Film

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger review - the Archers up close

Friday, 10 May 2024

This long, fascinating documentary was apparently intended as the centrepiece of last autumn’s BFI celebration of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But Made in England was delayed while Martin Scorsese (executive producer,...

Love Lies Bleeding review - a pumped-up neo-noir

Saturday, 04 May 2024

Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger comes to town.In Love Lies Bleeding, a smart, sexy neo-noir, the drifter is a weightlifter named Jackie...

Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala's civil war

Monday, 13 May 2024

Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was made on a modest budget and confines its running time to a crisp 78 minutes, but its impact is like being hit over the head with a sandbag. We frequently hear the word “genocide” being bandied about, but...

DVD/Blu-ray: The Holdovers

Sunday, 12 May 2024

Glance at The Holdovers’ synopsis and you might suspect that Alexander Payne’s latest effort is a slice of lightweight seasonal schmaltz. Yes, it is set at Christmas, and contains tear-jerking moments, but Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson...

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradise

Saturday, 11 May 2024

Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences...

La Chimera review - magical realism with a touch of Fellini

Friday, 10 May 2024

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazarro), ploughs a charmingly idiosyncratic furrow that might be described as magical realism, combining as it does vivid depictions of rural communities with shafts of fantasy and fable...

Nezouh review - seeking magic in a war

Friday, 03 May 2024

The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the Syrian war-set movie Nezouh begins with a teenage girl huddled in a tight, enclosed space – perhaps the bunk bed of...

Blu-ray: The Dreamers

Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Isabelle (Eva Green) leans over, her long hair catches fire from a candle, and Matthew (Michael Pitt) devotedly snuffs it out. She doesn’t miss a beat at this real-life accident, consumed already by The Dreamers’ closed world of a Left Bank...

theartsdesk Q&A: Marco Bellocchio - the last maestro

Saturday, 27 April 2024

The last of the old maestros is standing tall. Marco Bellocchio was a Marxist firebrand when he made his iconoclastic debut with Fists in the Pocket (1965). Now aged 84, he makes intellectually and emotionally muscular, hit epics about abused...

I.S.S. review - sci-fi with a sting in the tail

Friday, 26 April 2024

Earthrise, the 1968 Apollo 8 photograph of our small island of a planet, taken from the Moon’s surface, transformed our vision of our fragile home world. “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it...

That They May Face The Rising Sun review - lyrical adaptation of John McGahern's novel

Thursday, 25 April 2024

In director Pat Collins’s lyrical adaptation of John McGahern’s last novel, with cinematography by Richard Kendrick, the landscape is perhaps the most important character – though there’s a fine cast of well known mainly Irish actors.If you’re...

Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a multi-media artist

Wednesday, 24 April 2024

Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s Hunger. It’s gripping from the first frame to the last; the tension rarely lets up as we watch the main character...

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