Film
A United KingdomTuesday, 22 November 2016
It's remarkable that the story of Seretse Khama, the king of Bechuanaland, isn't more popularly known, though Amma Asante's film may change all that. The movie opens in a smoggy, gloomy London in 1947, where Seretse (David Oyelowo) is completing his... Read more... |
DVD: The Lovers & the DespotTuesday, 22 November 2016
What to do if you’re a despotic leader with an underperforming film industry? Hiring better directors and actors wasn’t an option for Kim Jong-il in the late 1970s, so he took drastic action: luring South Korea’s biggest female star Choi Eun-hee to... Read more... |
The New ManMonday, 21 November 2016
First-person documentary must steer the uneasy path between embarrassing confessional, narcissistic self-obsession and work that will resonate beyond the merely parochial context of home movies. The dangers surrounding the genre are of course one of... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: NapoléonSunday, 20 November 2016
Like Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Abel Gance's Napoléon is the monument of a genius badly in need of self-editing. In both instances, everything testifies to the singular vision of the artist - in Gance's case, his innovations in the field of... Read more... |
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find ThemFriday, 18 November 2016
Name seven students in Ravenclaw. Which 14 subjects are on the syllabus at Hogwarts? Create a shopping list of 20 different types of magical sweet. In her Harry Potter stories JK Rowling conjured up an almanack of wizarding facts and figures which,... Read more... |
Gimme DangerFriday, 18 November 2016
Jim Jarmusch has made a memorial to the Stooges, more than a celebration of their brutal prime. His Zen rhythms, which roll so movingly through the upcoming Paterson, aren’t entirely equipped for the blunt trauma of Ron Asheton’s guitar, or Iggy Pop... Read more... |
'It’s a much more freeing experience than Harry Potter'Thursday, 17 November 2016
David Yates is not the best-known film director in the world, but he has been at the helm of four of the most successful. All of them had “Harry Potter and the” in the title. After the last Potter movie he took a break among the computer-generated... Read more... |
Dog Eat DogWednesday, 16 November 2016
Paul Schrader is one of those filmmakers who critics really want to love. Not only is he responsible as a writer for at least two masterpieces – Taxi Driver and Raging Bull – he’s also the director of such great films as Mishima, American Gigolo and... Read more... |
DVD: Ma MaTuesday, 15 November 2016
Penélope Cruz has rarely been better, though her director Julio Medem has seldom been worse. As Magda, she’s an earthy everywoman, whether dealing with an errant husband, protecting her son Dani, or treating breast cancer with wry stoicism. It... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Robert VaughnSaturday, 12 November 2016
New York-born actor Robert Vaughn, who has died at the age of 83, achieved massive popular success when he starred as the sleek secret agent Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for four seasons from 1964 to 1968 and exploited the... Read more... |
American PastoralFriday, 11 November 2016
Ewan McGregor has been judged unworthy of adapting Philip Roth in the US. But his directorial debut is finely crafted, and powered by visceral emotion embodied in one of his best performances. As Seymour “Swede” Levov, he’s an All-Jewish-American... Read more... |
FrancofoniaFriday, 11 November 2016
The Russian director Alexander Sokurov has never been afraid of tackling weighty, often philosophical issues head on, and his latest film Francofonia is as pioneering – and, some might say, unnecessarily uncompromising – as ever. It’s nothing less... Read more... |
