OPENS MARCH 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS The cinema doesn't have a glowing record when it comes to mental illness, with films tending to veer between sentimentality, low humour or patronage. Petter N...
OPENS MARCH 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS
The cinema doesn’t have a glowing record when it comes to mental illness, with films tending to veer between sentimentality, low humour or patronage. Petter N
OPENED FEBRUARY 14, CERT 12A, 94 MINS A Kurdish-American man returns to his homeland after a long exile. His aim is to build an orphanage for the children of Halabja, the town in Iraqi-Kurdistan where, in 1988, 5,000 residents died after a chemical and biological attack by Saddam Hussein's forces. ...
OPENED FEBRUARY 14, CERT 12A, 94 MINS
A Kurdish-American man returns to his homeland after a long exile. His aim is to build an orphanage for the children of Halabja, the town in Iraqi-Kurdistan where, in 1988, 5,000 residents died after a chemical and biological attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces. In the process he meets 10-year-old Jiyan and her cousin, forming a friendship that introduces a crucial element of optimism into a film which doesn’t shy from showing the terrible long-term consequences of the attack.
It’s not hard to spot the autobiographical elements. Director Jano Rosebiani is a Kurdish-American who left his homeland in 1975, the same year as his central character. And, understandably perhaps, there’s an undercurrent of anger in this film about the plight of his people. But he avoids didacticism by concentrating on small-scale individual stories rather than overt political comment. Iranian directors like Abbas Kiarostami are clearly an influence, particularly on the exquisite cinematography. However, there are moments when emotional heavy-handedness obscures the power and simplicity of the story.
OPENS MARCH 21, CERT 12A, 90 MINS The man of the title is Johnny Hallyday, a jaded figure who arrives in a featureless small French town with the aim of robbing the local bank. By chance, he meets retired schoolteacher Jean Rochefort, an amiable, lonely old man who offers him a place to stay. In th...
OPENS MARCH 21, CERT 12A, 90 MINS
The man of the title is Johnny Hallyday, a jaded figure who arrives in a featureless small French town with the aim of robbing the local bank. By chance, he meets retired schoolteacher Jean Rochefort, an amiable, lonely old man who offers him a place to stay. In the three days they spend together, it gradually becomes clear that each lived a life that the other secretly coveted. There’s a sense of impending tragedy in the film as it counts down to a momentous day for both the men?Hallyday’s bank heist coincides with Rochefort’s open-heart surgery.
The beauty of this slow-burning drama is in the flashes of childlike mischief in veteran actor Jean Rochefort’s eyes and in the thundercloud of weariness that bears down on Hallyday’s lizard-skinned criminal. Director Patrice Leconte’s film is all about the acting, and you may be enthralled by Hallyday’s rock-star magnetism and Rochefort’s old-world charm, or bored to tears by line after line of opaque dialogue.
DIRECTED BY Todd Haynes STARRING Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert Opens March 7, Cert 15, 107 mins Haynes buries his reputation as a wilfully obscure maverick with this style-heavy homage to Douglas Sirk. While the glam-rock rollercoaster that was Velvet Goldmine gathered 'mixed' res...
DIRECTED BY Todd Haynes
STARRING Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert
Opens March 7, Cert 15, 107 mins
Haynes buries his reputation as a wilfully obscure maverick with this style-heavy homage to Douglas Sirk. While the glam-rock rollercoaster that was Velvet Goldmine gathered ‘mixed’ responses, this?you couldn’t conceive a more different film?is acclaimed as a Big Important Artwork. Go with inflated hopes, and you’ll wonder what the fuss is about. For all the lavishness of its look, it’s a quiet slow-burner, pinpointing emotional repression.
Set in ’50s Connecticut, it affectionately appropriates the tics, mores and stilted ‘aw shucks’ dialogue of the classic Hollywood ‘women’s pictures’ of that more supposedly innocent era. Only Haynes sneakily inserts a modern-day consciousness. In a ‘perfect’ marriage, rich housewife Cathy (Moore, who starred in Haynes’ Safe) has her feathers ruffled when salesman hubby Frank (Quaid) starts acting strangely. Turns out he’s wrestling with his sexuality. A confused Cathy falls for her art-loving gardener (Haysbert), but because he’s black, further peer-pressure problems are stirred up. “There’s been talk.” The period’s values are rattled and challenged, the chasm between surface and soul exposed.
