Hollywood
Matt Wolf
The sun shines - a LOT - in the new Zac Efron film, which seems appropriate to a celluloid landscape shaded with loss and grief that puts such aspects of the human condition to one side in favour of the sequence of pretty-as-a-postcard images on which Scott Hicks's direction alights before too very long. Rife with portentous voiceovers on such topics as guardian angels, fate, and moving from darkness through to light, the film may appeal to rain-drenched spectators who can go on holiday simply by feasting on the visuals here; others may yearn for those halcyon days before Efron got all Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Some gorgeous costumes get paraded about to little effect in Mirror Mirror, the latest in a series of Julia Roberts star vehicles to make one wonder whether this A-list thesp's management is actually out to torpedo her career. A terrific actress in material that actually asks something of her, Roberts looks irritated by her latest assignment in a wan Snow White rewrite, and who can blame her? British viewers may be less forgiving of the way the Oscar-winner possessed of the zillion-watt smile slaloms between accents, as if not entirely sure where her vowels should alight. Others may pass the Read more ...
ronald.bergan
For most film buffs, the name of director Vincente Minnelli immediately recalls the quintessence of the MGM musical of the 1940s and 1950s - a world of fantasy, brilliant colours, stylish décor and costumes in which Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dance and sing. The name also evokes steamy dramas and civilised comedies such as Some Came Running and Father of the Bride. As the BFI launches a major season of his films this week, however, it's worth pondering whether there is more to his oeuvre than meets the eye. Could Minnelli make claim to being an auteur? Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Forget the action movie trappings of the aggressively titled This Means War: the latest film from the enigmatically named McG has a plot that Noel Coward might well have loved. Whether Sir Noel would have approved of the witless dialogue and the decidedly coy sexual politics is another thing altogether, though he doubtless would have admired the three stars' physiques. Audiences may well respond in kind provided they check in their brains at the door, though as an illustration of the ongoing Hollywoodification of England's own Tom Hardy, the film provides instructive viewing for that reason Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Maybe it was host Billy Crystal at far from peak form. Or a surfeit of cringe-making shtick by too many presenters, including the distaff principals of Bridesmaids. Or the desperation that clung to the multiple on-air tributes to an art form whose very being was celebrated in the evening’s two major winners, Hugo and The Artist. But my God did the 84th annual Academy Awards need Meryl Streep by the time The Iron Lady was called to the stage as Best Actress in the penultimate award of the evening.I say that not just because Streep’s trophy for playing Margaret Thatcher – a surprise in a town Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Those who are “Jung and easily Freudened” (to misquote Joyce) need have nothing to fear from David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Yes, it’s the film where Michael Fassbender takes a cane to a barely corseted Keira Knightley, but don’t let the S&M seduce you; in an elaborate double bluff, it turns out that this costume drama is every bit as blandly bourgeois as its fin-de-siècle characters, with less sex than the average episode of Downton Abbey.While the fascination with society’s more deviant elements is classic Cronenberg, there’s little else here to signal the director’s input. The Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
The first time I saw Michael Fassbender (b 1977) in the flesh, it was in Venice, in 2011. I was heading home on the last day of the film festival, where Steve McQueen’s Shame – starring the Irishman as a New York sex addict – had enjoyed an enthusiastically received premiere a week before. As I jumped off a vaporetto at Marco Polo Airport, I noticed Fassbender walking in the opposite direction, towards the water. Alone, with a tuxedo slung casually over his shoulder, the actor had obviously got “the call”, to return to the festival to collect a prize.Indeed, that night he was on stage, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Michael Fassbender (Shame) got blanked (maybe Hollywood was put off by his manhood?), as did We Need to Talk About Kevin’s Tilda Swinton, for my money the year’s best performance by an actress, notwithstanding the marvellous Meryl. Gary Oldman, meanwhile, is in as Best Actor for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – his first-ever Oscar nod, incredibly - whereas Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar) is out.Those are just a few of the surprises unveiled at today’s announcement from Los Angeles of the nominees for the 84th annual Academy Awards; the winners will be named on 26 February. In an eclectic and Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
An interfering producer, an accountant who keeps trying to cut corners and costs, even a casting couch – making movies was never easy, according to this amiable new play by Nicholas Wright. Set in 1930s Hollywood and, in flashback, in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe, it is a kind of celluloid fantasia that charts a path from the shtetl to the stars. Films, for young Motl and the people of his village, are flickering, silvery dreams; a way of capturing a moment in time forever, of preserving memory, of drawing a connective thread between the present and the future. And they are emblematic Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The thrilling does battle with the banal and just about calls it a draw, which is a synoptic way of describing the effect of Steven Spielberg's film of War Horse, based on the Michael Morpurgo novel that spawned the now unstoppably successful play. Those nay-sayers who said it couldn't be done will find their prejudices confirmed, preferring the imaginative reach infinitely more easily arrived at by the use of puppets on stage. On the other hand, no one does epic screen moments quite like Spielberg, which on occasion means wincing through various passages while you await this director's long- Read more ...
theartsdesk
Over the year we have reviewed many a new film and television drama in theartsdesk's Disc of the Day slot. As our series of DVD recommendations comes round to the movies, we have chosen to concentrate not on individual titles but box sets. For completists we suggest everything from Harry Potter to Ken Loach, The Avengers to Tarkovsky. If you want more Chaplin or Eisenstein in your life, here, too, is a good place to start. These collections and collations are a worthwhile investment for serious and playful fans of film and drama alike. The great thing about a box set - be it three discs of Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's tempting to say that Martin Scorsese's first so-called "family film" works like clockwork, except that the movie possesses considerably more soul than that statement suggests. What's more, it would help to be a clan of thoroughgoing cinéastes to tap entirely into its charms, as a director steeped in the history of his chosen medium takes us backwards in time towards the very origins of the art form he so reveres. Kids may love the sweep and scope of the visuals, many of them involving timepieces that whir and tick and hum, but Hugo at heart is an extended act of homage toward the miracle Read more ...