Film
Donkeyote review - a quiet revelationTuesday, 23 October 2018
It’s an undeniably quirky set-up: an elderly Spanish farmer who takes it upon himself to travel to America and walk – alone – the epic, 2,200-mile Trail of Tears, following the westward route taken by the Cherokee fleeing white settlers. Alone, that... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Blood of HussainTuesday, 23 October 2018
Jamil Dehlavi is a filmmaker whose work straddles two worlds. His native Pakistan is certainly the key element in the two early films on this BFI dual-format release – it follows on from the director’s August South Bank retrospective, the first... Read more... |
LFF 2018: Roma review – Alfonso Cuarón’s triumphant return to MexicoSaturday, 20 October 2018
It’s not for nothing that Alfonso Cuarón’s mercurial CV includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because this director really knows something about alchemy. His last, the Oscar-winning Gravity, was a science fiction spectacular... Read more... |
LFF 2018: The Favourite review - Queen Anne's bizarre love triangleSaturday, 20 October 2018
Olivia Colman will in due course be appearing as Elizabeth II in The Crown, surely a role of a very different hue to her portrayal of Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (shown at LFF). It’s the beginning of the 18th Century, and England... Read more... |
Dogman review - Matteo Garrone takes on the mafia againFriday, 19 October 2018
There aren’t many movies that cater to audiences with a passion for canine grooming, the mafia and dismal seaside resorts but Dogman more than satisfies all those cravings. Ten years after Matteo Garrone won Cannes with the searingly brutal Gomorrah... Read more... |
LFF 2018: In Fabric review – Peter Strickland’s horror comedy is dressed to killFriday, 19 October 2018
While much has been said of Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror Suspiria, it’s the latest stylishly bizarre confection by British writer-director Peter Strickland – about a demonic dress, no less – that comes much closer to... Read more... |
Science Fair review - big on ambition, light on rigourFriday, 19 October 2018
More than 1,700 teenage finalists representing 78 countries take part in the annual International Science and Engineering Fair, virtually the Oscars for exceptional young biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, doctors... Read more... |
Matthew Holness: 'I wanted to make a modern silent horror film'Friday, 19 October 2018
Watching Matthew Holness’ debut feature Possum, you’d be forgiven in thinking he was a tortured soul. Lead character Phillip (played by Sean Harris, pictured below) is a lean marionette of a man, prone to horrific flights of fantasy involving a... Read more... |
DVD: Generation WealthFriday, 19 October 2018
“Psychopathologies come and go but they always tell us about the historical time period in which they’re produced.” So says the journalist and academic Chris Hedges in Lauren Greenfield’s documentary Generation Wealth. The idea the film plays with... Read more... |
LFF 2018: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs review - Wild West tales, and Redford and JackmanWednesday, 17 October 2018
The “portmanteau” form of film-making is almost guaranteed to deliver patchy results, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers’ six-pack of tall tales from the Old West (screened at London Film Festival), can’t quite avoid this age-old... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Comfort of StrangersTuesday, 16 October 2018
“There’s a lot of weirdness I didn’t want explained,” Paul Schrader reveals at one point in a new director’s commentary to his 1990 film. He certainly succeeded on that score: with its script by Harold Pinter (adapting Ian McEwan’s elliptical 1981... Read more... |
1945 review - Hungarian holocaust dramaFriday, 12 October 2018
Ferenc Török is firmly aiming at the festival and art house circuit with his slow-paced recreation of one summer day in rural Hungary. A steam train stops at a rural siding, two Orthodox Jewish men descend and with minimal speech, oversee the... Read more... |
