Film Reviews
LFF 2014: The Duke of BurgundyFriday, 10 October 2014
Love is a many-splendored thing but it can also be a cruel mistress, as British auteur Peter Strickland so exquisitely illuminates in this startlingly beautiful Seventies-style European erotica, which centres around power and desire.The shifting nature of long-term relationships is explored through a lesbian couple with a fetish for butterflies and S&M. Read more... |
LFF 2014: Thou Wast Mild and LovelyFriday, 10 October 2014
Ushering in the mucky-minded art-house crowd like the Pied Piper lining up kids for the snatching, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely describes itself as an erotic thriller set amidst the Kentucky wilds, while its fluid, meadow-fresh depiction of forbidden romance recalls Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. However, it's a film that turns surprisingly savage with 'hillbilly horror flick' a more apt description of where things end up. Read more... |
LFF 2014: The Imitation GameThursday, 09 October 2014
Benedict Cumberbatch leads a superb cast in The Imitation Game, the highly-anticipated biopic of Alan Turing, gifted mathematician and father of modern computing. Read more... |
LFF 2014: Camp X-RayThursday, 09 October 2014
What can another film about American malfeasance in its War on Terror add to our knowledge and disapproval? Camp X-Ray has too narrow a scope to offer much; yet it’s impossible not to be affected by its depiction of utter hopelessness for those illegally imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Read more... |
Effie GrayWednesday, 08 October 2014
A peculiar slice of 19th-century cultural life is mined to minimal effect in Effie Gray, a stillborn labour of love that doesn't justify the long slog from screenwriter and supporting player Emma Thompson required to bring this tale to the screen. It's not just that her husband, Greg Wise, is miscast in a part - that of the visionary critic, educator and sometime-painter John Ruskin - for which he's several decades too old. Read more... |
‘71Tuesday, 07 October 2014
“You’ll only be staying here until one of the paddies shoots you.” The blunt caution given to Private Gary Hook on his arrival in Belfast sets the tone for the army’s attitude towards where he’s been posted, and the tone of locals towards an army any of them might ostensibly join. The breathlessly hard-hitting ‘71 not only captures these tensions with flair, but does so from the incompatible, irreconcilable points of view of those caught up in and sucked into them. Read more... |
The CallingMonday, 06 October 2014
Jason Stone’s directorial debut is chock-full of killer-thriller tropes. Serial killer with a religious bent; cop with a drink and drugs problem; smalltown investigator butts heads with intransigent chief of police in the big city; a lightbulb moment when a detective looks at the crime pinboard – they’re all here (plus a few more), but it’s no less enjoyable for that. Read more... |
You and the NightFriday, 03 October 2014
At the risk of endorsing national stereotypes, I’ll still describe Yann Gonzalez’ feature debut You and the Night as a very French film. Its appearance in Critics’ Week at Cannes last year brought comparisons with Francois Ozon and Pedro Almodovar for a combination of style and sex, arguably at the expense of substance. Read more... |
VioletteThursday, 02 October 2014
Mesmerising in her sustained emotional rawness, Emmanuelle Devos is at her empathetic best in Violette, a psychological study of a woman damned by her loveless childhood and what she perceived as her ugliness. Read more... |
Gone GirlThursday, 02 October 2014
Some feared that turning Gillian Flynn's bestselling novel into a movie couldn't be done, but with Flynn herself in the screenwriter's chair and the clinically precise David Fincher wearing the director's hat, it's turned out a treat. It's long at 145 minutes, but it needed space to accommodate its titillating mix of police procedural, whodunnit, social satire and psychological drama. Read more... |
Life After BethWednesday, 01 October 2014
Zombies have feelings too. That's the message at the heart of writer-director Jeff Baena's debut Life After Beth, which begins its life as a sensitive indie comedy with a winning deadpan shtick and ends up salivating and snarling after developing an appetite for riotous, blood-splattered slapstick. Read more... |
Still the Enemy WithinTuesday, 30 September 2014
You expect the tears, anger and pride, as NUM veterans relive Britain’s defining industrial dispute, 30 years later. The bafflement of a South Welsh ex-miner is more telling; the way his voice slows in disbelief at the level of violence the British state unleashed in the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, and incomprehension as he still struggles to grasp how and why what he saw could have happened. Read more... |
Draft DayMonday, 29 September 2014
Draft Day should have been a contenda. As it stands, it's a football film for people who like football but who hate film. Sure, you may like “movies”, but you sure as hell don’t like film. It’s also the kind of film a rookie film reviewer will gleefully shred. Read more... |
I OriginsFriday, 26 September 2014
I Origins is a high-concept sci-fi thriller and romantic drama from American indie director Mike Cahill, who investigates big philosophical and scientific issues by looking for meaning in coincidence. Part produced by Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt, who also stars, this well-intentioned thesis intrigues but falls short due to a laboured script and an inelegant handling of a burgeoning relationship. Read more... |
Maps to the StarsThursday, 25 September 2014
Hollywood's veneer has been cracked so many times it's possible to see right through to its cynical core; in an age of irreverence and intrusion the stars simply don't glitter as brightly. David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars is a film that forgets all this and sets out its satirical stall anyway. Read more... |
The EqualizerTuesday, 23 September 2014
Denzel Washington steps into the shoes of avenger Edward Woodward (TV series 1985-89) as a quiet, private man wrestling with his demons as he tries to stifle his natural gifts for violent justice. He’s reluctant to hurt people but, you know, he has skillz. Washington's easy grace and intelligence give this predictable policier manqué almost edible allure. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourite...
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...
Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the dram...
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions...
Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic trick...
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisatio...
The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s ...
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - th...
Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in ...
Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries
“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however,...
Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House Demos
Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on...
Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and...
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great...
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin G...
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as...