Film
fisun.guner
Albert Speer was Hitler’s most high-ranking war minister, but just how much was he complicit in Nazi atrocities? Thirty years after his death, and 16 after Gitta Sereny’s controversial biography, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Speer remains a most enigmatic figure. Made in 2005 and now released on DVD, Speer and Hitler: The Devil’s Architect (dir: Heinrich Breloer; English subtitles) is an award-winning three-part docudrama that attempts to unravel that enigma.Sebastian Koch, who starred in the outstanding Lives of Others (dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; 2006), plays Speer as the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Notwithstanding legends of earlier generations such as Fangio or Jim Clark, it's Ayrton Senna whose name commands the most mystique in the annals of Formula One motor racing. Nor is his reputation limited merely to so-called "petrolheads". Away from the track, he became a kind of deity in his native Brazil, both for his racing feats and his charitable endeavours now continued by the Instituto Ayrton Senna.But he was a complex character, spiritual, deeply religious, yet brutally pragmatic. While he's viewed as a supernatural phenomenon by many, there was a dark and ruthless side to his Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In Mammuth the immense Gérard Depardieu hits the road, on both a practical quest and spiritual journey, his enormous form testing the metal of a motorcycle. He is flanked on his travels by the glorious French countryside, wind whipping through his golden mane. It’s an image of unlikely but undeniable beauty.Directed by Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine, Mammuth is an uplifting and disarmingly idiosyncratic view of retirement. It begins on Serge Pilardosse’s final day at the abattoir, where he is subjected to a rather stilted leaving bash and an excruciating, scripted speech (“Our country Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If there's one thing Hollywood hates more than people bootlegging its latest blockbusters on mobile phones, it's letting a lucrative franchise go to waste. Thus, after the initial three X-Men films and 2009's Wolverine spin-off, you are invited to roll up for the prequel, skippered by Brit director Matthew Vaughn, of Layer Cake and Kick-Ass fame.The young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is a bright and breezy telepath, schmoozing the girls with his amazing intuitive powers in a supposedly 1950s Oxford University. By contrast, Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), whom the world will come to know Read more ...
fisun.guner
This remarkable 1988 adaptation of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opens with Alice addressing the audience. “This is a story for children,” she tells us, before adding a teasing note: “Perhaps.” And that “perhaps” is worth noting, for Jan Švankmajer’s Surrealist Alice is full of cruel and violent incident.Paring the story down and dispensing with many of its most memorable characters – the Duchess, the Mock Turtle and the Cheshire Cat among them – the story becomes a disturbing duel between Alice and the White Rabbit. We first encounter the creature not hurrying across the lawn, Read more ...