film directors
Asteroid City review - desert dreamsFriday, 23 June 2023
Multi-media meta-layers land fast in Wes Anderson’s 11th film, overriding reality. Here’s Bryan Cranston’s portentous Fifties TV host (pictured below) in black-and-white, boxed Academy ratio, documenting rehearsals for a televised play, whose... Read more... |
No Hard Feelings review - nothing about this queasy comedy feels quite rightThursday, 22 June 2023
Last year Jennifer Lawrence won critical plaudits for her war-trauma drama Causeway, which seemingly signalled a bold new direction for her career, but how she got from there to No Hard Feelings is a bit of a mystery. Nothing about it feels quite... Read more... |
Under the Fig Trees review - a sensual day in the Tunisian sunSunday, 28 May 2023
Tunisian lives unfold over a working day in Erige Sehiri’s debut Under the Fig Trees, with fig-picking the backdrop to furtive, sparking collisions between men and women. Love, liberation and oppression all take their turn under the sun as community... Read more... |
Inland review - a cracked mosaic of memories, impressions and lurking anxietyWednesday, 24 May 2023
Fridtjof Ryder’s debut feature made a strong impression at last year’s London Film Festival, and its cinema release ought to give the Gloucester-born director’s career a hefty shove in the right direction. Although that doesn’t mean that Inland is... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Fill 'er Up With SuperTuesday, 16 May 2023
This almost forgotten, naturalistic 1976 road movie lets four young Frenchmen off the leash in a cross-country trip from Lille to Cannes.Car salesman Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is forced by his oppressive boss to ditch a promised weekend with his wife... Read more... |
Blu-ray: A Woman KillsSunday, 02 April 2023
May 1968. As France’s Fifth Republic shook, radical director Jean-Denis Bonan divided his time in the Paris streets between filming protests and the fictional hunt for a cross-dressing serial killer. A Woman Kills lay unfinished and forgotten till... Read more... |
Creature review - Asif Kapadia shines light on a dark dance pieceFriday, 24 February 2023
Filmed ballets involve a different way of watching: you may know a piece well, but you aren’t used to staring into its lead dancers’ eyes as they perform their roles. Not all dancers give good close-up, either. But a new film by the Oscar-winning... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Ingmar Bergman Vol 4Tuesday, 21 February 2023
Another box-set from the BFI full of Bergman treasures, from core catalogue classics such as Fanny and Alexander (1982), Cries and Whispers (1972), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973) to less well-known films such as After the... Read more... |
Markie Robson-Scott's Top 10 Films of 2022Tuesday, 20 December 2022
Madness, introspection, and childhood trauma all feature in the best films of 2022: a good year for delving deep. Triangle of Sadness is over-the-top, cathartic lunacy – don’t see it before going on a cruise – while The Banshees of Inisherin... Read more... |
Directors the Dardenne brothers: 'To be living means to be fragile'Saturday, 03 December 2022
Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have made their home region of Liège the site of excruciating moral crises and crushing injustice. Their 12 masterful, double Palme d'Or-winning films act as parables for the embattled human soul.The... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The TrialTuesday, 15 November 2022
“Two-percent movie-making and 98% hustling,” Orson Welles sighed not long before his death in 1985. “It’s no way to spend a life.” His 1962 film of Franz Kafka’s The Trial was his penultimate full-scale completed feature, only 1965’s Chimes at... Read more... |
Vesper review - impressively art-directed sci-fi filmMonday, 24 October 2022
Vesper is a piece of arty European sci-fi, filmed in the forests of Lithuania (homeland of co-director Kristina Buozyte) and set in a dystopian future conjured up by its French co-director Bruno Samper (a "digital experience designer"). The two... Read more... |
