documentary
DVD: Generation WealthFriday, 19 October 2018
“Psychopathologies come and go but they always tell us about the historical time period in which they’re produced.” So says the journalist and academic Chris Hedges in Lauren Greenfield’s documentary Generation Wealth. The idea the film plays with... Read more... |
Kusama - Infinity review - amazing tale of survival against the oddsThursday, 04 October 2018
Wearing a red dress covered in black polka dots and a bright red wig, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama sits drawing, a look of intense concentration on her face. It takes her three days, she says, to finish one of these huge repeating patterns (main... Read more... |
Queen of the World, ITV review - born to run and runWednesday, 26 September 2018
Awesome numbers: over a million miles, the equivalent of 42 times around the globe, have been traversed by Her Majesty the Queen, enabling visits over the past seven decades or so to 117 different countries. No one has reigned longer nor travelled... Read more... |
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. review - not your average popstarSaturday, 22 September 2018
Why is M.I.A. such a problematic pop star? Why can't she just shut up and release a hit? Tellingly, this is the very question the singer poses at the start of Matangi/Maya/M.I.A - a question she's been asked throughout her career, from interviewers... Read more... |
Faces Places review - Agnès Varda's enchanted journeyThursday, 20 September 2018
On the eve of her tenth decade, the marvellous Agnès Varda embarked on the enchanted journey that we see in Faces Places. For admirers of the great French director – of whom there are a great many: indeed, it is hard not to be won over by her... Read more... |
'I saw that death is beautiful, unspeakable and strange': on filming 'Island'Monday, 10 September 2018
Most of us have very little knowledge of the process of life ending, physically and emotionally, until it comes suddenly into our own experience. Dying remains taboo. We don’t talk about dying, we don’t teach it in schools, and yet this event is as... Read more... |
Under the Wire review - risking everything to tell the world the truthWednesday, 05 September 2018
She was “the most important war correspondent of her generation”, says Sean Ryan, her editor at The Sunday Times. And her colleague Paul Conroy describes her as “a complete and utter one-off – exceptionally driven, with a real sense of purpose”.... Read more... |
The King review - the myth behind the manSaturday, 25 August 2018
The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man. This is not another... Read more... |
Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage, Channnel 4 review - making meaning in deathFriday, 24 August 2018
Grayson Perry is at it again. The Turner Prize winner, Reith lecturer, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, curator, writer, British Museum trustee, CBE, RA – plus Britain's and the art world’s favourite transvestite – is trying to find sense... Read more... |
DVD: ArcadiaWednesday, 15 August 2018
Arcadia is the latest and the best of a series of films which draw on the archives of the BFI and the BBC, collages of often forgotten footage, designed to make the riches held by those venerable institutions come alive.Folllowing in the footsteps... Read more... |
Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?, BBC Four review - cold case solved?Thursday, 02 August 2018
They don’t make boxers like Freddie Mills any more. A granite lump of grinning charisma, he had a brow and jawline straight from a kids’ cartoon and, despite his humble origins and thuggish contours, a charmingly well-to-do voice. Mills was light... Read more... |
DVD: That SummerTuesday, 24 July 2018
The meanderings and bickerings of an extraordinary mother and daughter as they roam or lounge around a semi-derelict house and overgrown garden on Long Island have become a cult since the 1975 release of Albert and David Maysles' documentary Grey... Read more... |
