film directors
Memory review - love, dementia and truthFriday, 23 February 2024
Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is given a new lease on life in Mexican director Michel Franco’s moving, complex film, full of fine performances.Saul (a wonderful Peter Sarsgaard), who has early-onset dementia, plays the song constantly. It’... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Wim Wenders on 'Perfect Days'Wednesday, 21 February 2024
Wim Wenders’ latest narrative film Perfect Days might seem an uncommonly mellow work by the maker of Alice in the Cities (1974), The American Friend (1977), Paris, Texas (1984), and Wings of Desire (1987), but it still finds the 78-year-old... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Jerzy Skolimowski - Walkower, Bariera, Dialóg 20-40-60Tuesday, 20 February 2024
Diving into this three-disc set of early films by maverick Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski leaves one reeling, an arresting reminder of the vibrancy and flair of so much 1960s Eastern European cinema.This isn’t a valedictory package: Skolimowski,... Read more... |
Occupied City review - unquiet Nazi crimesTuesday, 13 February 2024
“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,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Werner Herzog - Radical DreamerTuesday, 13 February 2024
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... Read more... |
This Blessed Plot review - a right old English carry onSunday, 28 January 2024
The hefty Essex builder Keith Martin, who plays a version of himself, as do most of the non-professional actors in Mark Isaacs' comic docufiction This Blessed Plot, is no Olivier or Branagh. But he puts brio and a touch of bombast into the dying... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Old OakTuesday, 09 January 2024
Margaret Thatcher’s witless assertion that “there is no such thing as society” dates back to 1987; Ken Loach’s The Old Oak offers a belated but powerful rebuttal.His film highlights several discrete societies coexisting in a depressed Durham mining... Read more... |
Best of 2023: FilmTuesday, 26 December 2023
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... Read more... |
Powell and Pressburger: A Celtic storm brewingWednesday, 20 December 2023
“Nothing is stronger than true love,” a young laird says to a headstrong young woman in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), his voice heard above the sounds of wind and waves. She replies, “No, nothing.”Even as... Read more... |
Powell and Pressburger: In Prospero's RoomSaturday, 02 December 2023
There’s a thread of bright magic running through British cinema, from Powell and Pressburger through Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman and Lynne Ramsay, and it’s wrapped around Jarman’s last home like fisherman’s rope.His friend and collaborator Tilda Swinton... Read more... |
Napoleon review - Sir Ridley Scott's historical epic is wide but not deepWednesday, 22 November 2023
Sir Ridley Scott has taken umbrage at the French critics who weren’t too impressed with his new movie. Not only do they not like his film, but the French “don’t even like themselves”, according to the dyspeptic auteur.But I feel our French cousins... Read more... |
May December review - a queasy take on sexual exploitationSaturday, 18 November 2023
There’s much to admire here – May December features impressive performances from Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, and director Todd Haynes shows his mastery of classic Sirkian style. But disappointingly, this comes across as a... Read more... |
