Film
Tom Birchenough
The title of Swedish director David Färdmar’s feature debut gains a degree of helpful context from one of its opening lines, “But there’s no more we”. One partner, Hampus (Jonathan Andersson), is telling the other, Adrian (Björn Elgerd), that whatever feelings may remain between them, their life as a gay couple, their coexistence and cohabitation of some years – the element that has made them we – is over. That essence is perhaps told more succinctly in the title of Färdmar’s 2018 short film, simply No More We, an impressionistic, work-in-progress abbreviation over 14 minutes of Are We Lost Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
One of the world’s leading architectural photographers, Julius Shulman was the subject of a show at London’s Photographers’ Gallery this autumn, “Altered States of America”. That title surely alluded to the visual modernism that changed the face of that country over the course of the 20th century, which Shulman, working in close tandem with the architects concerned, captured over a career of almost eight decades, in California especially.Visual Acoustics, Eric Bricker’s documentary about that career, was originally released in 2008, the year before Shulman died, just a year or so short of his Read more ...
graham.rickson
This BFI compilation looks back to an age when an evening at the cinema was a proper night out, the main attraction preceded by a short supporting feature. Nine spooky and macabre examples are included here, though the set earns its four stars by dint of excellent documentation and historical significance rather than cinematic brilliance.Disc one’s chills are very mild indeed, opening with a pair of shorts from 1949 starring and narrated by Algernon Blackwood, a one-time male model, violin teacher, hotel manager and journalist who found fame writing ghost stories. Both films feature Blackwood Read more ...
theartsdesk
It all started so promisingly. Parasite's triumph at the Oscars was a resounding response to 2019's saccharine and problematic Green Book. Art house was in and here to stay. And in some ways, this came to pass - with cinemas caught in a cycle of opening and closing, the blockbusters were nowhere to be seen. Instead, it's been the indies and the streamers keeping us entertained through these days of isolation.This year's Best Of selection reflects the strange and diverse release calendar of 2020. Film has proved to be resilient, and a sparser schedule allowed for some hidden gems to shine Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The dramatic developments in The Woman Who Ran, the 24th film written and directed by Hong Sang-soo since 1996, are mild to say the least. The worst that befalls the protagonist, a romantically puzzled thirtysomething Seoul florist called Gam-hee (Kim Min-hee, Hong’s partner and muse), is a brief awkward meeting with a blasé older ex-lover, Mr. Jung. That the unease it elicits in her dogs the end of the movie shows how deftly Hong’s cinema ratchets up and sustains emotional states with minimal visual expressiveness or shifting of tone.The film consists of three short sections in which Gam-hee Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is best known for mainstream films like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, stylishly expressive in their harnessing of alienating terrains, notably deserts and plains. Their claustrophobic equivalent in Polytechnique (2009), the eerily quiet 77-minute indie Villeneuve made before his 2010 breakthrough Incendies, is a college campus and its environs during a blizzard – the brutalist architecture and freezing temperature redolent of the feelings of the lone shooter who matter-of-factly fires his semi-automatic rifle at women in a classroom, a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Pixar's recent work raises the question, how much overt spiritual guidance do you want in your animation? In their latest film, Soul, middle-school music teacher Joe (Jamie Foxx) aspires to play New York’s famed jazz clubs but is living hand to mouth. On the same day he’s offered a full time teaching post, he also scores a dream gig playing at the Half Note with a top band. It’s no wonder that a random street accident sees him unwilling to ascend the escalator to Heaven (someone at Pixar has been watching A Matter of Life and Death).Instead Joe jumps into the limbo-land of The Great Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Crash, David Cronenberg’s dazzling, daring, disturbing adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel about car crashes and sex is one of the most infamous of all cinema cause celebres.The film's premiere in Cannes in 1996 caused an extraordinary ballyhoo, with then Evening Standard critic Alexander Walker writing a review with the headline "a movie beyond the bounds of depravity" and jury president Francis Coppola declining to join his fellow jury members in awarding the film a special jury prize. The festival showing was followed by attempts around the world, most notably in the UK and US, to have Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The pairing of Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Superman’s surrogate parents in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did not go unnoticed, and here writer/director Thomas Bezucha has reunited them as Montana residents George and Margaret Blackledge. He’s a retired sheriff, she’s a former horse-trainer, and now their lives revolve around their son James, his wife Lorna and their baby son Jimmy.In the early sequences, Let Him Go (adapted from Larry Watson’s novel) looks as though it has a sort of On Golden Pond vibe going on, a sentimental story of growing older, changing Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
There was always bound to be a hint of melancholy watching George Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Try as you might to focus on the film, you can never quite shake the fact that you’re watching the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, whose life was cut tragically short this year from bowel cancer. This adaptation of Wilson’s play is the second in a ten-part cycle that chronicles the Black experience throughout the course of the 20th century. It’s produced by Denzel Washington, who himself starred in Fences, another Wilson play, back in 2016. This chapter focuses on the life of Ma Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After months of watching movies on computer screens, how delightful to have a press screening at the Waterloo IMAX cinema, albeit under Covid restrictions. Not so delightful was the realisation that Wonder Woman 1984 is crying out for some editing shears (151 minutes! Are they serious?), while the uninspired climax that Gal Gadot’s title character spends so long labouring towards really isn't worth the wait.Whereas 2017’s Wonder Woman found World War One mysteriously arriving at the island of Themyscira, mythical home to the Amazon women, this one (again helmed by Patty Jenkins) leaps forward Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Terrence Malick completists might consider this Blu-ray of The New World the dream version. Criterion's three-disc release contains the three different cuts of Malick's 2005 opus, which critics either believe is an incomparable masterpiece or an overly lavish work of self-indulgence.As well as a 4K restoration of the 172-minute version, there’s the 135-minute theatrical cut and the 150-minute first cut. Also included are an on-set documentary and new interviews with the producer, the production designer, the editors, and the stars, all of whom speak reverentially of Malick and made Read more ...