Film
Matt Wolf
Charlize Theron proved her acting chops, and won an Oscar in the process, playing a serial killer in the movie Monster, but surely her brilliantly realised Mavis Gary in Young Adult is very nearly as monstrous, albeit in a different way. Emotionally fixated to the point of pathological single-mindedness, Mavis is every "psychotic prom-queen bitch" (the film's words, not mine) you may think you left behind in school but haven't. And though she's as fine-boned and alluring to look at here as Aileen Wuornos was both pasty and pockmarked, don't be fooled. Beauty truly is skin-deep.The result is a Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Drawing us deep into the coercive, immersive world of a sinister sect, in its audacity and provocatively luscious aesthetic Martha Marcy May Marlene announces its first-time writer / director Sean Durkin as a major new talent. Durkin ingeniously emulates his young heroine’s disorientation as she fights for her sanity and - as the more-than-a-mouthful title suggests - her identity. Its credibility is buoyed by a courageous and psychologically complex performance from its young lead, another newcomer Elizabeth Olsen.A highlight of last year’s London Film Festival, and of Sundance before that, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Director Nicolas Winding Refn says that his LA heist fable Drive was inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales, but viewers unfamiliar with the perverse labyrinth of Refn's imagination are more likely to detect echoes of Bullitt, Walter Hill's The Driver and Clint Eastwood at his most taciturn. Ryan Gosling plays The Driver, auto-wrangling movie stuntman by day and getaway wheel-man by night. A pre-credits sequence follows him as he ferries two anonymous clients away from a robbery, mixing raw speed with calculating guile as he eludes police pursuit with icy efficiency.Despite being solitary and Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
I can’t help thinking of Mad Men when watching the opening sequence of Alma Har’el’s marvellous documentary Bombay Beach. Newsreel footage from the 1950s excitedly trumpets the “miracle in the desert” of the Salton Sea, formed by accident when the Colorado River ran wild, and the heart of a development scheme that was to turn the area into “the recreational capital of the world”. One can imagine the likes of Don Draper having a field day with the promise of the American Dream in this strangely idyllic Californian setting. Not surprisingly, the dream soon turned to dust, as the reality of Read more ...
ronald.bergan
The news that work is to begin in February on a major renovation of the 122-year-old Eiffel Tower reminds us that no other monument in the world, including the Statue of Liberty, the Houses of Parliament or the Coliseum, conjures up a city with such immediacy, and none with so much romance. According to Roland Barthes, “the Eiffel Tower is nothing but a place to visit. Its very emptiness marked it as a symbol, and the first symbol that it called to mind, by logical association, was inevitably that which one ‘visited’ at the same time as the tower, namely, the city of Paris. It is Paris by Read more ...