Inspired by a Bowie gig, Trilogy sees The Cure perform three of their LPs in full over two nights at Berlin's Tempodrom—the classics Pornography and Disintegration plus the more recent Bloodflowers. With the band, as usual, brilliantly lit and the event shot with 12 separate cameras, this is far superior to normal live fare. The music, too, benefits from perhaps the band's strongest line-up. Pornography, originally performed by a trio, here becomes a maudlin monolith, with the ageless Smith somehow reinfused with a bitterness now 20 years old. Thrilling.
Like a title fight between the two greatest actors of their generation, The Young Lions cares less about adapting Irwin Shaw's anti-war bestseller (which it subsequently mangles) than allowing Montgomery Clift's neurasthenic Private Ackerman and Marlon Brando's fey Nazi officer to out-Method each other on camera. Though the two icons only share one incidental scene, their separate contributions are still electrifying.
Belated DVD release for Stephen (Blade) Norrington's flaccid 2001 meditation on the nature of, wince, 'celebrity culture'. Max Beesley, ineffably irritating in Alfie mode, is Billy Byrne, a talentless wannabe whose driving desire for fame sends him on a Hellish Journey™ through London's criminal drug-dealing S&M underworld. Hateful characters, no discernible narrative voice, and hackneyed visuals. A mistake.
A punchy and intelligent tale, co-written by Michael Tolkin, about an unethical yuppie lawyer (Ben Affleck) locked in a battle of wills with a troubled divorcee (Samuel L Jackson). Toni Collette and Sydney Pollack lead the heavyweight supporting cast, and director Roger Michell delivers a bracing state-of-the-nation bulletin in the vein of Falling Down.
C Thomas Howell picks up homicidal hitch-hiker Rutger Hauer while driving through the desert and very wisely boots him out of the car at the first opportunity, setting in motion a duel between the two that involves a lot of exploding cars and a huge body count. Utter tosh.
Thirty-one years after its initial US release, Wes Craven's debut retains its power to shock, detailing the worst night in the (short) lives of two teenage girls and the bizarre comeuppance of their tormentors. Dated (and overrated) but worth a look.
Veteran producer Irwin Winkler's 1990 directorial debut, recreating the paranoid climate that enveloped early-'50s Hollywood during the anti-communist witch-hunts. Robert De Niro is the fictitious RKO director watching lives, morals and ethics come apart under the strain. A clear-eyed and heartfelt history lesson, with a Martin Scorsese cameo that's a barely disguised portrait of blacklist exile Joseph Losey.
Claude Lelouch arguably never surpassed this 1966 Oscar-winning romance, which sweetened French new wave experimentation for the global mainstream. For all the heart-tugging lyricism, it's still immensely affecting. Bright Anouk Aimée and brave Jean-Louis Trintignant, both widowed, fall in love as that durable theme tune twinkles away.
Riffing on early David Mamet or Neil LaBute, writer-director Patrick Stettner's superb three-hander anatomises the airless, amoral culture of top-rank executives. In a faceless airport hotel, high-flyer Stockard Channing plays sadistic sex-and-power games with young business rival Julia Stiles and corporate headhunter Frederick Weller. Sharp, astringent, and proof that complex ideas and strong performances transcend even minimal budgets.
