Film
Jasper Rees
There is a sequence in which a monstrous tree of otherworldly dimensions, its boughs as sturdy as oaks, its twigs as vigorous as saplings, crashes spectacularly to earth in roaring, creaking, shattering, time-expanding slo-mo. In a film that’s full of them, this is very much the premier-cru money shot. Remember the last time the director, deploying the computer-generated forces of a sound-stage deity, downed another very large object? Back then it was a boat. This time it’s a piece of wood. Tiiim-ber-r-rr!!There is no argument, of course. Avatar is an astonishing creation. For sheer Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This film was never going to be nominated for any awards, but then it probably doesn’t need critical acclaim - the first reworking of the glorious 1950s Ealing Studios comedies (which were based on Ronald Searle’s cartoons), released in 2007, was the third-highest grossing independent UK film ever. St Trinian’s 2 is more of the same: loud, silly and rollicking good fun.No joke is considered too old or too obvious in the immensely daft yarn scripted by Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft, directed by Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson. The plot (using the term loosely) concerns a 420-year-old Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Sixteen years ago, Tom Hanks was in Seattle, pining sleeplessly for Meg Ryan. In 2009, though, romantic comedy has a rather different complexion and, in another corner of the Space Needle city, two best buddies flirt with a gay affair, even though both of them protest, just a little too much, that they are straight. The American independent comedy Humpday is a curious mix of bromance and mumblecore - and please read on even if those two appellations are utterly foreign to you (read on too, even if they aren't, of course).The story turns on the uneasy friendship, a friendship which might just Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A funny thing happened to the movie musical of late: a genre thought to be moribund learned once again to sing, even if - as so often happens in education - there have been some truants along the way. In recent years, we've had Chicago and Hairspray, The Producers and Sweeney Todd, all of them adapted from Broadway shows familiar to UK playgoers as well. Now, along comes the riskiest of them all, Rob Marshall's Nine. And not for the first time, the last is best, though Nine is also likely to polarise reaction more sharply than any of these other titles have so far.The Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The 22nd European Film Awards closed last night with Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon winning Best Director, Screenwriter and Film. Tahar Rahim was Best Actor for his breakthrough performance as a French-Algerian initiate into a prison’s brutal underworld in Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, while the absent Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader. Eric Cantona provided the night’s real star-power as he presented a visibly overcome Ken Loach with the Lifetime Achievement Award. But with The White Ribbon simply adding to its Cannes Palme d’Or success, and a quizzical Danny Boyle (pictured) Read more ...
sheila.johnston
When the director Jim Jarmusch speaks of his new film, the discourse is jam-packed with cultural namechecks. One minute it's Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre, the next we're on to William S Burroughs, or Antonioni, or John Boorman's Point Blank. Joe Strummer is in the mix there too, and Jacques Rivette, and Boris, Sunn O))) and petenera flamenco and... well, you get the drift. Yet, freighted as it is with subtext, the story, such as it is, is the ne plus ultra of minimalist cool. And it is a fine line indeed that separates cool from boring.The main character, known only as Lone Man, is on a mission Read more ...
ryan.gilbey
Of all the film genres to flourish in recent times, mumblecore is both the most ethereal and, to date, the least profitable. But unlike, say, torture-porn or mockumentary, it has some distance to go before it outstays its welcome. For the uninitiated, mumblecore is essentially an offshoot of the rom-com, but instead of Kate Hudson, Sandra Bullock and/or Matthew McConaughey, you get an infinitely preferable gathering of aimless twentysomethings gently groping their way through matters of the heart, usually while wearing cardigans. (If the NME "C86" class of bed-wetting, thrift-shop-attired Read more ...
sheila.johnston
It begins with a touch of brio: a sinuous, swirling tracking shot plunges deep into the daily chaos of a market place in a remote Algerian desert village. Signs are hoisted aloft and askew, mobile phones noisily bickered over, clapped-out bangers pushed out of the way. Eventually, the camera pauses on three old men as they, as one, clasp their handkerchiefs to their noses: a honking wedding cortege is about to roar past in a miniature dust-storm to set the seal on the mayhem.A battle of the sexes, a comedy of errors and a cutting satire, Mascarades has won plaudits on the international Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Sir Michael Caine and Daniel Day Lewis were the headline honorees at the 12th British Independent Film Awards in London last night, while Moon, an ultra low-budget sci-fi movie directed by Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son, was named Best Film. The full list of nominees and winners follows below. The winning candidates are in bold typeface.An Education (read the review on theartsdesk)Fish Tank (read the review on theartsdesk)In The LoopMoon (read the review on theartsdesk)Nowhere Boy (read the review on theartsdesk) Best Director of a British Independent FilmLone Scherfig for An EducationJane Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Beware the ids of kids: Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's film of Maurice Sendak's seminal children's picture book, centres on a hyperactive nine-year-old boy, Max (Max Records), who’s so angered and frustrated by the reverses of a winter's day that he destroys a keepsake he gave his adolescent sister and ends up biting his single mother (Catherine Keener) while she’s entertaining her boyfriend at home.This first and best section of the movie sets up Max’s voyage that night to a faraway land occupied by a handful of huge two-footed beasts who speak in urban Americanese, are Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Though he has yet to make a perfect film, the director Tim Burton’s choice of Gothic and fantasy subjects and his deadpan, post-expressionist approach to them rightfully designate him an auteur of considerable genius. His 14 movies to date have earned him a cohesive retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But not content with this, the museum has also mounted an exhibition consisting of over 700 items, including scores of paintings and drawings, as well as costumes and figures from the films, Polaroids, videos and student films, and specially created installations; there's also a Read more ...
sheila.johnston
To accompany our review of the spectacular and extensive exhibition dedicated to Tim Burton at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, we present a tiny selection of the 700-plus works on display there until 26 April 2010. Click on any of the images below to open the full view.
The entrance to the MOMA exhibition (photograph: Michael Locasiano)
The Green Man (1996-1998), oil and acrylic on canvas
Creature Series (1992), acrylic on canvas
Picasso Woman (1980-1990), pen and ink and watercolour on paper
The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sally (1993), Polaroid
Ramone (1980-1990), pen and ink, marker Read more ...