Film
Nick Hasted
With the vertiginous drama of England’s cricket World Cup victory still fresh, Barney Douglas’s documentary digs into the human cost of a previous ascent, when England’s Test team rose to No 1 in the early 2010s. Made in the dour image of coach Andy Flower, they seem ill-suited to Douglas’s intention of a “rock’n’roll” cricket film. But star batsman Kevin Pietersen’s mid-series meltdown, almost taking the team with him and rendering captain Andrew Strauss an insomniac before his final Test, is just the best-known crack-up. Media-trained interview omerta is forsaken, to reveal an odd, likeable Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Odessa, the so-called "pearl of the Black Sea", is a Ukrainian city full of lovely 19th-century Italianate architecture and sandy beaches, with a reputation, even in Soviet times, for a certain bohemian sense of freedom. It has also, for the past ten years, hosted an impressive international film festival, the 'Cannes of the East'. The city has echoes of its Soviet times; Hotel Londonskaya, where the festival had its industry workshops, bears some passing resemblance to Wes Anderson’s Hotel Budapest. Mainly staffed by volunteers, it seems faintly miraculous the Odesa International Film Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
For a time, Aung San Suu Kyi enjoyed a heroic status on the international stage perhaps surpassed only by Nelson Mandela. The politician won a Nobel peace prize for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights in her country, Myanmar (formerly Burma), endured almost 20 years of house arrest, then played a leading role as her country moved towards so-called democracy.But then her country’s military started a persecution of the minority Rohingya Muslims that quickly became genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi said nothing. And her refusal to condemn the action turned her from hero to villain Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Nick Broomfield is never shy about inserting himself into his documentaries but here he has good reason: he was, briefly, a lover of Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen’s muse (So Long, Marianne was originally called Come On, Marianne; Bird on the Wire was also inspired by her).In 1968 Broomfield met her on Hydra, the idyllic Greek island where she and Leonard had shared a house since the early Sixties – she gave him his first acid trip and photographed him the morning after - and although one of her other lovers turned up and Broomfield beat a retreat, they remained friends for years and she Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
We like to think of scientists and inventors as innocent dreamers, trampled upon by the cruel old world. Of course, that’s not wholly true. Just look at today’s tech and social media industries. In fact the man cited as America’s greatest ever inventor, Thomas Edison, was a real scoundrel who wasn’t adverse to using dirty tricks to get ahead.The Current War is named after the infamous battle of wits in the US in the 1880s, between Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the entrepreneur George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), over who would provide electricity to illuminate and ultimately power Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Chinese director Jia Zhangke has made a masterful career from following the changes that his native land has undergone in the 21st century, catching the speed of its transition from old ideological order to the relentless dynamism of subsequent economic development – and, most importantly, the human consequences of the process. Fitting then that the action of his latest film, Ash Is Purest White, which premiered at Cannes last year, unfolds in three episodes set between 2001 and 2018. It’s a boldly drawn, sumptuously shot canvas that takes in the scale of the country, while catching the Read more ...
Owen Richards
With sapphire blue waters, year-round sun and architecture that spans centuries and cultures, it’s little wonder that Malta is a favourite location for Hollywood. To celebrate its long featured history, Radio 2 brought the BBC Concert Orchestra to Valletta for a special Friday Night is Music Night. It was a suitably bombastic evening, featuring soundtracks and songs from cinema, topped off by the Maltese favourite, fireworks.Our guide for this cinematic journey was the ever-effervescent Charles Dance, bouncing between anecdotes and impressions, wearing a smile rarely seen in his screen roles Read more ...
Graham Fuller
In Tell It to the Bees, sex is aberrant unless it’s conducted by a straight married couple. Since Annabel Jankel’s low-key drama is set in a grim Scottish mill town in 1952, you can add “white” to that dictum. We’re in the land of John Knox here and the suffocating mood of repression is summed up in the taut face of the factory forewoman Pam (the great Kate Dickie), who tells the machinist Lydia (Holliday Grainger), her Mancunian sister-in-law, “What was my brother thinking of, bringing home a wild one like you?”Based on the semi-autobiographical third novel by Fiona Shaw, Tell It to the Bees Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
One of the most memorable moments in Ron Howard’s documentary about Luciano Pavarotti is one of its earliest scenes. It’s a chunk of amateur video shot when Pavarotti visited the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, a splendid Belle Epoque structure in the midst of the Amazonian jungle. In front of a handful of curious onlookers, Pavarotti climbs onstage and sings Tosti’s "A Vuchella", a favourite piece of his idol Enrico Caruso, who also used to sing at the Teatro Amazonas. It’s a lovely tribute from one superstar-tenor to another from an earlier generation.Modern technology and media meant Pavarotti Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
French director Agnès Varda looks back over a cinematic career of seven decades in this a richly moving film farewell, finished not long before her death at the end of March, aged 90. It’s structured around a series of masterclasses in which she takes audiences through her work, joined in conversation by some of her collaborators (plentiful screen clips present many more). Varda defines the three words important to her in making films as “inspiration, creation, sharing”, and Varda by Agnès is testament to her special talent in that last category.It’s a selective survey, from her Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The cynicism of this film’s existence squeezes all the feeling from it. It approaches cherished childhood memories of the original The Lion King (1994) with a view to remonetising them. Technological advances apart, there’s no reason at all for this Lion King.The plot proceeds precisely as before, with lion cub Simba (the voice of Donald Glover once grown) pottering happily around the Pride Lands, an ecologically balanced Eden ruled by benign despot Mufasa (the returning James Earl Jones). Simba’s uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), pictured below, here ravaged and spectrally white, again plots Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This gothic yarn set in 1850s Snowdonia stars Maxine Peake as Elen. She’s left alone with two young daughters to manage an isolated farm when her husband goes off to war. Mysterious omens – a sheep’s heart filled with nails festoons the farm door – and ghostly shadows in the night all conspire to alarm her older daughter. Gwen (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) begins to doubt that her strict mother has the ability to keep her children safe, especially when Elen starts to have seizures. There’s no help from neighbours or the church and it becomes clear that the local slate mine owner is Read more ...