Film
'I saw that death is beautiful, unspeakable and strange': on filming 'Island'Monday, 10 September 2018
Most of us have very little knowledge of the process of life ending, physically and emotionally, until it comes suddenly into our own experience. Dying remains taboo. We don’t talk about dying, we don’t teach it in schools, and yet this event is as... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: RedoubtableSunday, 09 September 2018
For viewers challenged by the work of French auteur classic Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Hazanavicius’ Redoubtable catches the moment when Godard himself began to be challenged by Godard. The irony, a considerable one, is that Godard was rejecting... Read more... |
The Seagull review - Chekhov classic gets the all-star treatmentSaturday, 08 September 2018
A starry and mostly American cast does well by The Seagull, Chekhov's eternally moving portrait of egomania run wild and self-abasement turned tragically inward. Combining two major players from the New York theatre world in director Michael Mayer (... Read more... |
The Miseducation of Cameron Post review - learning the right wayFriday, 07 September 2018
This is Desiree Akhavan’s second film, following on from her rather ironically titled Appropriate Behaviour of 2014. That was a coming-out drama about a bisexual, Iranian-American woman, whose story closely reflected the director’s own – and Akhavan... Read more... |
Under the Wire review - risking everything to tell the world the truthWednesday, 05 September 2018
She was “the most important war correspondent of her generation”, says Sean Ryan, her editor at The Sunday Times. And her colleague Paul Conroy describes her as “a complete and utter one-off – exceptionally driven, with a real sense of purpose”.... Read more... |
DVD: Mary ShelleyTuesday, 04 September 2018
This should have been the perfect match. Saudi-born director Haifaa al-Mansour earned real acclaim for her 2012 debut film Wadjda, whose 12-year-old central character had to break the conventions of a restrictive society to realise her dream –... Read more... |
Yardie review - Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debutFriday, 31 August 2018
The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Yardie revisits the same world and era – it... Read more... |
Cold War review - a gorgeous and mesmerising romanceWednesday, 29 August 2018
Can we ever really know the passion that brought our parents together? By the time we are old enough to hear the story of how they first met, that lovers’ narrative has frayed in the telling and faded in the daily light of domestic familiarity. But... Read more... |
Blu-ray: A Gentle CreatureTuesday, 28 August 2018
“To our enormous suffering!” There are many macabre vodka toasts, accompanied by some appropriately gruelling visuals, in A Gentle Creature, but that one surely best captures the beyond-nihilist mood of Sergei Loznitsa’s 2017 Cannes competition... Read more... |
Neil Simon: 'I don’t think you want it really dark'Monday, 27 August 2018
Asked to nominate the most important playwright in America since the war, theatregoers would probably plump for Arthur Miller, Edward Albee or David Mamet. But in terms of sheer popularity there is another candidate. Neil Simon’s wiseacre comedies,... Read more... |
BlacKkKlansman review - absurd and angry satireSaturday, 25 August 2018
What happens when you let racism sit and fester in the middle of your culture? That’s the question Spike Lee keeps asking while telling the mostly true story of black policeman Ron Stallworth’s bizarre spell in the Ku Klux Klan.Stallworth (John... Read more... |
The King review - the myth behind the manSaturday, 25 August 2018
The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man. This is not another... Read more... |
