Film
Endurance review - the greatest escape, AI-assistedWednesday, 16 October 2024
Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which set out in 1914 only to be marooned until August 1916, was a failure but a “glorious failure”, in the words of one crew member, the meteorologist Leonard Hussey. It is also perhaps... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Valley of the BeesTuesday, 15 October 2024
František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1966) has been voted the best Czech film ever made, a visionary 13th century epic whose expense prompted its director to shoot the shorter, lower-budget The Valley of the Bees (Údolí včel) back-to-back with... Read more... |
Salem’s Lot review - listless King remakeSunday, 13 October 2024
A boy’s dead friend scratching at his first-floor window, Nosferatu-like vampire Barlow rearing up with heart attack shock…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV take on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot scared a teen generation out of... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024
ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
The Last of the Sea Women review - a moving tale of feisty traditional diversSaturday, 12 October 2024
“The ocean is our home… Even in my next life I will dive again,” says Geum Ok, one of a band of female divers from Jeju, a volcanic island 60 miles south of the Korean peninsular.Sue Kim’s documentary follows these brave Haenyeos as they plunge into... Read more... |
Timestalker review – she's lost control againFriday, 11 October 2024
Unlike the controversial Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which challenges many of the same attitudes towards sexual harassment, self-delusion, and stalking’s gender bias, Alice Lowe’s second feature as director, writer, and star does not bill itself as... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Alice Lowe on 'Timestalker' and what women rue through the agesFriday, 11 October 2024
Before Alice Lowe wrote her first short film scripts, she was, despite success in television and theater, “terrified” of making a full-length feature. “I thought it was some untouchable Holy Grail. That you have to be somehow inducted before you’re... Read more... |
Portraits of Dangerous Women review - quirky indie comedyThursday, 10 October 2024
“I like laws and rules,” Steph (Jeany Spark), a jaded primary school teacher, tells a pet-shop employee – she’s adopting a cat, though that venture is doomed to failure - defensively. “They’re what separate us from the monkeys and chaos.”In... Read more... |
Things Will Be Different review - lost in the pastSunday, 06 October 2024
Time-travel is a trap in debutante Michael Felker’s tender sf two-hander, whose title’s grim irony becomes gradually apparent.There’s golden American promise in the sun and shadow of the diner where Joseph (Adam David Thompson) meets sister Sidney (... Read more... |
Joker: Folie à Deux review - supervillainy laid lowFriday, 04 October 2024
“Psychopaths sell like hotcakes,” William Holden observed in Sunset Boulevard in 1950, and those individuals have been doing good business for Hollywood before and since.We root for them and we don’t root for them at the same time, which is perhaps... Read more... |
The Battle for Lakipia review - why post-colonial Kenya is a land of uneaseFriday, 04 October 2024
The Battle for Lakipia is a beautifully filmed and thoughtfully directed documentary that was made over a two-year period. Its focus is the conflicting claim to Kenyan land made by white ranch owners of English descent and the indigenous pastoralist... Read more... |
The Old Man and the Land review - dark secrets of a farming familyThursday, 03 October 2024
The Old Man and the Land depicts a worn-out sheep farmer going about his dreary business as the seasons pass, darkly and dankly. He does it because he’s always done it, and because he doesn’t trust his 42-year-old daughter, Laura, despite her... Read more... |
