documentary
Nick Hasted
“I feel as if I am live reporting from a shipwreck,” Dutch-Jewish journalist Philip Mechanicus wrote en route to his concentration camp murder. Steve McQueen’s four-hour reverie on Amsterdam’s Nazi occupation teases out the scars of that arbitrary, vicious time beneath his adopted home’s placid streets. Filming during 2020’s pandemic, this becomes a time-jumping double-portrait of his adopted home city, though the inexact mirroring often cracks.McQueen’s Dutch wife Bianca Sitgers’ book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945) led him to visit its addresses and use her text, which Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Weird, quirky Hollywood Werner can obscure the fierce visionary who warred with Kinski in the jungle. This is even true of many of his own features since moving to LA which, like his peer Wenders, usually pale next to his reverent, supernal documentaries. Thomas von Steinaecker’s conventional doc emphasises his latter-day, parodic cult stardom but, thanks to Herzog’s enthusiastic engagement, still gets valuably close to his heart.Star-studded talking heads including Christian Bale, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson and Chloe Zhao offer makeweight superlatives, but it’s von Steinaecker’s Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This week, the makers of Scala!!! threw a party in what remains of its subject – a notorious, beloved repertory cinema in then sleazy King’s Cross, born 1981, dead 1993, and now a dowdier music venue.The auditorium was cut up, shrunk and sanitised, the seats where hundreds got lost in an especially dank darkness long gone. But old shapes were mentally sketched by ageing regulars as a small screen defiantly unspooled copious gore, nudity and energetic depravity in trailers for Reform School Girls, Thundercrack!, Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Pasolini’s Salo, Hal Ashby Read more ...
theartsdesk
Numbers indicate if entries are listed in order of preferenceSaskia BaronAnatomy of a FallBrokerFallen LeavesJoylandKillers of the Flower MoonOtto Baxter: Not a F**ing Horror StoryReturn to SeoulSt OmerScrapperA Thousand and OneThe reason I go to the cinema is mainly to experience other people’s lives and thoughts but also to escape for a few hours from the gerbil wheel of anxiety about the world that spins constantly in my head. 2023 was not a great year for anyone of a fretful disposition, but these were the movies that for a while made me happy and distracted in the dark of the movie Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Ella Glendining has made an impressive documentary debut with the autobiographical essay, Is There Anybody Out There? Born without hip joints and very short thigh bones, we first encounter her as a perky, confident little girl walking in the woods near her home, in video footage filmed by her parents. They were aware from the first pregnancy scan that she was different and have done an exemplary job of ensuring that she had as happy a childhood as possible.As an adult Glendining’s confidence shines through and it informs her approach to the medical establishment throughout her Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you thought being a pop star might be fun, this four-part voyage around the tortured soul of Robbie Williams may convince you otherwise. He has sold 75 million records and historic numbers of concert tickets, scored 13 Number One albums and seven Number One singles in the UK, and has a shed full of gongs including 18 Brit Awards. But even so, now three months short of his 50th birthday, he still seems to feel that it could suddenly all end tomorrow, or possibly even this afternoon.“Nobody graduates from childhood fame well balanced,” he comments, having first been blasted into the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Journalism is a despised profession. And when you consider the story behind the interview that Diana, Princess of Wales, gave to BBC journo Martin Bashir in 1995 you can see why. As anyone who follows current affairs knows, it has been revealed that Bashir used less than honest methods to get this scoop and the whole sorry process has once again thrown an ugly light on the BBC as an institution.Now writer Jonathan Maitland, who has previously had Dead Sheep, An Audience with Jimmy Savile, and The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson staged at Park Theatre, gives us a documentary account of the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
On the Adamant is an endearing documentary by the French director Nicolas Philibert, best known here for his 2003 film, Être et Avoir, a portrait of a single-room school in the Auvergne.This time around, Philbert has placed his camera on the Adamant, a purpose-built barge permanently moored on the Seine in Paris. It’s a drop in centre for city dwellers battling with mental illness – a place where sessions of art therapy, communal cooking and mediated group discussions help troubled people from falling further into despair. Philbert’s style is to eschew Read more ...
Sarah Kent
If Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia doesn’t make you cry, you’re a hard nut to crack. The film records the fortunes of defectors fleeing North Korea, a hell hole that is more like a prison camp than a country.The phone rings with news that a family of five – an 80-year-old grandmother, her daughter, son-in-law and their two small girls – have crossed the Yalu River and are now trapped in China. They are desperate; if caught, they’ll be returned to North Korea to be tortured and either killed or sent to a concentration camp.The caller is part of the “underground railroad” network that helps Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It doesn’t do to be in a hurry in Nepal. In Baato, directors Kate Stryker and Lucas Millard follow Mikma and her family as they travel 300 kilometres from their mountain village in Eastern Nepal to the town of Terai. It takes the best part of a week for the five adults, two boys, and two dogs to walk the narrow paths until they reach the unpaved road where they can board rickety buses or jeeps to complete their journey.The trip is an annual event. Every winter for hundreds of years, villagers have been making the journey south to sell medicinal herbs gathered over the summer months in the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first he’s got to sort out some trouble. Shabu’s beloved grandma flew home to see her family in Suriname, and the lad took her car for a joyride and trashed it. Now he has to work out how to make enough money so his grandma can replace her car when she gets back.Making and selling frozen popsicles is one enterprise he tackles. We watch him concoct a Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His pleasure is so infectious that the independent bookstore he’s run in Lenox, Massachusetts for over 40 years has become a hub of bonhomie.“My favourite thing to do,” says his daughter, “is to sit in one of the pink armchairs and watch his interactions with people. Everything is informed by kindness, patience, and generosity. He’s got time for everyone Read more ...