Film
graham.rickson
The earliest film collected here, 1963’s Elgar, stands up incredibly well. Some of its quirks were imposed from above: fledgling director Ken Russell was initially employed by the BBC’s Talks Department and was discouraged from using actors in his documentaries. So Elgar is packed full of reconstructions of scenes from the composer’s life, though the actors never speak and there are no close ups.All of which adds to the realism, aided by Huw Wheldon’s sonorous narration of Russell’s script. The images are glorious: the recurring scenes of Elgar traversing the Malvern Hills accompanied by his Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The tag-line for this definitively audacious Berlin thriller-love story writes itself: “One take. One night. Who survives?” Director Sebastian Schipper filmed Victoria in one take that roams through dozens of locations in Berlin’s empty small-hours streets, with dialogue improvised by his core young cast of five. Hitchcock tried something similar, editing Rope’s 10-minute takes to simulate continuous action much as Birdman did, while Orson Welles’ long, bravura opening shot in Touch of Evil was emulated at Boogie Nights’ start. Helped by modern camera technology, Schipper has aced them all in Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Even by the varied experiences of transferring Shakespeare to another culture, with the attendant revelations that come when an original story is modified to match a world governed by very different priorities, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is virtually in a class of its own. So it’s a curious thought that associations with King Lear were not in fact at the forefront of the great Japanese director’s mind when he started working in the mid-1970s on what would become his last full-scale epic.Instead his direct inspiration was the story of a 17th century feudal lord, whose three sons proved themselves Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The trio of Sixties television documentaries assembled here are prototypical examples of Ken Russell’s oeuvre: hyper-real, and often frenzied, depictions of the lives of their subjects. Each not-quite or more-than documentary was made for the BBC in an era when boundaries were pushed and the corporation allowed directors to follow their artistic sensibilities. Although there is little immediate link with the Ken Loach of 1966’s Cathy Come Home, both he and Russell thrived in the fertile environment of a BBC which took chances.The Great Passions collects Always on Sunday (1965), a portrayal of Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The Chilean director Pablo Larrain completed his loose trilogy about his country confronting the legacy of its Pinochet years four years ago with No. Striking a distinctly upbeat note after the two films that had preceded it, Tony Romero and Post Mortem, its title came from the unexpected referendum result that deprived the dictator of an anticipated extension of his mandate, and was seen through the story of the advertising men behind that epoch-changing vote.But new times do not bring new morals. His new film The Club (El Club), which took the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Berlinale, may Read more ...
Saskia Baron
These are sensitive times when it comes to playing anyone on screen with a mental health condition, particularly when it’s a comedy with Kristen Wiig. But Welcome to Me pulls it off, skittering nimbly along a tightrope between offensiveness, surreal humour and mawkishness.Wiig plays Alice Klieg, a failed veterinary assistant first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her teens and now living on disability benefits, mandatory therapy and medication from her controlling therapist (Tim Robbins, pictured below right). He considers her to have borderline personality disorder (BPD) and certainly she’ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Amazing, isn't it, how the good ol' comic book is inexorably swallowing the planet. With the Marvel empire running rampant through all media, DC Comics are racing to catch up with their DC Extended Universe. It debuted with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel in 2013, and continues here as Snyder returns to helm this bloated yarn of superheroes at loggerheads.However, devotees of this same Snyder will perhaps find that it's his earlier film, 2009's Watchmen, that springs to mind here, with its story of a group of jaded, retired superheroes trapped in a satirical Cold War dystopia. In this new movie, Read more ...
Holly O'Mahony
If an authority figure ordered you to inflict pain on another person, to what extent would you comply? That is the subject of Experimenter, which focuses on Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience experiment. Unable to secure a theatrical run in the UK, writer-director Michael Almereyda’s urgent biographical drama, which had its premiere at Sundance last year, is now available on DVD and for digital download. The movie’s unsettling depiction of our capacity for cruelty makes it essential viewing.Yale social psychologist Milgram devised the experiment following the 1961 trial of Adolf Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It’s a fair bet that when Lewis Hamilton and his Formula One colleagues are driving to practice sessions they don’t have to queue for 90 minutes at a military checkpoint. This was just one illuminating vignette of the daily grind shown in Amber Fares’ interesting documentary about a group of Palestinian female car-racers, the first all-women team in the Arab world.This incident happened to team captain Maysoon, who marshals Marah, Noor, Mona and Betty, four very likeable women who love racing cars. Fares tells their stories through interviews with the women and their families, interspersed Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I hope Todd Haynes isn't consumed with bitterness about the way Carol was ignored at the Oscars – mind you, a world where the dreary Spotlight can get Best Film probably isn't one he misses much – but the discerning filmgoer can be in little doubt that this is a masterpiece. A lesbian love story derived from Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, it's as poignant and haunting an exploration of the ways of the human heart as you could hope to find, graced with central performances by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara which are as brilliant as they're dissimilar.As Carol Aird, a fashion- Read more ...
David Kettle
When a film’s two leads start debating George Bernard Shaw in the middle of a fight to the death, you know you’re in trouble. In fact, Shakespeare, Byron, Melville, Rimbaud and plenty more all get namechecked in William Monahan’s pretentious doppelgänger thriller. With a bit more flair and wit, and a little less sententious self-importance, Mojave could have ended up as an outrageously entertaining parody. Instead, it just feels self-obsessed and disappointingly mundane.It doesn’t help that the two leads in question are so thoroughly unsympathetic. Garrett Hedlund (pictured below) plays Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s unbelievable how hard it is to retell the greatest story ever told. And yet dramatists still feel the urge. The BBC had a big Easter binge a few years ago with the Ulster actor James Nesbitt playing a sort of Prodius Pilate. Now here’s a film financed by producers of a missionary bent. It’s called Risen and it’s essentially a sermon disguised as a sword-and-sandals epic.Still reading? Risen’s closest cinematic forebear is possibly Ben Hur in which a non-Christian is drawn into the benign orbit of an unkempt Nazarene pauper with healing powers. In this case the benighted pagan is Roman Read more ...