Film
The ApartmentSaturday, 09 June 2012
“A dirty fairy tale” was one of the encomiums lobbed at The Apartment in June 1960, nine months before it won Billy Wilder and I A L Diamond the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Wilder the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.... Read more... |
DVD: Roll Out The Barrel - The British Pub on FilmFriday, 08 June 2012
Five and a half hours of documentaries about beer and pubs. The temptation is to stock up on pork scratchings and consume the whole lot in one session, but this wonderful, handsomely-restored two-disc set is best savoured in several sittings. There’... Read more... |
Sing Your SongFriday, 08 June 2012
Sing Your Song isn’t a showbiz biopic of the actor and singer, it’s a history lesson that revolves around Harry Belafonte and his tireless, long-term espousal of civil rights and socio-political causes. Belafonte is an incredibly important figure, a... Read more... |
Casa de mi PadreThursday, 07 June 2012
Comedic curio Casa de mi Padre features Will Ferrell in his most surprising role yet – that of a Mexican rancher who “no habla inglés”. This Spanish-language film is a tongue-in-cheek thriller featuring Ferrell alongside Mexican stars Gael García... Read more... |
DVD: Classic BergmanThursday, 07 June 2012
Only one of the five films in Artificial Eye’s selection is palpably a classic, a turning point in Ingmar Bergman’s early career. It’s flanked by curiosities spanning 11 of the master’s 59 years as a film-maker – two of them flaunting the beginner’s... Read more... |
iLL ManorsWednesday, 06 June 2012
There was a strange sense of ghosts, or rather absent presences, in the screening room where I saw Ben Drew’s iLL Manors (that orthography reflects the chosen spelling of the film’s title, and Drew is also as well known as Plan B, from his rapper... Read more... |
DVD: The Queen on Tour/A Royal OccasionTuesday, 05 June 2012
BOAC, BEA, and Britannia: the recent past is so near and yet so far. All have now disappeared from the national consciousness but, in these two DVDs, the flagship planes of the British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways appear... Read more... |
Under African SkiesMonday, 04 June 2012
The world is awash with rock docs, most of them not very good, but it's best to think of Under African Skies as merely a superb piece of film-making. Marking the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon's Graceland, and included on DVD with the album's... Read more... |
The Turin HorseSunday, 03 June 2012
The Turin Horse begins with a prologue in which a novelistic male narrator, talking over a black screen, describes the probably apocryphal incident that caused Friedrich Nietzsche to suffer a terminal mental breakdown (the more likely reason being... Read more... |
A Thousand Kisses DeepFriday, 01 June 2012Jodie Whittaker revisits herself as a younger woman to try to put right a romance-gone-wrong. Sort of Groundhog Day meets Inception, but on a lower budget. Director: Dana Lustig. Starring: Jodie Whittaker, Dougray Scott, Emilia Fox, David Warner.... Read more... |
A Royal AffairFriday, 01 June 2012Danes do costume drama. Eighteenth-century saga featuring a mad young king whose physician falls for the isolated queen. Cue constitutional skulduggery. Director: Nikolaj Arcel. Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Alicia Vikander.... Read more... |
Red LightsFriday, 01 June 2012Nutty scientists thriller. Possibly overweening. Director: Rodrigo Cortes. Starring: Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver. Trailer: Read more... |
