actors
Adam Sweeting
Echoes of Phil Kaufman’s 1983 classic The Right Stuff resonate through Damien Chazelle’s new account of how Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The Right Stuff ended with the conclusion of America’s Mercury space programme in 1963, and First Man neatly picks up the baton by taking us through the ensuing Gemini and Apollo missions, peaking with the “giant leap for mankind” of Apollo 11.First Man plots Armstrong’s progress from test pilot to astronaut with all the training and preparation that entailed, though fans of the earlier film may find themselves missing its comic, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The straw hat is surely the season’s requisite headgear for great actors embarking on their valedictory screen performances. It was there on the venerable Harry Dean Stanton’s head through much of Lucky, and the great John Hurt makes it his own in Eric Styles’ That Good Night, his last lead film role (his cameo in espionage thriller Damascus Cover hardly counts). As its title, drawn from Dylan Thomas’s famous poem about death, suggests, the whiff of mortality is strong, and so is the sense of a script creaking, dramatic impact sustained principally by the charisma of a master.“The horizon Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Harry Dean Stanton died in September last year aged 91, and will forever be remembered as the embodiment of the lean, lonely, laconic stranger, a man of few words but imbued with an enigmatic allure. This film, the directorial debut of character actor John Carroll Lynch, has been conceived as both homage to and starring vehicle for the departed Stanton, but doesn’t quite hit the spot on either count.Harry D is the eponymous Lucky, a solitary 90-something living on the edge of a sleepy, sun-baked town in the Arizona desert and trying to understand what his life has meant. Displaying a heroic Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Fenella Fielding - “one of the finest female impersonators in the business,” joked Eric Morecambe – has died at the age of 90. Most actors of such a great vintage tend to be forgotten, but not Fielding. Last year she celebrated her big birthday with a memoir. Its alluring title Do You Mind If I Smoke? was lifted from that succulent scene in Carry On Screaming! Playing a femme fatale draped on a divan, Fielding seemed to exude sultry clouds of steam from her very pores.The memoir brought her a great deal of publicity. She did book events, she read the readers’ news on Radio 4’s PM, she was Read more ...
Owen Richards
What signals the end of a relationship? The loss of attraction? Infidelity? Or is it, as Wanderlust explores, something more innocuous? The opening episode of BBC One's latest show packed in enough domestic drama to sustain most series, but found its pressure points in unexpected places. This is not a story of betrayal, but an honest conversation on what happens when lust leaves but love remains.When we met Joy and Alan (Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh, main picture), they're going through the motions. Foreplay consists of a disinterested strip and a mild reassurance of “ready?” This isn’ Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Amidst ever-uncertain times, one thing is for sure: this country's ability to regenerate and renew itself theatrically remains alive and well. From an ever-bustling array of activity in the capital to all manner of bracing enterprise up and down the land, the British theatre continues to attract the best, and this year's shortlist for The Hospital Club's h 100 Awards amounts to a snapshot of excellence at this point in time. That the finalists range from an actor-turned-playwright (Arinzé Kene, author of Misty, main picture) to an entrepreneurial powerhouse based in the northwest (Alex Read more ...
David Benedict
What’s that? Joan Crawford had no sense of humour? Well, take a look at It's A Great Feeling. It’s a pretty bizarre (and pretty bad) 1949 musical with Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan playing themselves running round the Warner Brothers lot attempting to make a picture. For reasons too daft to explain, they want to turn waitress Judy Adams (Doris Day) into their leading lady and all three wind up at a swanky gown shop. Doris disappears to try on a red gingham number, when who should pop up in a fur stole knitting what looks suspiciously like a baby bootee? Real-life Joan.Appalled by Read more ...
Heather Neill
Jonathan Munby's production starring Ian McKellen, first seen last year in Chichester and now transferred to the West End, reflects our everyday anxieties, emphasising in the world of a Trump presidency, the dangers of childish, petulant authoritarianism. And while King James I was keen to promulgate the benefits of a united kingdom - having joined England and Scotland under his rule only three years before Shakespeare's tragedy was presented at court in 1606 - the corrosive nature of divisions within the state is equally clear now in the era of Brexit. The Union Flag features frequently in Read more ...
Saskia Baron
What would have happened to Leon Vitali if as a schoolboy he had gone to see that other 1968 hit sci-fi movie, Barbarella rather than Kubrick’s 2001? It’s impossible to imagine that a life devoted to the oeuvre of Roger Vadim would have merited a documentary. Luckily it was Stanley Kubrick who inspired total dedication. Filmworker is fascinating not just for Stanley Kubrick dévotees, but for anyone interested in the craft of filmmaking or the psychology of obsessive artists. Leon Vitali was a young British actor in the early '70s, just starting out on his career. He looked a bit like the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Inside Tully – or maybe inside Charlize Theron’s massively pregnant belly – is a darker, more daring film trying to get out. There are startlingly original moments, but it’s as if writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, creators of Juno and Young Adult, chickened out in the end and plumped for whimsy and sentiment.Marlo (Theron) is swamped by pregnancy and motherhood. She and her lacklustre husband Drew (a mumbling Ron Livingston) have two kids aged eight and five already, and now they’re expecting a third. Possibly not a good plan. Unplanned, in fact. “I feel like a trash barge,” she Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If only there were more: that's a first response to Nothing Like a Dame, Roger Michell's affectionate yet clear-eyed portrait of four of Britain's finest actresses, all now in their 80s. As the camera circles around Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, and Eileen Atkins in conversation, it's impossible not to be swept up in a collective portrait of these remarkable careers alongside their shared awareness of the advancing years. Small wonder the one classic role they pause to debate at length is Cleopatra. Age really cannot wither this quartet's infinite variety. Due to be Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It’s about time Juliette Binoche and Claire Denis teamed up: the legendary French actress, Gallic film royalty known by her countrymen and women as La Binoche, with one of the country’s most unique directors, both talented and formidable women who have very much forged their own paths in the cutthroat world of the film industry.Just like waiting for a bus, there are now two collaborations between them, made in quick succession: the second, a science fiction co-starring Robert Pattinson, is in post-production. The Arts Desk met Binoche in Paris to speak about the first.Let the Sunshine In has Read more ...