Film
Markie Robson-Scott
If you’ve ever had an argument with a neighbour, watch Under the Tree and take notes. This mesmerising story of a dispute over a tree blocking the sun in a next-door garden is based, says Icelandic director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, on an actual domestic conflict, though surely one with less cataclysmic consequences. But trees are relatively rare in Iceland and the summer is short, so too much shade is no laughing matter.Although billed as a suburban satire, the film is much darker and more complex than that, with death, loss, sex and broken relationships examined with a dispassionate wit Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Stan & Ollie unfolds mostly during Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s 1953 British concert tour, when the boys were on their last legs as a comedy act – Hardy was physically spent – but still showing flashes of their old genius. The lure of the tour, according to Jeff Pope’s screenplay, was to raise industry interest in a Robin Hood film to have starred the duo. The script for it has been written and revised by Laurel, but his red-phone-box calls to the producer, one Harold Miffin, have been ignored.Once the tour reaches London, Laurel sets out from the Savoy hotel to call at Miffin’s office Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Dallas writer-director Yen Tan has brought 1985 back to stylistic basics, and the resulting resolute lack of adornment enhances his film’s concentration on a story that achieves indisputably powerful, and notably reserved emotion. Independent cinema through and through, it’s economical in every sense and thrives on excellent all-round performances.Tan’s drama of family relations, set at the moment when the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was gradually becoming clear to Middle America, takes us back three decades, and there’s a similar feel to the visual style that he and his cinematographer ( Read more ...
Owen Richards
In a telling scene midway through Colette, our lead is told that rather than get used to marriage, it is “better to make marriage get used to you.” In this retelling of the remarkable Colette’s rise, it is evident she did much more than that; by the time she was done, all of Paris was moulded in her image, and in Keira Knightley's hands, it’s no mystery why.When we first meet Colette, she is a wide-eyed country girl caught in a whirlwind romance with Paris lothario Henry Gauthier-Villars, better known by his penname Willy (Dominic West, pictured below). He’s full of bombast and opinion, never Read more ...
Graham Fuller
A cannily crafted biographical docudrama about the Lakota Sioux broncobuster and horse trainer Brady Jandreau – playing himself as Brady Blackburn – The Rider will resonate with anyone whose dreams have gone up in smoke. Jandreau was 20 when, on April 1, 2016, a horse stomped on his skull, fracturing it in three places, severely damaging two regions of his brain, and penetrating it with bone fragments caked in manure and sand. Defying doctors’ orders, he walked out of hospital shortly after having life-saving brain surgery. Six weeks after returning home he began training horses again. The Read more ...
Matt Wolf
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade: that bromide is about the only one absent from the astonishingly bad Life Itself, which in actuality might require a stiff drink to make it through the film intact. Folding together an interconnected set of stories told across continents and out of sequence, writer-director Dan Fogelman (of TV's This Is Us) hurls one tragedy after another at his hapless characters, none of them so serious that they can't be caught up in the tidal wave of triteness. By the time we're informed, near the end, that "life brings you to your knees", you may well be full of Read more ...
Ralph Moore
In the proverbial melting pot, this film has all the right ingredients. Steve Carell, playing aspiring artist Mark Hogancamp and occupying a similar space and place as Tom Hanks did in Forrest Gump, even shares that film’s director here, Robert Zemeckis. Based on the award-winning documentary Marwencol from 2010, Marwen, it transpires, is a made-up town occupied by toy dolls and Mark’s vivid imagination. Back in the real world, Steve has already been busy on the promo trail here in London (and indeed across the globe) selling his new wares, but more of that Read more ...
Tom Baily
This is a love that begins sweetly, turns terrible, and is told with unflinching directness. Directed by Catherine Corsini, An Impossible Love is based on a novel by Christine Angot (known in France, and increasingly elsewhere, for her powerful autobiographical fiction), which is in turn based on Angot’s own troubling early life and family experiences. If the film is too direct – an anti-melodrama melodrama – it is only because it is honest and treats emotional extremes with great fidelity.It all begins with romance, as Rachel (Virginie Efira) – working class, Jewish and beautiful – meets the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film Daisies almost defies description, though what initially seems like 75 minutes of plot-free silliness does coalesce into something bordering on the coherent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld. Daisies is what it is, and approaching it with open eyes is a whole lot of fun. Opening with aerial footage of World War Two bombing raids, we soon cut to Chytilová’s young protagonists, played by Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová. Both called Marie, they recline in swimming costumes and make nonsensical conversation. “Nobody understands anything,” Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It can be fascinating to see ourselves as others see us. In this case, Athens-born director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster) brings his acute eye to the English country-house period drama in a scintillatingly warped portrait of the dysfunctional court of Queen Anne.It’s the beginning of the 18th century, and England is struggling with the increasing costs of war with the French. The ageing and mentally erratic Anne (Olivia Colman) quails at the prospect of decision-making as preening politicians screech and chatter around her, wrestling for political advantage and Read more ...
theartsdesk
While the Academy Awards is still searching for a host, theartsdesk's relatively controversy-free 2018 means we're ready for our end of year tributes. Superhero saturation reached breaking point, with Warner's Aquaman, Fox's Deadpool 2 and Sony's Venom all desperately trying to keep up with Disney's three(!) Marvel releases (and that's not including several animated releases). It might feel like this cinematic war will last for infinity, but away from the multiplexes were some of the most affecting and gorgeous films in recent memory. Here our team picks their highlights from both blockbuster Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The story of Henri Charrière’s gruelling ordeal as a prisoner in French Guiana and eventual escape was a bestseller on everyone’s bookshelf in the 1970s. It didn’t take long for it to become a Hollywood drama, which showcased the gigawatt talents of Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. McQueen ruggedly embodied the titular convict, named after the butterfly tattoo on his chest, and Hoffman reprised a version of the shuffling weirdo he played in Midnight Cowboy. The film still has a rightful place in the pantheon of escape movies including titles as disparate as The Shawshank Redemption, Down by Read more ...