Film
Tom Birchenough
When Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan opens in Russia early next year it won’t be in the director’s cut. Given new legislation effective from this past July, it will be against the law to include the very distinctive Russian expletives, known locally as mat, that are plentiful in the director’s film, and add a very distinctive quality to his depiction of contemporary Russia.It’s a difference that may be lost on non-Russian speaking viewers who won’t be surprised by the usual procession of f-words and the like. But for Zvyagintsev himself, it’s a matter of considerable concern. “Film-makers, and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Space, the final frontier. Except that on the slowly dying earth where Christopher Nolan's often awesome sci-fi epic begins, the instinct to reach for the heavens has been crushed by the struggle for survival as crops die and life-choking dust storms sweep across the American midwest.In this eco-doom dystopia, technology has been deemed useless because food production is the sole imperative, and schools teach that the NASA moon landings were a fiction designed to bankrupt the competing Russians. Virgin Galactic is evidently not operational. It's only when former test pilot Cooper (Matthew Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's been much talk about Late Turner, to co-opt the name of the exhibition now on view at Tate Britain covering the last 16 years in the English artist JMW Turner's singular career. And as if perfectly timed to chime with those canvases in celluloid terms is Mr Turner, the ravishing film that stands as a testimonial to what one might call Late Leigh. The writer-director Mike Leigh has made period pieces before, most notably Topsy-Turvy in 1999, but even by his own exalted standards this cinematic profile of one artist by another stands a league apart.And just as Topsy-Turvy was as Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Never mind Alien vs Predator. Gareth Edwards's rumbustious earth-in-peril spectacular restores Godzilla to the top of the über-monster food chain. He's an indestructible force called from his sub-oceanic lair to combat hideous opponents fuelled by mankind's reckless abuse of Mother Nature.Edwards makes token efforts to give his story some human-scaled interest, though frankly it's futile. Bryan Cranston emotes doggedly as a scientist at a Tokyo nuclear plant, where the first signs of impending planetary catastrophe are felt, but Juliette Binoche as his wife lasts about five minutes before she Read more ...
stephen.walsh
At least three composers have set about turning The Fall of the House of Usher into operas, including most famously Debussy, whose abortive attempt, completed by Robert Orledge, was brilliantly staged by Welsh National Opera in June. But there is a good argument that Poe’s story – short on incident and character, long on visual image and atmosphere – lends itself better to film than to the stage. So I was intrigued by the chance of seeing Jean Epstein’s 1928 silent film, complete with a new accompanying score by Charlie Barber, at Malvern’s Forum Theatre, halfway through a tour set up by Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Adapted from the cult novel by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) and directed by Alexandre Aja, Horns can't keep itself on an even tonal keel for more than a few minutes. Part policier, part doomed romance and part gothic nightmare, I suppose it might even have created its own nano-genre.Nonetheless I enjoyed it quite a lot, even with its over-optimistic two hour running time. But this probably isn't the film which will carry Daniel Radcliffe across the great divide from boy wizard to mature screen actor. Partly it's the nature of the piece, which frequently finds itself trying to straddle the Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“If it bleeds it leads”, proclaims crime news reporter Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) as he investigates the bloody remains of a car crash with his invasive camera lens in a bid to make the biggest bucks out of the exploitation of human tragedy. It’s a mantra which curious onlooker Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal, who has shed a massive 30 pounds for the role) takes to grim and vicious extremes when he sets up his own TV news business. First-time director Dan Gilroy sets his grisly and blackly funny satire of modern media practices and the American dream on a seedy night-time LA canvas which oozes style Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The key lines are “you’re reborn into an untroubled world” – a world “where everyone’s the same.” The 1956 Don Siegel science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often taken as a response to America’s fear of Communism and the associated suppression of self, or as a commentary on the encroaching conformity brought by the spread of consumerism and a regimented suburbia. In both cases, homogenisation and standardised behaviour were the potential result.Seeing the film anew does nothing to alter these interpretations. In cinemas again as part of the BFI’s Days of Fear and Wonder Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
In The Overnighters documentarist Jesse Moss found his story and pursued it with remarkable empathy, all in the best traditions of the genre. He persuaded both sides in this tale of (quiet) confrontation to trust him, and they opened up completely. Then closing minute revelations that come as a total shock take his film to a different level, turning what would have been a strong film in itself into something that will stay in the memory for a very long time.It made us ponder that frequent question with the form: what persuades the subjects of a film to continue cooperation, when the subject Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There are moments in observational documentary that sometimes seem to rise to the drama of fictional cinema, and Ilian Metev’s Sofia’s Last Ambulance (Poslednata lineika na Sofia) has plenty such. They come when the viewer becomes in some way so engrossed in what is on screen that the standard distinctions of form seem to be lost.Given both its subject and origin in Bulgaria, the obvious feature counterpart to Metev’s film must be the Romanian ambulance drama The Death of Mr Lazarescu by Cristi Puii from 2005 (though viewers may find themselves recalling Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, too Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Angelina Jolie carries this re-visited Disney classic. She is the flying buttress that supports the old story told anew, as commanding as the nuclear green energy she emits into the stratosphere and as striking as any original drawing may have been.While the famous curse scene is as honest an homage as it could be to the original animation, Maleficent draws upon the backstory of the supposedly evil villain from Sleeping Beauty. A woman mistreated and exacting her revenge, Jolie's powerfully haunting portrayal complete with clipped British accent sees her excel as both villain and Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
The Jimi Hendrix redux directed by John Ridley, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of 12 Years A Slave (and the underrated Undercover Brother, among others), was highly anticipated - especially as this take on the great guitarist’s life would not, apparently, feature any hits.Although this sounded like a deliberate plan, one suspects Ridley was hampered by a perennial film budgeting problem: soundtracks cost a lot. So, no greatest hits but snippets of covers work perfectly well to tell the story of Jimi’s breakthrough year 1966-67 – with Jimi well portrayed by the telegenic, talented and relaxed Read more ...