Film
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia TraoréWednesday, 13 February 2019
The striking cover for the Brighton Festival 2019 programme shouts out loud who this year’s Guest Director is. Silhouetted in flowers, in stunning artwork by Simon Prades, is the unmistakeable profile of Malian musician Rokia Traoré. Taking place... Read more... |
Jellyfish review - life on the edge in MargateWednesday, 13 February 2019
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside – well perhaps not, if Jellyfish is anything to go by. Set in Margate, this independent feature paints a picture of a town and people that have been left behind. Cut from the same cloth as Ken Loach’s I, Daniel... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Human DesireTuesday, 12 February 2019
In an interview with Fritz Lang towards the end of his life, he dismisses Human Desire as a film he was contractually obliged to make and for which he had no great fondness. Certainly it isn’t his masterpiece, but it’s a lot more... Read more... |
If Beale Street Could Talk review - love defies racism in James Baldwin adaptationSunday, 10 February 2019
Films that show a young couple’s love deepening are rare because without personal conflict there’s no narrative progression. They're especially rare in the current mainstream American cinema since romantic dramas are commercially risky, though LGBTQ... Read more... |
All Is True review - all's well doesn't end well in limp Shakespeare biopicSaturday, 09 February 2019
All may be true but not much is of interest in this Kenneth Branagh-directed film that casts an actor long-steeped in the Bard as a gardening-minded Shakespeare glimpsed in (lushly filmed) retirement. Seemingly conceived in order to persuade... Read more... |
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part review - everything's still awesomeFriday, 08 February 2019
Is everything awesome? Indeed it is if you like your movies brightly coloured, packed with jokes and really quite loud. Almost five years after the first Lego movie impressed critics and entranced its target audience of families with young kids, its... Read more... |
América review - a joyous portrait of young men caring for their aged grandmotherFriday, 08 February 2019
What a wonderful little gem! This documentary by American duo Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside lasts 76 minutes, but I could happily have watched it for hours. The film addresses a desperately sad and difficult issue – what to do with an elderly... Read more... |
Boy Erased review - gay vs God drama treated with empathyWednesday, 06 February 2019
Joel Edgerton’s second turn as a director is the second film in a year to treat the subject of gay conversion therapy. The first was Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post, whose victory at Sundance a year ago confirmed, symbolically not... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Diamonds of the NightTuesday, 05 February 2019
The opening shot of Jan Němec’s 1964 debut feature, Diamonds of the Night, recalls the start of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. Němec’s camera also ducks and dives, here following a pair of teenagers fleeing from a moving train and escaping into a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Matthew Heineman on directing 'A Private War'Saturday, 02 February 2019
The release of Matthew Heineman’s film A Private War, about the tumultuous life and 2012 death of renowned Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, has gained an added edge of newsworthiness from this week’s verdict by Washington DC’s US... Read more... |
Can You Ever Forgive Me? review - no page unturned in a comedy about literary forgerySaturday, 02 February 2019
What is it with all these new films based on biographies? Vice, Green Book, The Mule, Stan & Ollie, Colette… and that’s before we even get to the royal romps queening up our screens. At least Can You Ever Forgive Me? brings a lifestory... Read more... |
Burning review - an explosive psychological thrillerSaturday, 02 February 2019
Burning, which is the first film directed by the Korean master Lee Chang-dong since 2010’s Poetry, begins as the desultory story of a hook-up between a pair of poor, unmotivated millennials – the girl already a lost soul, the boy a wannabe writer... Read more... |
