Film
Matt Wolf
If Peter Bogdanovich – remember him? – weren't there in the credits, Woody Allen would seem the unmistakable director of She's Funny That Way, the way too intermittently funny trifle that calls to mind such far superior Allen paeans to the New York stage as Bullets Over Broadway and finds leading man Owen Wilson adopting Allen's mannerisms throughout (as well Wilson might, having led the cast of Midnight in Paris). Playing a Broadway director who can't keep his trouser belts buckled, a stammering Wilson is the supposed comic pivot of a slow-aborning film from the once-great Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pinpointing exactly what makes Force Majeure so disquieting is difficult, and a second viewing on DVD confirms this. Overall, the elements of the film are unified so smoothly that focusing on any one of them doesn’t indicate the unexpectedly powerful effect of Ruben Östlund’s dissection of the collapse of male character.The impact could be a result of the director and writer's avowed reversal of the filmic hero trope. It could be Johannes Kuhnke’s intense depiction of father Tomas’s denial and subsequent breakdown in the wake of his transgression. Or it could be that such a sensitive theme Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It’s a big deal when a film festival unveils a new artistic director. After all, this is the person who leads the selection of often hundreds of films, thereby shaping the style and tone of the festival. It’s a responsibility that can not only reflect but dictate patterns in filmmaking and viewing; and for specifically public events, such as the festivals in London and Edinburgh, the pleasure of thousands of people depends on getting it right.This is a terrific job to have, which is why there are some festival chiefs around the world, cineaste Sepp Blatters, who refuse to budge for years on Read more ...
graham.rickson
If you’ve ever cycled down a potholed inner city street, dodging white vans and errant pedestrians, you’ll howl with envy at the cycling safety shorts collected in this BFI compilation. What did these riders have to worry about? 1947’s Pedal Cyclists shows a suited wag combing his hair whilst riding, and the same year’s Stringing Along illustrates what will happen if you patch your brakes up with, er, string. The surprise is the dearth of traffic, apart from the occasional slow moving bus. Leave a bicycle unattended in any major city and it’ll probably vanish within minutes; in these films, Read more ...
Graham Fuller
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? Was it that he could rely on Holly to be dazzled and dominated by him, as he must have been 20 years before at school?These and other questions – comprising the mystery within the mystery – are left Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Station to Station documents the transcontinental American rail trip taken by a group of musicians, visual artists, and performers in 2013. Local artists and marching bands also contributed to the series of "happenings", often enhanced by light shows and pretty effects, which included rock concerts staged at each of the 10 designated stops on the westward journey. Organised by the artist Doug Aitken, the marathon must have brought the contributors and audiences much pleasure. His film of it is underwhelming.It's not for the want of big names, indie rock being particularly well represented. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In 1998, Ian McKellen starred in Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, an account of the final days of the ailing and tormented film director James Whale. Echoes of it are discernable here, where Condon has recruited an older McKellen for a carefully-crafted depiction of the imaginary dotage of Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective. Aged 93, the doddering sleuth struggles to reassemble the jumbled jigsaw of his memories and hence solve his final case, which turns out to be himself.Condon has based his film on Mitch Cullin's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, and the narrative whisks Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A group of gunmen are roaming the Argentine rainforest jungle, terrorising local farmers in order to obtain the rights to their land. One farmer follows an ancient custom, praying to spirits to send a saviour. When a young stranger strolls bare-chested and barefoot out of the jungle, the farmer assumes his prayer has been answered.This is the scenario that opens The Burning, a Latin American co-production featuring some of the region’s richest talents, including the Argentine director Pablo Fendrik and his stars, Mexican Gael Garcia Bernal and Brazilian Alice Braga. Fendrik is not a household Read more ...
ellin.stein
Some people are irritated by Entourage’s superficial depiction of Hollywood as a bro fantasy world, but this is like condemning a soufflé for not being a roast chicken. For those like myself who enjoyed Entourage the television series, Entourage the movie will be very much the kind of thing they like, since it is essentially a feature-length version of the long-running HBO/Sky Atlantic show; non-enthusiasts, however, may find it shallow, shambolic, sexist, and smug (if you feel this perfectly describes Top Gear, you probably fall into the latter category).Like the film iterations of Sex in Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford camped it up superbly as 1950s Western matriarchs in Rancho Notorious and Johnny Guitar respectively. Yet they were outflanked by the steelier Barbara Stanwyck, an actress passionate about the genre. She carved a niche for herself as a fierce, cynical frontierswoman of property in The Furies, Cattle Queen of Montana, The Maverick Queen, and Forty Guns, though love or justice typically compromised the feminist slant of these films, which led Stanwyck eventually to her 1965-69 Western series The Big Valley.Forty Guns wasn’t as thematically rich as Run of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A twist on the battle between the sexes and the romance which blooms after the dust has settled, Les Combattants pitches the reticent Arnaud into the path of the intimidating Madelaine. While the outcome is never in doubt, true love is only achieved after navigating a few bumps in the road, most of which result from Madelaine’s feelings that she and the world in general are at war with each other.The fitting title Les Combattants is a neat pun. Not only are Arnaud and Madelaine at loggerheads, they actually begin training for the army, apparently France’s second-biggest employer after Read more ...
ellin.stein
The clue is in the name: Selma, after the Alabama city that was the site of three crucial confrontations in the 1960s struggle for African-American civil rights, not King, after the eloquent spokesman and de facto leader of that struggle. Because director Ava DuVernay is more interested in saluting the power of a grassroots movement than in lionizing a Great Man of History, this inspiring, profoundly moving film avoids the pussyfooting and over-reverence that has afflicted biopics of other secular saints like Gandhi, Lincoln, and Mandela.The moral courage of David Oyelowo’s Martin Luther King Read more ...