While co-opting Sirk’s ultra-vivid palette, Haynes acknowledges that that undervalued German-born director covertly questioned middle-class American beliefs, saluting untethered desire. Getting postmodern on us, Haynes uses the hyper-real (you’ve never seen autumn leaves so golden) to heckle hypocrisy and racism. Moore bites her lip tellingly, while Quaid takes a whopping career gamble, and is vulnerable without over-cooking it.
The film looks stunning and the booming, lachrymose Elmer Bernstein score is cattily satirical. A reservation, amid the plaudits for Haynes, has to be that Sirk was no unwitting hack himself. A born subversive, in films like Written On The Wind it wasn’t like he didn’t slide his subtexts in. He cast Rock Hudson with a sly sense of humour. So this is a crafted tribute, not a radical reinvention. Its strength is that in promoting the lush and lovely glories of colour, it remembers its characters are more than just black or white.
OPENED JANUARY 31, CERT 15, 81 MINS After a sell-out run at the NFT, Bergman's 1966 masterpiece heads out for a full UK tour. Experimental films date quickly, but Persona is so harrowing that it's impossible to dismiss with a shrug those moments when the film jumps the sprockets or catches fire. Su...
OPENED JANUARY 31, CERT 15, 81 MINS
After a sell-out run at the NFT, Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece heads out for a full UK tour. Experimental films date quickly, but Persona is so harrowing that it’s impossible to dismiss with a shrug those moments when the film jumps the sprockets or catches fire. Such Dadaist distancing echoes the theme. What is the artist to do in the face of the real world’s atrocities? Two women, one a famous actress (Liv Ullmann) who has withdrawn into silence, the other her nurse (Bibi Andersson)?it could be a scenario by Beckett. It’s just the two of them, and we watch in horror as the chatty, cheerful nurse is forced into ever deeper levels of destructive self-awareness by her silent confessor. The betrayal by letter of her intimate sexual confidences drives her into cruel reprisal, and her precarious identity begins to blur into that of her patient.
Both actresses are superb, but Andersson’s nurse is not the sort of turn you would give lightly. It’s one of the best performances on screen ever.
Hal Ashby's deceptively sunny direction of Robert Towne and Warren Beatty's sex-comedy screenplay is brimful of Barbie hair, open shirts and Triumph motorcycles, as libidinous pompadour George (Beatty) juggles four Beverly Hills sirens with his own nascent career plans. Yet the oppressive setting (N...
Hal Ashby’s deceptively sunny direction of Robert Towne and Warren Beatty’s sex-comedy screenplay is brimful of Barbie hair, open shirts and Triumph motorcycles, as libidinous pompadour George (Beatty) juggles four Beverly Hills sirens with his own nascent career plans. Yet the oppressive setting (Nixon’s ’68 election night), Beatty’s stunningly lugubrious performance and his eventual comeuppance all feed a brash vein of cynicism that shapes the entire movie.
Dick Lester's faithful two-part version of Dumas' adventure tale has truly imaginative action sequences, a cracklingly witty screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, swashbuckling heroes (Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay), OTT villains (Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee), a fantastic supporting cast (everyone fr...
Dick Lester’s faithful two-part version of Dumas’ adventure tale has truly imaginative action sequences, a cracklingly witty screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, swashbuckling heroes (Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay), OTT villains (Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee), a fantastic supporting cast (everyone from Charlton Heston to Spike Milligan) and a visibly huge budget. Wonderful stuff.
Screened on TV last Christmas, this celebrity fundraiser for the Peter Cook Foundation features a host of comedians including Michael Palin, Rik Mayall, Angus Deayton and Dom Joly (reprising the one-legged Tarzan sketch) and, unfortunately, Josie Lawrence and Griff Rhys-Jones. A fitfully amusing par...
Screened on TV last Christmas, this celebrity fundraiser for the Peter Cook Foundation features a host of comedians including Michael Palin, Rik Mayall, Angus Deayton and Dom Joly (reprising the one-legged Tarzan sketch) and, unfortunately, Josie Lawrence and Griff Rhys-Jones. A fitfully amusing parade of the old and new, worth purchasing if only for the excellent, pithily epigrammatic Jimmy Carr.
