Film
Sound of Metal review - hidden depths behind the decibelsThursday, 08 April 2021
I once went to see Motorhead, back in the days when real men didn’t wear earplugs, and afterwards it was if somebody had completely sawn off the top half of my hearing register. Weird and scary, and the band were putting themselves through that... Read more... |
Undine review - respecting the nymphWednesday, 07 April 2021
Illogical in its twists and turns, elusive as a fading dream but not stylistically dreamy – Christian Petzold’s optimistic romantic tragedy Undine is a ciné-conundrum par excellence. It seems, at first glance, a dismayingly insubstantial work for... Read more... |
Blu-ray: BeginningTuesday, 06 April 2021
This debut feature from the young Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili is exceptional in many ways. It stands out not only for its hypnotic quality as a film that feels like that of an already formed auteur, as well as for the complex... Read more... |
Wilderness review – 'what comes after besotted?'Monday, 05 April 2021
Wilderness has close-ups. And intimacy. And glorious empty beaches. A couple – John (James Barnes) and Alice (Katharine Davenport) – first meet outside the back door of a jazz club. They become completely infatuated with each other. We see them... Read more... |
Blu-ray: I Start CountingSunday, 04 April 2021
Released in 1970, David Greene’s I Start Counting is as much an examination of childhood innocence as a psychological thriller. Fans of 1960s architecture will also find plenty to enjoy - never has Bracknell looked so good on film, with starring... Read more... |
Filmmaker Darius Marder: 'Deafness is a culture. That's not being PC'Saturday, 03 April 2021
Sound of Metal has been a long time coming. Director and writer Darius Marder faced years of delays ranging from casting changes to the whole world shutting down. Was it worth the wait? Well, six Academy Award nominations including Best Film... Read more... |
Godzilla vs. Kong review - let battle commence (again)Friday, 02 April 2021
All is harmony as another day breaks in paradise. Kong yawns and stretches luxuriously, his furry brown musculature surely paying homage to Burt Reynolds’ iconic yet discreet Playgirl centrefold. Bobby Vinton croons Over the Seas... Read more... |
The Drifters review - lovers-on-the-run with little moral depthFriday, 02 April 2021
The Drifters remakes the romance crime genre by placing the main themes of rebellion and freedom in the context of the race and migration divisions of present day Britain. It is a noble mission for a debut by British director Benjamin Bond.... Read more... |
The Mauritanian review – moving 9/11 dramaThursday, 01 April 2021
Whether he’s making documentaries or dramas, director Kevin Macdonald has an eye for the bleak moments in our history, and a dynamic way of recreating them, from the Oscar-winning doc Four Days in September, about the Munich massacre, to the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Silent ActionTuesday, 30 March 2021
Silent Action makes for a snappier title than the original La polizia accusa: il Servizio Segreto uccide, though the frenzied action in Sergio Martino’s 1975 thriller is anything but silent. The film opens with the grisly murders of three Italian... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Romeo is BleedingSunday, 28 March 2021
The problem with much neo-noir is that it’s ersatz – too self referential for its own good. Peter Medak’s noir is as dark as it gets, but the hell he portrays is a shade too knowing, tainted with irony and excess.Romeo is Bleeding (1994) showcases a... Read more... |
Memories of My Father review - the richness of childhood, the cruelty of historySaturday, 27 March 2021
Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s Memories of My Father adapts the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince’s 2006 family memoir, which was published in English as Oblivion: the Spanish-language title of both book and film, El Olvido Que Seremos (“... Read more... |
