independent cinema
Tom Birchenough
The invaluable work being carried out by the Wim Wenders Foundation to preserve the legacy of the great German director continues to bear fruit. In 2012, with the help of the World Cinema Foundation, Wenders bought back his entire back catalogue (which he had lost in associated bankruptcy proceedings a decade earlier), and the process of 4K digital restoration began.The challenges – much more than just repairing images drawn from some very tired original prints (though that was considerable work too, as an accompanying extra here, Restoring Time, reveals) – were particularly demanding in the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“He’s not a sideshow attraction,” we hear towards the end of Marc Meyers’s queasily compelling My Friend Dahmer, when one of the “Dahmer Fan Club”, a group of high school sham-friends-cum-taunters who have been treating the film’s teen protagonist as if he was just that, has second thoughts. Encouraging him to throw pretend fits – they call it “spazzing” – first around school, later in public, they have seen it as some sort of “cool” provocation, a hilarious disruption. The bullied outsider Jeff appears content to go along with it, gratified by the semblance of inclusion that it seems to 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 ...
Tom Birchenough
The naturalism of Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull has an engrossing inconsequence – if that's not a contradiction in terms – that surely betrays the Brazilian director’s origins as a documentarist. Narrative in any traditional plot sense is the least of the film’s concerns, subordinated to our growing engagement in the distinctive world that it captures, which is that of the vaquejada, the rodeo community of the country’s Nordeste region. It’s Mascaro’s second feature, and although he’s moved on to working with professional actors, the collective achievement here is to dial down any Read more ...
Owen Richards
Deep in an unnamed desert, a violent and psychedelic retribution is sought. The aptly named Revenge is a brutally rewarding experience, bringing classic horror and exploitation tropes kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is the debut feature from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat, who combines a low opinion of men, visual panache and disturbing imagination to create a taut, bright thrill ride.We begin at a villa, where the smug, rich Richard (Kevin Jannsens, pictured below right) has brought his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz, pictured below left) for some fun before a hunting Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The title of South African director John Trengove’s powerful first feature works in more ways than one. In its literal sense, it alludes to the ritual circumcision, or ukwaluka, that accompanies the traditional rite of passage for young Xhosa men, and the process of healing that follows. It’s a process that sees teenage “initiates” symbolically inducted into adulthood by older men, or “care-givers”, who have themselves previously been through the experience that they now oversee.Traditionally shrouded in secrecy, descriptions of ukwaluka are rare, the best-known that in Nelson Mandela’s Read more ...
Owen Richards
Divorce proceedings turn sour in this devastating debut from writer/director Xavier Legrand. Using the full palette of human behaviour, Custody expertly balances high tension and grounded realism to create a timely and lingering film.We start at a custody hearing for a child, Julien (Thomas Gioria, main picture), his parents sitting silently as counsellors read opposing statements. The mother, Miriam (Léa Drucker), is stoically still as her unsubstantiated claims of an abusive husband are read out; next to her is the accused Antoine (Denis Ménochet, pictured below), a hulking but subdued man Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Boxing movies are often about redemption in the ring. From Somebody Up There Likes Me to last year’s Bleed for This via Rocky, the story stays the same: boxer seeks peace though punching. In Journeyman, Paddy Considine travels along a different path. The sporting action happens towards the start, but the heart of the story is in its aftermath.The clue lurks in that title. As a professional, Matty Burton is no journeyman – he’s a world champion – but as a result of his final fight he is a man on a journey. Quite how challenging a journey it will be is indicated in heavy hints as Matty Read more ...
Owen Richards
Last year, the BFI commemorated the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality with the release of Queerama, part of its Gross Indecency film season. Now available on DVD, the documentary from Daisy Asquith eschews standard storytelling for something all the more provocative.Queerama is compiled from the BFI’s huge film and television archive, one hundred years of LGBT+ documentaries, dramas, musicals and comedies, all told through the heterosexual lens of the day. Curiosity, confusion and disgust were narrative constants.But in Queerama, the narrative has been Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Perhaps it’s fitting that Donald Crowhurst should once more find himself in a race. Even more aptly, it’s a race against himself. You wait half a century for a biopic about the round-the-world yachtsman who disappeared off the face of the earth, and then two turn up at once. This sort of clash sometimes happens in film, and one movie always ends up trouncing the other. Dangerous Liaisons seduced audiences away from Valmont. Capote killed off Infamous. That’s not quite the way things play out this time with two British films.Last month The Mercy, directed by James Marsh and starring Colin Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The gripping paradox of Lynne Ramsay’s terse, brutal thriller is suggested in its title. Adapted from Jonathan Ames's novella, it’s a film distinguished by the force of its images and the compression of its narrative, and while its impact leaves you dazed, you can’t quite believe that what you’ve just seen ever happened.Even its running time is designed to provoke. At a mere 85 minutes, it rejects the creeping bloat which has become endemic in Hollywood, and the shock of its abrupt ending leaves you feeling as if you’ve just staggered out of some terrible accident, and you’re trying to put Read more ...
David Kettle
Following his irreverent superhero reboot Thor: Ragnarok, one of 2017’s most distinctive blockbusters, and his quirky Kiwi indie comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016, it’s fair to say that interest in New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s back catalogue is high. Hence, no doubt, the DVD release of Waititi’s second feature, 2010’s big-hearted coming-of-age comedy Boy.It’s fair to say, too, that the director’s signature style – his bathetic, deadpan wit; his unapologetic silliness; his big emotions – are all there in this earlier movie. But there’s a more serious side to Boy: a sense of Read more ...