Film
Man UpFriday, 29 May 2015
American actress Lake Bell turns in a rather charming performance in a romcom written by newcomer Tess Morris, who handles the insecurities of a thirty-something woman looking for love in a funny and energetic way.There's a manic screwball edge to... Read more... |
TimbuktuThursday, 28 May 2015
The imposition of a brutal jihadist regime is relayed with formidable articulacy and a surprising lightness of touch in this gut-wrenching drama from Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako. Although its narrative events are as horrifying as those... Read more... |
Danny CollinsThursday, 28 May 2015
Al Pacino gives it his barnstorming all as Danny Collins, an ageing, coke-rattled rocker who calls it quits in order to reconnect with his family and recharge his life. Sentimental (but not brazenly so) and buttressed by an ace supporting cast, the... Read more... |
DVD: The Long Good Friday/Mona LisaTuesday, 26 May 2015
“No other city has in its centre such an opportunity for profitable progress.” Anyone depressed and outraged by London’s gentrification plague will find this the most chilling statement by visionary gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), as his... Read more... |
The New GirlfriendFriday, 22 May 2015
François Ozon’s sly fascination with radical family units takes another, surprisingly gentle twist here. Based on a Ruth Rendell story but equally inspired by French protests against gay marriage, this is an affecting romcom starring a secret male... Read more... |
DVD: Germany Pale MotherFriday, 22 May 2015
This is a great, neglected film of Nazi Germany. After being savaged by German critics for its “subjective” and “sentimental” perspective on the Third Reich at its 1980 Berlin Festival premiere, it was released with 30 minutes slashed. This is the... Read more... |
DVD: BirdmanThursday, 21 May 2015
Michael Keaton – like Cary Grant, Bill Murray, and George Clooney – is one of those stars who frequently convey their awareness that the situations they’re in are preposterous. He tautens his jaw muscles; his eyes express a mix of incredulity and... Read more... |
A Girl Walks Home Alone at NightThursday, 21 May 2015
A skateboarding female vampire in a striped Brêton top. A James Dean look-alike with a junkie father. A prostitute as confessor. Spaghetti western-influenced music. The black-and-white A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a smorgasbord of attention-... Read more... |
Only Angels Have WingsSaturday, 16 May 2015
Howard Hawks and Cary Grant made five films together. Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, I Was A Male War Bride and Monkey Business were all screwball comedies, made by two of the genre’s leading exponents. As an adventure film, Only Angels Have... Read more... |
Mad Max: Fury RoadFriday, 15 May 2015
There is still much to be said for George Miller's original 1979 Mad Max, a cheap but ferocious tale of rape, murder and vengeance in a gang-infested dystopia. However, only two sequels later, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) found the franchise... Read more... |
Clouds of Sils MariaFriday, 15 May 2015
When Hollywood characters revisit their youth it tends to be through the school reunion, with generally trite results; how typical of a French filmmaker, and of the cerebral, cinephile Olivier Assayas in particular, that his character should be an... Read more... |
DVD: FoxcatcherFriday, 15 May 2015
As he died in 2010, we can never know what John du Pont was like in person, but if Steve Carell’s rendering of the maniacal American multi-millionaire with a wrestling fixation is even close to the real thing, the experience must have been... Read more... |
