sun 10/12/2023

Film reviews, news & interviews

Please Don't Destroy: Treasure of Foggy Mountain review - Dude, where's our map?

Justine Elias

Despite an ominous title, there’s always fair weather in the debut comic adventure film featuring Please Don’t Destroy, a NYC sketch comedy trio that’s hit it big with viral videos and on the long-running NBC series Saturday Night Live. (So long running, in fact, that two of the three are second-generation performers.)

Wonka review - a confusingly mixed bag of bonbons

Helen Hawkins

As the 117 minutes of Wonka tick by, the question it poses gains momentum: who is this film actually for? Children of all ages?

Smyrna review - Greece at twilight

Anthony Cecil

The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers, is a topical subject...

The Peasants review - earthbound animation

James Saynor

After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw that jump cuts and stop-...

Monica review - sombre American drama

Saskia Baron

There’s a rich seam of folk stories about changelings, infants snatched from home and replaced with a substitute child, to the horror and...

Blu-ray: Blackhat

Nick Hasted

Chris Hemsworth-starring, bone-jarringly physical cyber-thriller

Powell and Pressburger: In Prospero's Room

Nick Hasted

A magical day at Derek Jarman’s Dungeness cottage, dancing with the ghosts of Shakespeare, Powell and Pressburger

Eileen review - a dank fairytale film noir

Graham Fuller

A naive prison worker crushes on a chic colleague in William Oldroyd's disturbing thriller

Fallen Leaves review - deliciously dry Finnish romcom

Saskia Baron

Aki Kaurismaki returns to the cinema with a touching tale of love

Queendom review - an LGBTQ+ performance artist takes to the streets of Moscow in protest

Sarah Kent

Startlingly beautiful costumes designed to challenge the authorities

Blu-ray: King and Country

Graham Fuller

The class war rears its ugly head on the Western Front in Joseph Losey's bleak classic

The Eternal Daughter review - tricksy ghost story with a poignant emotional core

Helen Hawkins

Tilda Swinton (and her dog) excel in Joanna Hogg's latest

Maestro review - the infinite variety of Leonard Bernstein

David Nice

The music's well chosen, but Carey Mulligan shines brightest as Bernstein's wife Felicia

Lost in the Night review - hunting a mother's killer

James Saynor

Avengers and not many angels in this grim Mexican mystery

A Stitch in Time review - feelgood Aussie indie with an undernourished script

Helen Hawkins

An elderly woman's pursuit of lost dreams is given a light-touch treatment

32 Sounds: Interview with innovative documentarian Sam Green about his audio and visual feast

Saskia Baron

Rare chance to catch a unique documentary that explores the listening world

Napoleon review - Sir Ridley Scott's historical epic is wide but not deep

Adam Sweeting

Waterloo sunset for Joaquin Phoenix's surly French Emperor

Blu-ray: Pearls of the Deep

Graham Rickson

Poetic, witty anthology film, a 'manifesto for the Czech New Wave'

Mami Wata review – a gorgeous, strange African fable

Nick Hasted

Monochrome imagery illuminates a mythic war for a village's soul

May December review - a queasy take on sexual exploitation

Saskia Baron

Todd Haynes reunites with Julianne Moore in a stylish but cold melodrama

Is There Anybody Out There? review - autobiographical documentary on disability

Saskia Baron

Ella Glendining makes an impressive debut with her portrait of life with physical difference

Saltburn review - an uneven gothic romp

James Saynor

Tainted love among the toffs in Emerald Fennell’s latest

Tish review - haunting portrait of a driven working-class photographer

Graham Fuller

Intimate documentary on the life and extraordinary art of Tish Murtha contains a timely political message

Driving Madeleine review - a Paris taxi ride reveals a harrowing life story

Markie Robson-Scott

Christian Carion directs 95-year-old Line Renaud and Dany Boon in a heart-warming tear-jerker

DVD/Blu-ray: 23 Seconds to Eternity

Thomas H Green

Collection capturing the berserk, exhilarating vision of music-art mavericks The KLF

Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin review – close-up on chaos

Nick Hasted

Startling, incurious access to a dissolute rock life

Powell and Pressburger: the glueman cometh

Graham Fuller

A perverse village magus plays god with three wartime pilgrims in 'A Canterbury Tale', the Archers' strangest film

Anatomy of a Fall review - gripping psychological thriller set in the French Alps

Markie Robson-Scott

The power of ambivalence: Sandra Hüller excels in Justine Triet's superb fourth feature

A Forgotten Man review - Switzerland's WW2 record haunts monochrome drama

Saskia Baron

Stylish feature film explores a dark chapter in Switzerland's history

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

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