Those who claim to have been at Bowie's "farewell to Ziggy" at Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973 could fill an Olympic stadium. Those who weren't can now dream they were via DA Pennebaker's film, finally available on DVD. The stage is gloomily lit. There's no special effects. There are only brief ba...
Those who claim to have been at Bowie’s “farewell to Ziggy” at Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973 could fill an Olympic stadium. Those who weren’t can now dream they were via DA Pennebaker’s film, finally available on DVD. The stage is gloomily lit. There’s no special effects. There are only brief backstage glimpses of Bowie having his make-up applied. It’s a point-and-shoot record of a now-legendary night. Drawing mostly on songs from Ziggy and Aladdin Sane, Bowie’s sense of melodrama is palpable. Apart from Mick Ronson, The Spiders are almost invisible, but Pennebaker realised the rows of writhing Ziggy lookalikes in the crowd were a far more important element of the sexually-charged drama.
Steve Buscemi's 1996 writing/directing debut, by turns subtly hilarious and desperately sad, is a scruffy, rambling tour of barfly life, wherein his shiftless mechanic becomes an ice cream salesman and romances a much-too-young-for-him Chloe Sevigny. The tagline?"One man's search for... who knows wh...
Steve Buscemi’s 1996 writing/directing debut, by turns subtly hilarious and desperately sad, is a scruffy, rambling tour of barfly life, wherein his shiftless mechanic becomes an ice cream salesman and romances a much-too-young-for-him Chloe Sevigny. The tagline?”One man’s search for… who knows what”?perfectly captures its loaded small-town shrug. Bruisingly good.
Enduringly popular epic, directed with vigorous panache by Richard Fleischer. Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis are terrific as the feuding half-brothers, sons of hugely-bearded Viking warlord Ernest Borgnine, and there's an admirable amount of rowdy quaffing, hearty pillaging and general mayhem....
Enduringly popular epic, directed with vigorous panache by Richard Fleischer. Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis are terrific as the feuding half-brothers, sons of hugely-bearded Viking warlord Ernest Borgnine, and there’s an admirable amount of rowdy quaffing, hearty pillaging and general mayhem.
Set at the death of the samurai age, Japanese master Nagisa Oshima's first feature in 13 years charts the disruption of a militia barracks by the arrival of Ryuhei Matsuda's androgynously beautiful young swordsman. A partial return to the erotic obsession of In The Realm Of The Senses, it's a bleak ...
Set at the death of the samurai age, Japanese master Nagisa Oshima’s first feature in 13 years charts the disruption of a militia barracks by the arrival of Ryuhei Matsuda’s androgynously beautiful young swordsman. A partial return to the erotic obsession of In The Realm Of The Senses, it’s a bleak but mesmerically beautiful movie where realism balances with dreamy stylisation.
A cult favourite back when our people were fair and had stars in their hair, this addled 1974 sensory epic follows legendary surfer and cameraman George Greenough's search for the perfect wave. Set to the ping-pongs of Pink Floyd's "Echoes", the final 20 minutes are surf-cinema's equivalent of 2001'...
A cult favourite back when our people were fair and had stars in their hair, this addled 1974 sensory epic follows legendary surfer and cameraman George Greenough’s search for the perfect wave. Set to the ping-pongs of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the final 20 minutes are surf-cinema’s equivalent of 2001’s Stargate sequence?but it’s for boardheads and Floyd completists only. Give us Point Break any day.
Koyaanisqatsi is arguably the best stoner movie of all time, although Godfrey Reggio probably didn't realise that in '83. Aerial photography of forests, animals; etc, sweeps across to expansive time-lapse shots of factory complexes and nuclear power plants. The big country's poeticised and exposed t...
Koyaanisqatsi is arguably the best stoner movie of all time, although Godfrey Reggio probably didn’t realise that in ’83. Aerial photography of forests, animals; etc, sweeps across to expansive time-lapse shots of factory complexes and nuclear power plants. The big country’s poeticised and exposed to Philip Glass’ insistent score. Powaqqatsi, the ’88 sequel, explored Third World exploitation, but the original’s the must-see.
