Academy Awards
Best of 2020: FilmSaturday, 26 December 2020
It all started so promisingly. Parasite's triumph at the Oscars was a resounding response to 2019's saccharine and problematic Green Book. Art house was in and here to stay. And in some ways, this came to pass - with cinemas caught in a cycle of... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: ParasiteTuesday, 02 June 2020
So what exactly is all the fuss about? For those of us from a cinema-deprived area, it’s been a long wait for the homevideo release of this much vaunted "masterpiece". And the trailer gives away so much, there’s probably little to surprise us, right... Read more... |
Women Make Film: Part Two review - two steps forward, one step backFriday, 22 May 2020
The second half of Mark Cousins’ documentary on films by women filmmakers starts with religion; it ends with song and dance. This is a second seven-hour journey through cinema. It reconfirms Women Make Film as a remarkable feat of excavation and... Read more... |
Parasite review - a class war with grand designsThursday, 06 February 2020
With the Oscars approaching, one film building momentum in the fight for best picture – and whose victory would delight all but the most blinkered – is the Korean Bong Joon Ho’s deliriously dark and entertaining black comedy, Parasite. It... Read more... |
Minding the Gap review – profound musings on lifeFriday, 22 March 2019
Where would you go for a devastating study on the human condition? The home movies of teenage skaters would be very low down on that list. But most of those movies aren’t filmed, compiled and analysed by Bing Liu, the director of Minding the Gap.... Read more... |
Oscars 2019: Olivia Colman crowned queen of HollywoodMonday, 25 February 2019
The 91st Academy Awards began with a rousing concert appearance from Queen to kick off a show from which Bohemian Rhapsody led the field with four trophies. Three host-free hours later, the ceremony got a surprise shot of adrenaline from the... Read more... |
DVD: The GuiltyFriday, 22 February 2019
It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active patrol pending a conduct investigation and is stuck on the phones. Drunks, druggies, posh blokes complaining of being mugged in... Read more... |
'I'll show the lot of you!' Richard E Grant's Oscar nominationWednesday, 23 January 2019
Richard E Grant has captivated the internet. The actor greeted the news of his nomination for an Academy Award by returning to his first rental when no one had heard of him. There he whooped with childlike delight, and then shared the whole thing in... Read more... |
The Wife review - Glenn Close deserves better from her latest Oscar bidFriday, 28 September 2018
Writers need to write, or so goes the unimpeachable argument that underpins The Wife, which is being strongly touted as the film that may finally bring leading lady Glenn Close an Oscar in her seventh time at bat. Close is terrific, as she almost... Read more... |
Michel Hazanavicius: 'Losing himself is how he found himself'Friday, 11 May 2018
French director Michel Hazanavicius made a name for himself with his OSS 117 spy spoofs, Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009), set in the Fifties and Sixties respectively and starring Jean Dujardin as a somewhat idiotic... Read more... |
Oscars 2018: The shape of a snoozefestMonday, 05 March 2018
Is #MeSnooze a hashtag? It could well be for those who sat through the 90th annual Academy Awards, an Oscar night so reined in by the current climate in Hollywood that it was as if all the fun and frolics had been leached out of a ceremony always at... Read more... |
Oscars 2017: Moonlight and La La Land go toe to toeMonday, 27 February 2017
If only the recent American election had been similarly rectified. That was surely the thought on many people’s lips as the 89th Academy Awards ended in confusion with the news that the evening’s expected winner, La La Land, had in fact lost to... Read more... |
