Film
Saskia Baron
Paul Schrader is one of those filmmakers who critics really want to love. Not only is he responsible as a writer for at least two masterpieces – Taxi Driver and Raging Bull – he’s also the director of such great films as Mishima, American Gigolo and Light Sleeper. But what really makes people who write about movies watch out for each new Schrader film is that he started off as a critic himself, and it still shows in his deep knowledge of cinema and insatiable desire to find new ways to tell stories through clashing images, abrasive dialogue and discordant music.It’s a shame therefore when the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Penélope Cruz has rarely been better, though her director Julio Medem has seldom been worse. As Magda, she’s an earthy everywoman, whether dealing with an errant husband, protecting her son Dani, or treating breast cancer with wry stoicism. It perhaps helps that her doctor, Julian (Asier Etxeandia), is dishy, sensitive and, like football scout Arturo (Luis Tosar) – a chance acquaintance undergoing his own tragedies who becomes her lover – enraptured by her. Magda becomes a centrifugal force around which these men spin, even as the lurking cancer’s blows become more grievous, and fright and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
New York-born actor Robert Vaughn, who has died at the age of 83, achieved massive popular success when he starred as the sleek secret agent Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for four seasons from 1964 to 1968 and exploited the then-new James Bond mania to ratings-busting effect. Prior to that, Vaughn, both of whose parents were actors, had racked up a long string of minor credits in American TV and movies, the most prestigious of which was an appearance in John Sturges's 1960 cowboy classic, The Magnificent Seven. The latter also starred Steve McQueen, with whom Vaughn Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Ewan McGregor has been judged unworthy of adapting Philip Roth in the US. But his directorial debut is finely crafted, and powered by visceral emotion embodied in one of his best performances. As Seymour “Swede” Levov, he’s an All-Jewish-American hero, living the 1950s dream, till the 1960s bring it crashing down. His beloved daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning, pictured below right) is the agent of his destruction, in a one-sided generation war unusually seen from the straight-edged parents’ side. McGregor, here a kinder artist than Roth, cares about the father and daughter with a painful Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The Russian director Alexander Sokurov has never been afraid of tackling weighty, often philosophical issues head on, and his latest film Francofonia is as pioneering – and, some might say, unnecessarily uncompromising – as ever. It’s nothing less than a meditation on civilisation, its potential for preservation or destruction, and history, seen through the prism of Paris's Louvre. Stretching, and evading, the conventions of both documentary and fiction, it’s perhaps best considered as an art project in itself.Sokurov’s cinematic fascination with the museum as a concept stretches back to his Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In case one thought that turning hit TV shows into movies was a 21st century phenomenon, here comes a restoration of The Small World of Sammy Lee to prove that film-makers were at it back in 1963.Writer-director Ken Hughes's noir drama started off as Sammy, a tense, one-hour, one-location television play made in 1958. Its small screen success allowed Hughes to hire the incomparable documentary photographer Wolf Suschitzky as his DP and cast musical star Anthony Newley for the feature film version. Newley plays Sammy, a small-time hustler in Soho, dodging the bookies' heavies who are chasing Read more ...
Saskia Baron
While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, it’s faintly reassuring to imagine that there might be some intelligent life form out there beyond the stars that’s just waiting to land on our planet and make us all love one another – or swiftly put us out of our squabbling misery, once and for all. This familiar story – from The Day the Earth Stood Still, through Close Encounters and Independence Day, to Mars Attacks – is reworked for adults with a philosophical bent in Arrival.Twelve enormous black ovoids have mysteriously arrived on Earth and are hovering over locations from Devon Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Only a film which is very sure of itself would set one of its climactic scenes against a backdrop of wallpaper dominated by swastikas. Such audaciousness is typical of Nicolas Winding Refn who, with the startling Neon Demon, confirms he is now mainstream cinema’s most adroit director of films rooted in shock traditions stretching back to the Sixties. There are no laboured, knowing winks or clunky, long-winded exercises in genre recreation. Instead, Winding Refn hurtles pell-mell into his tale with nary a look back over his shoulder.The Neon Demon is as fantastic as its predecessor Only God Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This tragicomic romp is loosely based on a bizarre footnote in Spanish history. The Italian Duke Amadeo was offered the throne after the previous occupant’s violent overthrow. But when the kingmaker who invited him was assassinated just before his 1870 coronation, the new monarch went from guest of honour to gatecrasher at a convoluted constitutional party, where the last thing anyone wanted him to do was rule.As Amadeo, Alex Brendemühl is quietly dignified, looks smoulderingly good in uniform, and yearns to bring enlightened reform to a sclerotic, corrupt nation. Humiliations are heaped on Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Tom Ford steps up to the celluloid big leagues with Nocturnal Animals, a deeply disquieting film that resists classification – even precise meaning – up until the final frame. A failed-relationship drama that enfolds elements of mystery and horror into its tightening grip, this adaptation of the 1993 Austin Wright novel Tony and Susan finds its designer-turned-director combining style and substance while doubling as an ace director of actors, several of whom here deliver some of their best work in years.That's true of ancillary roles handing the likes of Michael Sheen and Laura Linney Read more ...
graham.rickson
This new Blu-ray release of Ken Loach’s Kes looks and sounds terrific, but the film’s glories would be just as well-suited by a scratchy print projected in a school hall, or on a distressed VHS cassette. Chris Menges’ cinematography is outstanding, capturing the coal-streaked grime of 1968 Barnsley along with its beauty. This is a work of bright, cool light and pitch blackness, the dark bedroom which Billy shares with his step-brother, Jud, a contrast with the bleached skies where the titular kestrel soars. Kes feels eerily contemporary: Barnsley’s streets look marginally smarter in 2016 but Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You could begin to wonder if The Accountant is part of a game of one-upmanship between Ben Affleck and his old buddy Matt Damon. If Matt can strike it big with Jason Bourne, the amnesiac super-lethal assassin, Ben can go one better – Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant and super-lethal assassin! That this movie is as enjoyable as it is is down to Affleck going beyond being merely strong and silent into an understatement almost as stylised and codified as Noh theatre. He lets slip sly one-liners as barely audible afterthoughts ("sorry," he murmurs, after interrupting an ongoing Read more ...