Film
Matt Wolf
The worlds of marital abuse and artistic fraud collide to eye-opening if also frustrating effect in Big Eyes, Tim Burton's film about the unmasking of an elaborate deception that ruptures a family along the way. The film has would-be Oscar contender written all over it, not least in pairing five-time nominee Amy Adams alongside two-time winner Christoph Waltz, but for all that fascinates about the real-life story on view, its walk to the podium is likely to remain as much a fantasy as the claims of the central character, Walter Keane, to having been a great artist. In fact, the Nebraska Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“Comedy is all about timing” quips Lloyd Christmas at one point, something this sequel to the Farrelly Brothers' crass, gross-out comedy from 1994 very knowingly mocks. Those who hold a fondness for Lloyd and Harry’s shtick may be amused by the huge number of in-jokes and the silly slapstick, but overall this instalment is more filler than killer and relies way too heavily on nostalgia.As part of a huge prank to fool his best friend Harry (Jeff Daniels), Lloyd (Jim Carrey) has been pretending to be in a catatonic state for 20 years. That is, until Harry reveals he needs a kidney transplant to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This newly-restored version of one of MGM's most hallowed musicals is making the seasonal rounds with a run at the BFI and selected cinemas around the country. Directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz in 1955, the piece drips with period charm, while its pairing of Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra is still capable of generating a box office buzz 60 years later. But (I'll just whisper this) it may seem like a bit of a slog for modern audiences.It's not just the 150-minute duration that sometimes makes time feel like it's been nailed to the floorboards, or the jarring quaintness of the Damon Runyon- Read more ...
fisun.guner
Since David Hockney entered his eighth decade (he is now 77), we seem to have witnessed an accelerated output of major exhibitions, biographies and documentaries. The public appetite has never tired of this most tireless of artists, but it’s an interest that’s been given fresh impetus by the exuberance and vivacity of his epic series of paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds. Bruno Wollheim’s TV documentary, Hockney: A Bigger Picture (2009), was a look at this recent period of renewed vigour and creativity, while Randall Wright’s cinema-released second film of the artist – the first, David Hockney Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Nothing proves a theory better than practice, and this is exactly what Norwegian adventurer-archaeologist-ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl did in 1947 when he and five companions sailed a raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove his hypothesis of how the Pacific islands were originally settled. He thought people first arrived there from the east, not the west, contravening the then-prevailing scientific orthodoxy. But Polynesians didn’t have boats, cried the establishment. Ah, but they had rafts, countered Heyerdahl. So he built one and launched it into an ocean whose currents it followed to Polynesia Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Remembering the early years of social and sexual liberation in Swiss gay life, Stefan Haupt’s drama-documentary The Circle (Der Kreis) has rich affection for its subject. In particular, that’s the relationship between teacher Ernst Ostertag and drag artist Robi Rapp, who first met in the Fifties and have been partners ever since. Both now in their eighties, their documentary remembrances of the time are intercut with staged dramatic material concerning Haupt’s wider subject, the world that grew up around the magazine, social centre and club of the film’s title.Switzerland was unusually Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is a classic. Not only is it one of cinema's best films and a foundation of French New Wave, it also affectingly and rivetingly depicts an anomie-filled childhood. Released in 1959, it was a comment on French society which pulled no punches yet had warmth at its core. The magnetic star was Jean-Pierre Léaud, playing the then 13-year-old anti-hero Antoine Doinel with a panache which seemed as though he was refracting his own persona.Truffaut did not leave it alone and four more Doinel vehicles followed: Antoine and Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“At the end of all things,” to quote Frodo Baggins in the dim and distant future, there is purgative fire and resounding clangour in the final instalment of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit triptych. Thirteen years after the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson has concluded his JRR Tolkien opus with an epic more thunderous than its two predecessors. The Battle of the Five Armies is also a little closer in tone to the LOTR films than An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Desolation of Smaug (2013) – not that Bilbo Baggins’ prolonged burglary career can match the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
I don’t think any of us will look at a museum in quite the same way after this dazzling documentary. For several years the Austrian film-maker Johannes Holzhausen and his team followed what seems to be scores of the working staff inhabiting Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (KMH), as they physically cared for the remarkable objects in their care, worried about how best to put them on view for the public, and met continually to discuss museum matters.KMH is one of the world’s most important museums, repository of centuries of Habsburg imperial heritage, as well as myriad other Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Given Hercules stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and is directed by Brett Ratner, the man behind the Rush Hour films, currently signed on to helm Beverley Hills Cop IV, few would expect anything but a mindless multiplex romp. And that’s exactly what they get although it’s a shame brains must be so completely switched off since much more fun could have been had with this, especially given a strong supporting cast that includes John Hurt, Peter Mullan and Joseph Fiennes. Marvel films such as Avengers Assemble and Guardians of the Galaxy have ably demonstrated that it’s possible to entertain 14- Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Finding a clear narrative among the deadly uncertainties of the long-lasting stand-off between Israel and Palestine is a challenge. Israeli documentarist Nadav Schirman, drawing on a real-life story, has honed The Green Prince down into a bare story of the ongoing contact between Gonen Ben Yitzhak, an officer of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a young man from the very centre of the Palestinian leadership who becomes his agent.It’s a remarkably unadorned film, concentrating on the direct testimonies of the two players. They tell their stories direct to camera Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Hong Kong master Wong Kar Wai has ventured into new territory with The Grandmaster. Many years in the making, his new film is a remarkable portrayal of martial-arts traditions, specifically the story of kung fu master Ip Man from his early life in mainland China on the eve of World War II, through to post-war exile in Hong Kong. It was there that he set up his own Wing Chun school, which would with time achieve huge international popularity; Ip went on to train future kung fu stars, most notably Bruce Lee.Fans of the heightened aesthetics of Wong’s early arthouse masterpieces like 2000’s In Read more ...