Film
Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesThursday, 11 February 2016
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” Miss Bennet has been a busy Lizzy. In recent years she's popped up in a British Bollywood setting (Bride and Prejudice) and in the present... Read more... |
The SurvivalistWednesday, 10 February 2016
This is the first feature by writer-director Stephen Fingleton, and has earned him a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut. Set in Fingleton's native Northern Ireland, it's a pared-down tale of post-apocalyptic struggle, compensating for its lack... Read more... |
TrumboSaturday, 06 February 2016
Trumbo depicts the 13-year struggle by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) to break the blacklist imposed on him and the other members of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. By continuing to get his scripts produced throughout the Fifties, Trumbo... Read more... |
DVD: BillFriday, 05 February 2016
The jokes come thick and fast in this debut feature from the team behind the BBC’s Horrible Histories. Released theatrically to little fanfare last autumn, Richard Bracewell’s Bill is a delight – a joyously funny film which wears its erudition... Read more... |
DVD: 99 HomesTuesday, 02 February 2016
The opening scene of Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes plunges us into the darker depths of American society, post-2008 financial crisis. We’re in the world of home repossessions, and the blood spattered around the bathroom of one property by an ex-owner who... Read more... |
YouthSaturday, 30 January 2016
Toward the end of Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, a tough-as-nails Hollywood diva played by Jane Fonda informs Harvey Keitel’s creatively spent director that television has supplanted cinema as the home of screen drama. True or not, this has been the... Read more... |
SpotlightSaturday, 30 January 2016
Communities function in different ways depending on their constituencies, to note just one of the many salient points made by the deeply compelling and equally disturbing Spotlight. The Catholic church in Boston for years closed ranks and shut... Read more... |
DVD: TangerinesThursday, 28 January 2016
Georgian director Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines made the shortlist of five for last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar category (it didn't win). It was nominated from Georgia, but could equally well have represented Estonia: this incrementally powerful... Read more... |
The Big ShortFriday, 22 January 2016
Although terms like "collateralised debt obligations" and "credit default swaps" were much bandied-about after the banking crash of 2008, they still make sense to almost nobody except bond traders and arbitragers. However, director Adam McKay has... Read more... |
DVD: The Jacques Rivette CollectionFriday, 22 January 2016
It’s a general rule that extras on a home cinema release should not be watched before the feature. This sumptuous box set of French art-auteur Jacques Rivette’s most – until now – hard-to-see films reverses that. Just as the director turned the... Read more... |
The AssassinThursday, 21 January 2016
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, a film of surpassingly exquisite visual beauty, centres on a deadly hit-woman in ninth-century China who for humanistic or sentimental reasons can't bring herself to kill all her designated victims. That the Taiwanese... Read more... |
Lost in KarastanWednesday, 20 January 2016
Ah, the fascination of faraway countries of which we know nothing. And of dictators, always a species of interest to filmmakers, because you rarely have to make anything up – Chaplin, of course, wrote the primer on that one. How alluring when... Read more... |
