Film
Ismene Brown
The clips as you load the DVD show women in extremis - women tied to the end of a rope, women being assaulted by mass male groping, women dancing on pointe with bleeding chunks of meat stuffed into their ballet shoes. Pina Bausch’s commentaries on women make her ballets disquieting viewing. Wim Wenders’ film, released as a 3D version in cinemas earlier this year, takes you into those deep, confused questions that Bausch’s dance works put.He had planned to make this film with Bausch, but her sudden death left him bereft. This film therefore became an elegy to her and her company, Tanztheater Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I'm going to help you rediscover your manhood," a self-described sexual "tomcat" called Jacob (Ryan Gosling) tells his new friend, and project, Cal (Steve Carell). And with that, the awkwardly titled Crazy, Stupid, Love sets off on its none too surefooted way. Might some equivalent to Jacob's confidence and expertise have been of use behind the camera, as well? Without a doubt, and one worries only that there may be those who actually do take this film as some sort of sexual and social primer for our troubled age.On the other hand, no movie with Gosling's singular charisma and insouciance Read more ...
david.cheal
It’s hard to imagine a director being able to make a film like More today. The plot could be written on the back of one of the soft-packs of cigarettes being constantly smoked in the movie; the characters are unlikeable; there’s little in the way of emotional engagement; the music, by “The” Pink Floyd, is used only as part of the action, ie, coming out of cassette players, record players, and so on, rather than as an actual soundtrack; the editing has a deliberately un-rhythmic, un-fluid, nouvelle vague quality; the camerawork is unostentatious; the acting and the dialogue are flat and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
As an elegiac score plays, bails of early editions of the New York Times are bundled and tossed into a fleet of vans, which roll out into the dawn city streets, to distribute the news. The conviction shared by many in this documentary about the paper is that the vans will soon look as quaint as the last of the horse-drawn hackney cabs. The ritual of late-night editorial agonising over stories before the presses roll, and newspapers themselves, are equally under threat. The New York Times’ possible death, as much as daily life there, is director Andrew Rossi’s theme.He focuses on the Times’ Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Tomas Alfredson’s riveting, stately adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy novel is an immaculately measured teaser, delivered one carefully heaped spoonful at a time. Primped, polished and with the tension ratcheted up a notch for the big screen, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a high-wire tight introduction to a group of men who live their lives in guarded apprehension. It’s populated by an all-star cast, led by a formidably restrained Gary Oldman as - watcher of the watchmen - George Smiley.For those unfamiliar with le Carré’s eight Smiley novels (of which Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
When West Side Story won 10 Academy Awards, that was back in a Hollywood era during which movie musicals regularly garnered such acclaim. Gigi, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Oliver! all bookended the 1961 film adaptation of the landmark Broadway show when it came to copping the Best Picture Oscar; indeed, songs from the musicals that became films were part of the Hit Parade of that particular time to a degree that is unthinkable nowadays - though the popularity of TV phenomena such as Glee has done much to push the (comparative) marginalia of Broadway back toward the mainstream.West Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy tells a small-scale story that’s sensitive to its depiction of gender uncertainties. However, because its cast are pre-adolescents, the wider overtones of sexuality don’t really come into the picture (though it won the LGBT Teddy Award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival). It’s not exactly the tale of a “summer of love”, and is resolved in a finally benign way, but there’s much that is poignant in its heroine’s development to a greater self-awareness.Ten-year-old Laure (the very talented Zoé Héran) arrives in her family’s new home, where her father and heavily pregnant Read more ...
sam.price
A spectre is haunting Britain - the spectre of a film called Big Fat Gypsy Gangster. Poised for release in just over a week’s time, this Ricky Grover vanity project is described generously as “Monty Python meets Snatch”, chronicling the life and times of Bulla, apparently “Britain’s hardest man”, as he roams over London with a shotgun, blowing the heads off his gangland opponents. It’s a crime comedy-drama for the ages, boasting performances from Peter Capaldi, Steven Berkoff and, less illustriously, comedian Omid Djalili, Tulisa from The X Factor, Big Mo from EastEnders as “Aunt Queenie” and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
After the first two parts of Mark Cousins’s magisterial The Story of Film: An Odyssey, I’m still in two minds as to whether it’s fair to call the presenter a generalist. He has already managed to piece together details from the cinema cultures of almost every film-making nation on earth with the authority of a specialist – and that’s before his narrative has formally progressed beyond the arrival of the talkies, let alone colour. His 15-part documentary, developed from his book of the same name, looks set to give a new focus to traditional history-of-cinema surveys – and it looks different, Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
This year’s Venice Film Festival has been awash with great directors from what one might call the old guard: David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Aleksander Sokurov, Philippe Garrel. But when the jury presents its prizes tonight, I hope that it honours some of the new, young film-makers who have been the ones to set this festival alight.Chief amongst those has been a Brit, Steve McQueen, who follows his extraordinary debut, Hunger, with a second film that has shaken and stirred the critics here. The focus of Shame is Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a successful New Yorker whose Read more ...