Film
emma.simmonds
Boasting one of the most appealingly eclectic casts in recent memory, The Salvation – from Dogme 95 director Kristian Levring – might have hoped to emulate the success of Sergio Leone's Italian-infused approach by bringing a Danish flavour to traditional western proceedings. But by relying too heavily on the tried and tested it fails to distinguish itself, meaning that the "smørrebrød" western seems unlikely to replace its spaghetti cousin in audience affections any time soon.Set in America in 1871, it begins promisingly with a soon-to-be-shattered softness as a nervous Dane, Jon ( Read more ...
kate.connolly
The Nobel prize-winning writer, playwright and artist Günter Grass was arguably the best-known German-language author of the second half of the 20th century. Kate Connolly met him in May 2010 in Istanbul where, after attending a series of literary events, Grass was forced to stay on for some days as volcanic ash closed European airports.Born in 1927 in the port city of Danzig in what is now Gdansk in Poland, he was among the hundreds of thousands of ethnic German refugees who settled in West Germany in 1945. His literary career started with his debut novel, The Tin Drum (1959), which remains Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Ken Russell remained British cinema’s enfant terrible till his death in 2011, aged 84. Rather than fade into respectability, he retreated to amateur provocations filmed in his back garden, and returned to the dramatised documentaries on classical musicians which made his name for the BBC in the Sixties. His notoriety peaked with Women In Love’s nude male wrestling in 1969, the nude nuns and corrupt bigotry of 1971’s The Devils and his chat show assault on its critic Alexander Walker, and The Who’s Tommy (1975).Russell’s decision not to direct Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday as his cinema debut Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
The burden of responsibility weighs heavily on a young man struggling to deal with his mother’s alcoholism, in Gerard Barrett’s powerful and poignant second feature. Jack Reynor, who so impressed in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, turns in a nuanced and moving performance as a son driven to desperate measures in order to survive. Barrett empathises how difficult it can be to get by when you don’t have a regular income, or indeed plentiful cash to throw at your problems.John (Reynor, pictured below) is at a crossroads in his life. Does he continue driving a taxi in the village where he Read more ...
emma.simmonds
This shrewdly assembled, often near-monochrome actioner injects pathos from the off and mirrors the melancholic outlook of its grief-ravaged protagonist, played by Keanu Reeves, who dials down the befuddlement and proves rather endearing. Directed by stuntmen Chad Stahelski and (an uncredited) David Leitch, it's a lovingly crafted, pleasingly characterful effort that delivers impactful, imaginatively executed thrills.Even if you're not an animal lover, John Wick has a crafty way of pulling at the heart strings, demonstrating a simultaneous flair for manipulation and restraint. It opens with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Retrospectively, two things help The Blob stand apart from the glut of late-Fifties aliens-invade-small-town-America science fiction films. It gave Steve McQueen his first starring role and its theme tune was an early Burt Bacharach co-write. Either of these – or even both together – are probably not enough to make the 1958 regional independent production into a classic piece of American cinema. But it is pretty good.Somewhere in Pennsylvania a courting couple – the male half of which is McQueen, playing “Steve” – are smooching in an open-top car. Coming back from their close encounter they Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple, on a skiing vacation in the Alps with their two young children, having their photographs taken by a resort snapper: as they readjust their poses, it seems like a search for a depiction of the perfect family. But beneath such hinted ideals, there’s a heavy underlying level of unease bubbling, which will duly unravel over the course of the film’s Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
In the past decade or so the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s minimalist masterworks have earned him an ardent, if particular following. With Jauja he’s moved beyond his comfort zone, by using professional actors for the first time and with more dialogue than in all his previous combined. The result is at once his most accessible film and his most mysterious, which is quite some trick. And it confirms his status as one of contemporary cinema’s great artists.It’s set in Patagonia in the 1880s, where Captain Dinesen (Viggo Mortensen), a Danish soldier and engineer, is working for the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When President Obama took office in 2009, he was riding a wave of idealistic expectations of a superior brand of politics and even a better kind of world. That all looks ludicrous now of course, and one of the lasting stains on his reputation is likely to be the way the USA has ramped up its campaign of drone strikes under his leadership.Good Kill is set in 2010, as the drone campaign was kicking into high gear. Its troubled anti-hero is Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke), a former USAF F16 pilot with six tours of duty on his record, but now confined, along with his team, to a Portakabin-style Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ryan Gosling throws a lot at his first film as director but Lost River is a sign he has found a single discipline which can accommodate many of his scattershot tendencies. He does not, though, find a place for his own musical output in the avowedly arty Lost River.Instead, Lost River is overflowing with overt and less-direct cinematic references which position it as Gosling’s love letter to film. Casting Barbara Steele evidences an appreciation of Italian and Euro-horror in general. George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face crops up. Sections of composer Johnny Jewel’s soundtrack music echo Goblin’ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Mary McCarthy’s 1963 novel The Group inspired Candace Bushnell to write Sex and the City, a connection highlighted on this DVD of Sidney Lumet’s 1966 adaptation. Only the breezy style of the newsletter which keeps eight female friends from Vassar’s Class of ‘33 in touch bears real comparison. This is a broader saga about women’s experiences and ambitions in the years up to World War Two. It’s also an unexpected entry in Lumet’s great series of New York films, as these Manhattan wives, daughters, doctors and socialites grip as strongly as his more familiar male cops and lawyers, moving to the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"He's not evil, he's just young," we hear in passing in Noah Baumbach's wickedly funny film about the growing pains that affect us at every stage of life. That's to say that by any objective standard, the 40-something Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) aren't especially old, but they inhabit an entirely different sphere from Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), the deeply hip – and younger – New York couple who soon take over their lives. Will youth triumph over the seasoning of age, or will experience trump innocence? Such time-honoured questions are folded into a Read more ...