptation. It’s difficult to imagine the novel being better visualised, or its characters better cast; at the same time, the director’s own... Read more... |
Blu-ray: La Dolce VitaTuesday, 19 October 2021
One of those films weighed down by a considerable reputation, La Dolce Vita (1960) is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. From the very first sequence in which a figure of Christ sails across Rome’s skies, suspended from a helicopter, a... Read more... |
The Velvet Underground review - Todd Haynes tunnels through band historyTuesday, 12 October 2021
Todd Haynes’ documentary about the Velvet Underground has to be one of the better uses of time by a film-maker during the Covid pandemic. He spent lockdown putting the film together with a team of archivists and editors working remotely. It’s a... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Lighthouse (Mayak)Tuesday, 12 October 2021
Mariya Saakyan’s 2006 debut feature is bookended by grainy footage of what looks like a fire-ravaged diary, the distressed, crumbling scraps of paper torn and charred. The missing pages and unfinished sentences spill over into what follows, Saakyan... Read more... |
Gabriela Montero, Kings Place review - improvising to a Chaplin classic is the icing on a zesty cakeSaturday, 09 October 2021
As the Statue of Liberty appears in Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, our improvising pianist proclaims “The Star-Spangled Banner”, only for it to slide dangerously. The passengers on the ship taking them to a new life are brutally cordoned by the... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Another RoundTuesday, 05 October 2021
Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen left me dumbstruck in the cinema in 1998 with its brilliant depiction of an incestuous, viciously glamorous family imploding over a family celebration. At the time, I hoped that my Danish mother never saw what looked, to... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Maigret - The Complete SeriesSunday, 03 October 2021
This weighty box set contains all 52 episodes of the BBC’s take on George Simenon's Maigret, four seasons of which were made and broadcast between 1960 and 1963. Given how much vintage BBC material has been wiped, that this series can now be watched... Read more... |
No Time to Die review - Daniel Craig’s bold, bountiful Bond farewellWednesday, 29 September 2021
In order to preserve its impact for the millions lining up to see it, it won’t be possible to truly dissect the boldness and significance of No Time to Die until the dust has settled on the box office, and moves to find Daniel Craig’s... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Johnny GuitarTuesday, 28 September 2021
Watching this restored print of Nicholas Ray’s delirious Western reminded me of the discovery that those pristine white statues of the Ancient World had once been painted in gaudy colours. When I first saw Johnny Guitar, it was one of those movies... Read more... |
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life review - a complex portrait of a complex manMonday, 27 September 2021
It’s well worth tracking down one of the September 29 special cinema screenings of Ric Burns' lovingly made documentary portrait of the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or seeking it out online. Famous for his vivid, insightful descriptions of... Read more... |
Gagarine review - hazy cosmic jive in a Paris banlieueSaturday, 25 September 2021
This is the story of a boy and a building. Sixteen-year-old Youri (newcomer Alseni Bathily) lives, with his telescope, in Cité Gagarine, a vast red-brick Sixties apartment complex in Ivry-sur-Seine, an eastern suburb of Paris governed by the French... Read more... |
The Ballad of Billy McCrae review - beware the quarryman's beautiful daughterFriday, 24 September 2021
An entertaining but undernourished industrial-domestic neo-noir set in South Wales,The Ballad of Billy McCrae depicts the power struggle between bent quarrying company boss Billy (David Hayman) and gullible failed businessman Chris Blythe (Ian Virgo... Read more... |