Christopher Nolan was never going to find it easy to follow a film as wholly individual as Memento and Insomnia initially seemed a somewhat disappointing foray into the conventional mainstream, slick, professional, but rather empty?much like Panic Room, David Fincher's follow-up to the blistering ge...
Christopher Nolan was never going to find it easy to follow a film as wholly individual as Memento and Insomnia initially seemed a somewhat disappointing foray into the conventional mainstream, slick, professional, but rather empty?much like Panic Room, David Fincher’s follow-up to the blistering genius of Fight Club.
Watching it again, however, Insomnia is a quiet revelation, a compelling meditation on guilt and obsession, the price driven men pay for what passes as their souls when certain lines are crossed. Al Pacino is, no surprise, tremendous as the veteran cop investigating the murder of a teenage girl in nightless Alaska even as his own career as a legendary investigator is under critical review. Robin Williams, meanwhile, is creepily effective as one of the suspects in the killing and his scenes with Pacino are grippingly intense. Nolan probably concedes too much to the multiplex?the final showdown is a hollow sop to the box office?but at its lingering best, Insomnia is insidiously brilliant.
DVD EXTRAS: None.
A polite, prissy take on Wilde which seems to think he wrote for children. Rupert Everett and Colin Firth are there, of course, as a playboy and a country mouse, both posing as "Earnest" while ducking scenery-munching from the tragically overrated Judi Dench and, in the token Gwyneth role, Reese Wit...
A polite, prissy take on Wilde which seems to think he wrote for children. Rupert Everett and Colin Firth are there, of course, as a playboy and a country mouse, both posing as “Earnest” while ducking scenery-munching from the tragically overrated Judi Dench and, in the token Gwyneth role, Reese Witherspoon. Muffs every joke as lamely as a fifth-form production.
Sean Penn has done many good things, and none of them can be found in this sentimental guff. As Sam, he's an autistic who, with the help of saintly lawyer Michelle Pfeiffer, tries to prove he's a fit father to his daughter. It's manipulative, dishonest, and wreaks carnage on The Beatles' songbook. P...
Sean Penn has done many good things, and none of them can be found in this sentimental guff. As Sam, he’s an autistic who, with the help of saintly lawyer Michelle Pfeiffer, tries to prove he’s a fit father to his daughter. It’s manipulative, dishonest, and wreaks carnage on The Beatles’ songbook. Penn was Oscar-nominated. You have to laugh.
Golden boy Sam Mendes' less-than-feelgood follow-up to American Beauty suffered a critical backlash, but its daringly gloomy photography (by the late Conrad Hall) is often breathtaking. An unsmiling Tom Hanks' hitman-with-a-heart is underwritten, but a wrinkly Paul Newman still oozes charisma and Ju...
Golden boy Sam Mendes’ less-than-feelgood follow-up to American Beauty suffered a critical backlash, but its daringly gloomy photography (by the late Conrad Hall) is often breathtaking. An unsmiling Tom Hanks’ hitman-with-a-heart is underwritten, but a wrinkly Paul Newman still oozes charisma and Jude Law’s credibly sinister. A surprisingly bleak, long dark night of the soul.
Indie tyro Doug Liman (Go!) takes a gripping premise (amnesiac superspy is hunted by CIA while seeking clues to his own identity), an efficient leading man in Matt Damon, and a raft of stellar supporting players including Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Franka Potente, and delivers a confide...
Indie tyro Doug Liman (Go!) takes a gripping premise (amnesiac superspy is hunted by CIA while seeking clues to his own identity), an efficient leading man in Matt Damon, and a raft of stellar supporting players including Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Franka Potente, and delivers a confident if ultimately soulless knockabout thriller.
Along with Insomnia and the inexplicably-unreleased Death To Smoochy, this eerie thriller serves to rehabilitate Robin Williams. His cloying wacky zaniness jettisoned, he's a broody bugger as the middle-aged loser who becomes obsessed with a cute family whose holiday snaps he's developed for years. ...
Along with Insomnia and the inexplicably-unreleased Death To Smoochy, this eerie thriller serves to rehabilitate Robin Williams. His cloying wacky zaniness jettisoned, he’s a broody bugger as the middle-aged loser who becomes obsessed with a cute family whose holiday snaps he’s developed for years. Like a chubbier Travis Bickle, he feels his fantasy figures owe him emotional payback. He freaks, rivetingly.
