Film Features
The second coming of The Third ManMonday, 22 June 2015
What happened to Harry Lime during the war that he slid into iniquity, or was he always a swine? What cracked in him so badly that he sold diluted penicillin that gave children meningitis? What rat-like instincts of survival prompted him to betray his Czech lover so that the Russians would evict her from Austria? And why did he summon the hapless Holly Martins from America to join his racket? Read more...
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Christopher Lee: A Career in ClipsSaturday, 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. Read more... |
Arise, Sir Van, Sir Lenny and Sir Kevin. Dame who?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. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A Special: The FallingWednesday, 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. Read more... |
10 Questions for Filmmaker Damián SzifronTuesday, 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. Read more... |
Best of 2014: Top 13 Films, 5-1Wednesday, 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. Read more... |
Best of 2014: Top 13 Films, 13-6Tuesday, 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. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Dubai International Film FestivalSaturday, 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. Read more... |
Sci-Fi Week: 2001: A Space OdysseyThursday, 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. Read more... |
Sci-Fi Week: Scoring the ImpossibleWednesday, 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. Read more... |
Mike Nichols, 1931-2014Friday, 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. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the ViennaleMonday, 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. Read more... |
Leviathan: Attacking Putin's Russia From Inside the WhaleMonday, 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. Read more... |
Opinion: What's the point of short film?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. Read more... |
Immoral Tales: When Art Met PornographyWednesday, 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. Read more... |
Joan Rivers, 1933-2014Friday, 05 September 2014
Age could not wither her, or so it appeared. Joan Rivers has died, aged 81. On her 80th 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? Read more... |
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