Film
Nick Hasted
Spielberg’s prequel to All the President’s Men was filmed at speed, and aimed squarely at the press-hating Trump, not the late Tricky Dick. This contemporary intent is already fading. What remains is the director’s second return, after Munich, to the sort of Seventies conspiracy thriller dabbled in by his own great hits of the decade, Jaws and Close Encounters. The story of the 1971 exposé by government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the US government’s true, knowingly doomed conduct in Vietnam, is framed here by a less important question: whether the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s open season on the Getty dynasty. Last month the BBC documentary The Gettys: The World’s Richest Art Dynasty briskly coursed through the family archives. In March the TV drama Trust began on FX, scripted by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Danny Boyle. But breasting the tape over Christmas was All the Money in the World, Ridley Scott’s account of the kidnap of J Paul Getty III in Italy in 1973. The film seems destined to be remembered for the excision of Kevin Spacey from the original cut, to be replaced by Christopher Plummer.A great deal closer in age to the dynasty’s founding father, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The naturalism of Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull has an engrossing inconsequence – if that's not a contradiction in terms – that surely betrays the Brazilian director’s origins as a documentarist. Narrative in any traditional plot sense is the least of the film’s concerns, subordinated to our growing engagement in the distinctive world that it captures, which is that of the vaquejada, the rodeo community of the country’s Nordeste region. It’s Mascaro’s second feature, and although he’s moved on to working with professional actors, the collective achievement here is to dial down any Read more ...
Cuckmere: A Portrait/Environment 2.0, Brighton Festival review - landscape, politics and art collide
Nick Hasted
Sitting between the South Downs and the sea, Brighton’s borders are defined by nature. The Downs’ 2010 designation as a National Park also legislatively limits urban encroachment. The typically beautiful Sussex village of Falmer is on the city’s edge, supporting while doing its best to ignore two universities and a football stadium, with a pond and church at its theoretical heart but an A-road to London gouged through its middle, requiring a bridge between pond and pub.Falmer is also home to Sussex University’s Attenborough Centre, where patrons can ponder the intertwining of rural Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
French director Michel Hazanavicius made a name for himself with his OSS 117 spy spoofs, Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009), set in the Fifties and Sixties respectively and starring Jean Dujardin as a somewhat idiotic and prejudiced secret agent. But it was with The Artist in 2011 that he hit the jackpot, marrying his gift for period recreation with a story of genuine depth and warmth. A black-and-white silent movie about the silent era itself, starring Dujardin alongside Hazanavicius's wife and frequent collaborator Bérénice Bejo, The Artist Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Though set in a futuristic (although not by much) world in which information technology has almost taken over the human psyche, Anon still relies on a crumpled whisky-drinking gumshoe for its protagonist. In this case, the relict of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe is detective Sal Frieland, played by Clive Owen with his habitual air of laconic disappointment. If anything good should happen in Sal’s world, he knows it won’t last.Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, auteur of sci-fi classic Gattaca and screenwriter of The Truman Show, Anon decants us into an identikit North American city – Read more ...
Owen Richards
Deep in an unnamed desert, a violent and psychedelic retribution is sought. The aptly named Revenge is a brutally rewarding experience, bringing classic horror and exploitation tropes kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is the debut feature from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat, who combines a low opinion of men, visual panache and disturbing imagination to create a taut, bright thrill ride.We begin at a villa, where the smug, rich Richard (Kevin Jannsens, pictured below right) has brought his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz, pictured below left) for some fun before a hunting Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The freeing of a plane-load of hostages by Israeli forces at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 produced an instant spate of movie versions. Raid on Entebbe starred Peter Finch and Charles Bronson, Victory at Entebbe offered gainful employment to Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, while the Israeli-made Operation Thunderbolt featured Klaus Kinski as German hijacker Wilfried Böse.In this new update by Brazilian director José Padilha (RoboCop, Narcos), the Böse role goes to Daniel Brühl, playing opposite a disappointingly brittle Rosamund Pike as his partner in ideologically- Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, debate and spoken word, with visual artist David Shrigley as Guest Director.Enter this competition by entering your details here for a chance to win a fantastic break for two over the closing weekend of Brighton Festival (Fri 25 – Sun 27 May).The prize package includes:A two-night stay at Sooty’s Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Director James Erskine found a fascinating subject in the life of ice-skating legend John Curry and has fashioned it into an absolutely compelling 90-minute documentary. Curry was only 45 when he died of AIDS in 1994, but his professional career, in which he moved from ice-skating as competitive sport to performing and choreographing it as dance, was intense: Erskine describes him, in the short Q&A that appears as an extra on this DVD release, as “an artist more than an athlete,” and you end up agreeing resoundingly.The Ice King makes clear the struggles that Curry went through to reach Read more ...
Owen Richards
British director Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete is a heartfelt and surprisingly stark affair. Based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin, the film follows a young boy and his stolen horse across America. Despite its simple premise, Haigh and his lead Charlie Plummer (main picture) deliver a complex and moving piece of cinema.Charley is a quiet 15-year-old, malnourished and poorly supported by his father Ray (Travis Fimmel), who mostly drinks beer and brings home women. There’s an awkward but distant love between the two, both evidently still struggling from Charley’s mother walking out Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Inside Tully – or maybe inside Charlize Theron’s massively pregnant belly – is a darker, more daring film trying to get out. There are startlingly original moments, but it’s as if writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, creators of Juno and Young Adult, chickened out in the end and plumped for whimsy and sentiment.Marlo (Theron) is swamped by pregnancy and motherhood. She and her lacklustre husband Drew (a mumbling Ron Livingston) have two kids aged eight and five already, and now they’re expecting a third. Possibly not a good plan. Unplanned, in fact. “I feel like a trash barge,” she Read more ...