Magic spells, a crystal pendant and eco-friendly robots all figure in this animated new age fable from Hayao Miyazaki (creator of Spirited Away) as two children search for a legendary flying city. Not a patch on the director's later work, and the comedy material is tiresome; still, it's streets ahead of Disney, and the flying sequences are just incredible.
The cross-cutting is seamless—'20s England, '50s California and presentday New York feeding off each other, resonating, as our disaffected heroines, played impeccably by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, flirt with total internal breakdown. And still, it's all about that nose. Kidman's prosthetic nose. Bumpy, spongy, and slightly off-colour. You either buy it, or you don't.
Al Pacino is in workaday Mad Mentor mode (see Donnie Brasco and Devil's Advocate) as the CIA talent scout who lures the brooding, intense™ Colin Farrell into the fold while director Roger Donaldson tries to rekindle memories of his definitive '80s paranoia thriller No Way Out by inserting a screamingly obvious twist into a 'mole in the agency' finale.
Already a by-word for meaningfully ambitious technical accomplishment, Alexander Sokurov's epic was shot in St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum in one unbroken steadicam shot. Moving through the rooms, we're tossed across history, from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great. And it IS great: saying much about Mother Russia then and now, but also visually gorgeous.
A Dogme film in danger of giving a tiring genre a good name, Susanne Bier's love tragedy is deeply involving and intensely moving. When a woman's lover is paralysed in a car accident, she falls in love with his married doctor. Not once in its two hours does the film hit a dishonest note, there's subtle humour, and the acting's exemplary. You'll be tenderised.
An immaculate digital restoration job, including muffle-free audio, silky silver monochrome and original 'pillarbox' framing, adds an unnerving contemporary kick to Fritz Lang's 1931 masterpiece. Detailing the slavering hunt for bug-eyed child murderer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) through a dark and hostile, shadow-filled Berlin, this is the original, if not the best, serial killer flick.
Tough thriller from director Ron Shelton based on a James Ellroy story. Kurt Russell is outstanding as veteran bad-ass Los Angeles cop Eldon Perry, who realises too late the waste he has made of his life. Great support from Brendan Gleeson as his malignant boss and Ving Rhames as the upright officer dedicated to bringing him down.
This respectful ode to the early days of the US movie industry was the third consecutive box-office flop for Peter Bogdanovich, and the movie that put an end to his wünderkind status in Hollywood. Not fair: Nickelodeon is an accomplished, unjustly-maligned movie very much in the same whimsical period vein as Paper Moon, reuniting the father/daughter team of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal and throwing in an on-form Burt Reynolds. Watch and be charmed.
Directed by the hugely uncompromising Robert Aldrich, this ferocious post-Wild Bunch western stars Burt Lancaster as a world-weary army scout at odds with callow cavalry officer Bruce Davison on a mission to hunt down the errant Apache chief Ulzana, who with a small band of warriors has broken out of the reservation and are now looting, killing and raping their way across the bleak southwestern territories.
Much tampered with by the studio on its original 1972 release and the subject of heated debate about its depiction of the Apaches, the film is in fact both complex and intelligent in its
