Film
Magic in the MoonlightWednesday, 17 September 2014![]() An ageing misanthrope is given a new lease of life and a fresh outlook by a pretty, young woman. Woody Allen wheels out this tired old trope for his 44th feature film set in his favourite era on the French Riviera with a light romantic yarn between... Read more... |
Opinion: What's the point of short film?Tuesday, 16 September 2014![]() The emergence of digital both as a technology and a culture has fundamentally changed the world in which short film now exists. Now short film has public, industry and social value and its role and routes have fundamentally changed.Short film is one... Read more... |
DVD: The Two Faces of JanuaryMonday, 15 September 2014![]() Hugely underrated, The Two Faces of January packs more filmmaking power than, at least, its poster would ever suggest. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, which puts it streets ahead of most films, Two Faces... has a superb ensemble cast: Viggo... Read more... |
20,000 Days On EarthSunday, 14 September 2014![]() This excellent documentary considerably deepens the Nick Cave we know. If there is a Cave other than the spiritually and intellectually ravenous rock star with the raven hair, bone-dry wit and shamanic showman seen here, a bumbling secret identity... Read more... |
10 Questions for Actor Stellan SkarsgårdSunday, 14 September 2014![]() “Haven’t we met before?” We hadn’t, but Stellan Skarsgård’s friendly greeting immediately sets the tone for an encounter which is so relaxed that thoughts of the explosive Nils, the quiet man who boils over in In Order of Disappearance, almost... Read more... |
Down by LawSunday, 14 September 2014![]() Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law is back in British cinemas 28 years after it joined Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It and Lizzie Borden's Working Girls in galvanising the embryonic American indie movement.The original catalyst was Jarmusch's Stranger... Read more... |
A Most Wanted ManFriday, 12 September 2014![]() Other films have been and still will be released featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, since his death earlier this year. But A Most Wanted Man is the one that serves as the final testament to what’s been lost. Here is not just a final great performance... Read more... |
DVD: A Thousand Times Good NightThursday, 11 September 2014![]() There’s war in the world outside and much conflict at home in Norwegian director Eric Poppe’s A Thousand Times Good Night. The film is centred in every sense around the poised, taut performance of Juliette Binoche as war photographer Rebecca, whom... Read more... |
PrideThursday, 11 September 2014![]() Buried deep in the final credits for theatre director Matthew Warchus's second feature film, Pride, is a shout-out to his late father for teaching his son the twin virtues of compassion and comedy. Both those qualities, as it happens, are on... Read more... |
Manuscripts Don't BurnWednesday, 10 September 2014![]() Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Manuscripts Don’t Burn will raise many questions for its viewers, not least the practical one: just how was it made at all?Rasoulof has had plenty of problems with the regime in his native country over the years... Read more... |
Immoral Tales: When Art Met PornographyWednesday, 10 September 2014![]() The release of a restored version of 1974’s Immoral Tales on Blu-ray raises inevitable and unavoidable issues: whether the film is pornography, art or arty pornography. Then, there’s the matter of whether its director Walerian Borowczyk was a... Read more... |
In Order of DisappearanceTuesday, 09 September 2014![]() The frozen north of Norway seems an unlikely spot for a Serbian drug gang to be operating alongside a local mob, but this is the world which snow-plough driver Nils meets head on when avenging the death of his son. Throw in larger-than-life... Read more... |
