Film
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 ...
Graham Fuller
In his previous films, the French director Bernardo Bonello has demonstrated a non-judgemental affinity for pornographers, prostitutes, and other transgressors. In his latest, House of Tolerance (House of Pleasures in the US), his sympathy is with the languid courtesans of a doomed high-class fin-de-siècle Parisian brothel, who are united in their contempt for the wealthy, condescending men who subject them to fetishes, diseases, and violence.Early in this gloomy elegy to the organised vice of the Belle Epoque, which implies the maisons de tolérance weren’t much safer then the sordid Read more ...
fisun.guner
Diehard Sebaldians may seek to retrace the footsteps that formed the basis of WG Sebald’s meditative masterpiece The Rings of Saturn. Or they may choose to watch Grant Gee’s film tribute instead. Patience (After Sebald) takes as its fulcrum the German expatriate’s category-defying memoir-cum-history, travelogue-cum-novel – which was published in 1995 and is considered by many to be his greatest work – and it attempts to recreate the book's physical and mental landscape. An ambitious undertaking, it only partly succeeds.Excerpts from the novel are beautifully read by Jonathan Pryce (one is Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It may be glimpsed only in brief flashbacks, but Vietnam is always on the mind of Rolling Thunder (1977), one of the earlier attempts by Hollywood’s generation of indie filmmakers to confront the conflict’s impact on its citizenry. William Devane plays Major Charles Rane, who returns from the war zone hardened after years in captivity to discover that women no longer wears bras and his wife has moved on. Worse, hoodlums come to steal the cache of silver dollars ceremonially presented to him by his grateful Texan hometown. When they can’t break him into submission with violence, they kill the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s not out until 8 June but fan excitement levels are already feverish. Ridley Scott, who directed the original, groundbreaking science-fiction-horror-classic Alien back in 1979, has said that his new film Prometheus – only his third ever sci-fi outing (the other was Bladerunner) - is not part of the Alien series and won’t feature the snap-jawed xenomorph, last seen battling fellow monster franchise Predator in a series of dismal B-movies. Prometheus, however, does clearly inhabit the same universe, as the latest trailer clearly shows, with Alien designer H R Giger advising and aspects from Read more ...
emma.simmonds
“Paradise can go fuck itself”: the candid words of a disillusioned middle-aged man in director Alexander Payne’s latest road-to-redemption dramedy. He’s referring to the irritating presumption that Hawaii’s idyllic surroundings in some way shield its residents from the mire and misfortunes of life. Although there’s a smattering of such sourness in Payne’s adaptation of the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, for the most part this tale of a father reconnecting with his daughters is surprisingly sweet.In The Descendants a pleasingly shaggy George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaiian lawyer and Read more ...