Film
Adam Sweeting
The Conan yarns are familiar from novels, comics and TV series, but most of all from the early-Eighties Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. In this new remake, the title role is stretched around the pneumatic bulk of Jason Momoa, the half-Hawaiian and half-Irish veteran of the celebrated cheesecake opera Baywatch.Plot-wise, it's a point-and-go revenge saga with an added long arc of ancestral evilMomoa doesn't look as if he likes to waste time studying the Method or boning up on the Nouvelle Vague, but he fills a Conan-sized 3D hole on the screen. Yet Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Chris Marker has made over 60 films in his long career (he's now 90). But his reputation has rested on just two. Sans soleil (1983), a meditative film essay on Japan, and La jetée (1962), a 20-minute sci-fi film in the ciné-roman photomontage style, are widely considered the finest examples of their respective genres. On top of that, La jetée was named one of the Top 10 sci-fi films of all time by Time magazine. Optimum Classics are re-releasing both this week on one DVD.With its eccentric eye, its exotic locations, its peripatetic ways, zipping between the economic miracle of Japan and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although FW Murnau’s pre-America years will always be defined by 1922’s Nosferatu, he’d already racked up nine films in the preceding three years. He made his mark on Hollywood with the 1927 landmark Sunrise but, although being overshadowed by Nosferatu, his earlier German films reveal how he reached these points. Schloss Vogelöd (also known as The Haunted Castle) is a Murnau obscurity, a stately, atmospheric meditation from 1921 that’s capable of giving the willies.But they take a while manifesting themselves. The straightforward plot is drawn out. Every scene is a carefully staged set piece Read more ...
ash.smyth
It is easy to see why Danish director Susanne Bier’s latest movie would have scooped up all the Foreign Language gongs, made the festival selection lists and generally five-starred it all over the shop. Riffing on the theme of violent conflict as it arises both in an African refugee camp and a generic Danish town (here, picnics in wheat fields, fresh lakes for swimming, unlocked front doors, faces like golden apples; there, Darfur-style dirt-scratching), In a Better World centres on the friendship of two schoolboys, Elias (Markus Rygaard) and Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), one perennially Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Directing and writing his first full-length feature, John Michael McDonagh fully exploits the wild and windswept landscapes of Connemara, and similarly extracts maximum value from his leading man, Brendan Gleeson. Perhaps he picked up tips from his brother Martin, who directed Gleeson in In Bruges. As Garda Sergeant Gerry Boyle, Gleeson finds himself on the trail of a trio of ruthless drug smugglers, about to land a colossal stash somewhere on the Irish west coast. This has attracted the attentions of FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle).The narrative is partly driven by the culture shock Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006) is a shadowy study in exile, set in and starring a Lisbon neighbourhood of Cape Verdean migrant workers. Ventura is the damaged, dignified old man who fills nearly every scene. With a lurching walk and disturbed, sad stare, dictating letters to relatives who no longer exist and lending an ear to the local heroin-addict mum he calls his daughter, he’s alienated yet loving. “The ceiling is full of spiders,” he imaginatively complains to a letting agent, as he refuses yet another pristine impersonal flat in the new block the neighbourhood is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The title is the film. In a new low point for high concepts, producers Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg only needed to see the cover of the titular, unfinished comic book to give Cowboys & Aliens the green light. Iron Man’s director Jon Favreau, JJ Abrams’ writers, Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig similarly found the prospect of the sort of six-shooter/laser dust-up last seen when 1980s schoolkids tipped up their toy boxes irresistible. It’s nothing like as much fun as it should be, the strain of turning the concept into an actual film overwhelming everyone.It’s 1873 and we’re in Absolution Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This is ferocious popular cinema. The original Elite Squad (2007) was an iconic hit in Brazil, detailing the training, private lives and bloody ghetto raids of BOPE, the black-suited elite Rio police force led by charismatic Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura). Director José Padilha resisted offers to convert the film’s commercial clout into a TV franchise, instead expanding this sequel into a total indictment of Brazilian society. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is the most politically and socially engaged, best action film this year.Sweaty energy and ruthless narrative momentum grip from the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s something elemental in Elizabeth Mitchell and Brek Taylor’s Island – a small-scale British independent film that scores highly on performances and more than relishes the visuals of its setting.The landscapes, shot mainly on the Isle of Mull, are glorious, and speak for the mood of the film’s heroine Nikki (Natalie Press): the emotional undercurrents of the script seem as tempestuous as local nature, especially the surrounding sea. The directors don’t hurry to bring a trace of explanation to their story (based on the novel by Jane Rogers), but it gradually becomes apparent that this Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There are biopics and there are biopics. The process by which an actor is made up to look like the character he has been cast to play gets an intriguing twist in The Devil’s Double. Latif Yahia, who was often confused with Uday Hussein when they were at school, many years later found himself involuntarily drafted as the lookalike of Saddam’s son. And now both men are played by Dominic Cooper, who finds himself in the odd position of being made up to look like he's been made up to look like a lookalike.The question at the heart of this gruesome tour of recent Iraqi history is whether Latif Read more ...