Film Features

Christopher Lee: A Career in Clips

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 13 June 2015

Christopher Lee died this week, aged 93. It’s strange that an actor best known for horror films, for characters that were fiendish and diabolical, should be so cherished a part of the British cultural landscape. That fact speaks volumes for the charisma and charm, as well as craft of Lee’s performances, and for the intelligence, grace and wit of the man in person.

Arise, Sir Van, Sir Lenny and Sir Kevin. Dame who?

Jasper Rees Saturday, 13 June 2015

If the honours system is used to award deserving individuals, its other job is to provide an aspirational marker for the country as a whole. This, it tells us twice a year, is who we want to be: inclusive, non-sexist, colour-blind. From the look of the awards dished out in the arts for the Queen’s birthday honours list, in the summer of 2015 it looks very much as if we want to be a society which favours male privilege. Don’t hold the front page.

theartsdesk Q&A Special: The Falling

Kieron Tyler Wednesday, 22 April 2015

The Falling, released in cinemas this week, charts the events surrounding an epidemic of fainting among pupils of a girls' school in the late 1960s. The trigger appears to be the end of the friendship between the intense Lydia and the outgoing Abbie. Much in the dream-like film is unexplained. Abbie’s difficult home life is perhaps a contributing factor, as may be the institution’s disconnection from the liberal world evolving beyond the school’s gates.

Comment

10 Questions for Filmmaker Damián Szifron

Demetrios Matheou Tuesday, 24 March 2015

Nominated for Best Foreign Language film at this year’s Oscars, Wild Tales is that rarity, a portmanteau film; even rarer, it’s a good one. Though unconnected by plot or character, the six darkly comic stories are bonded by themes of revenge and fighting back – against cheating lovers, bad drivers, rank bureaucracy, the crook who ruined your life. It’s about people who cross a line most of us only fantasise about.

Best of 2014: Top 13 Films, 5-1

theartsdesk Wednesday, 31 December 2014

Continuing on from yesterday where great British comedy sat alongside Turkish slow cinema in our countdown of the best films from 13-6, here are our top five films of 2014. Another diverse selection which celebrates ambitious and immersive storytelling, technical prowess and breathtaking sights.

Best of 2014: Top 13 Films, 13-6

theartsdesk Tuesday, 30 December 2014

In 2014 theartsdesk film team presents their picks of the year with a list of 13 diverse titles from great homegrown and international directors. Thirteen is the number of theartsdesk film critics who voted in our end-of-year poll so we have compiled our list so each of our wonderful writers can act as a champion for one of their personal picks.

theartsdesk at the Dubai International Film Festival

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 20 December 2014

Dubai is a city that famously emerged from the desert, founded on oil and ambition, rising in an eruption of skyscrapers, luxury resorts and bling.

Sci-Fi Week: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Graham Fuller Thursday, 27 November 2014

No Gravity or Interstellar has challenged the might and influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey: its re-release this week is one of the movie events of the year.

Comment

Sci-Fi Week: Scoring the Impossible

graham Rickson Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Classical composers have always enjoyed depicting the implausible. Operas based on mythological subjects abound, creating near-impossible staging demands. Musical works based on science fiction are far rarer. Haydn's plodding opera Life on the Moon isn't one of his most scintillating works.

Mike Nichols, 1931-2014

Matt Wolf Friday, 21 November 2014

He was at home with screen newcomers like Dustin Hoffman and Cher and knew how to handle such old pros as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, while his stage work gave a leg up to then-unknowns Robert Redford and Whoopi Goldberg and he collaborated time and again with Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson.

theartsdesk at the Viennale

Demetrios Matheou Monday, 10 November 2014

We’ve grown accustomed to cinemas asking punters to pocket their cell phones, or prohibiting food and drink inside the auditorium. But an unassuming sign on the doors of the Gartenbaukino in Vienna has a different plea: Bitte nicht laufen. Please don’t run.

Leviathan: Attacking Putin's Russia From Inside the Whale

Tom Birchenough Monday, 03 November 2014

When Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan opens in Russia early next year it won’t be in the director’s cut. Given new legislation effective from this past July, it will be against the law to include the very distinctive Russian expletives, known locally as mat, that are plentiful in the director’s film, and add a very distinctive quality to his depiction of contemporary Russia.

Opinion: What's the point of short film?

Debbi Lander Tuesday, 16 September 2014

The emergence of digital both as a technology and a culture has fundamentally changed the world in which short film now exists. Now short film has public, industry and social value and its role and routes have fundamentally changed.

Immoral Tales: When Art Met Pornography

Kieron Tyler Wednesday, 10 September 2014

The release of a restored version of 1974’s Immoral Tales on Blu-ray raises inevitable and unavoidable issues: whether the film is pornography, art or arty pornography. Then, there’s the matter of whether its director Walerian Borowczyk was a misogynist; an objectifier of women. Consideration of its qualities as a film can be lost in such debate.

Joan Rivers, 1933-2014

Fisun Güner Friday, 05 September 2014

Age could not wither her, or so it appeared. Joan Rivers has died, aged 81. On her 80^th birthday she told an interviewer she’d be celebrating with her eightieth face. Her caustic humour could leave your nerves jangling, but she was the butt of it as often as anyone was. And in the field of cosmetic surgery you could almost call her a lone pioneer, of sorts, for what other American celebrity has ever been as candid about going under the knife?

LFF 2014: Programme Launch

Matt Wolf Wednesday, 03 September 2014

A pair of Oscar hopefuls that take wildly divergent perspectives on World War II were confirmed today as the opening and closing night films of the 58^th annual BFI London Film Festival, running 8-19 October at a range of venues across the capital.