★★★☆☆ In Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982), Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr) are two working stiffs living in Las Vegas, locked in a relationship from which much of the fun and affection has drained away. […]
The world has been ending for some time now, so it’s only right that US TV drama should take note. The ill-fated Jericho didn’t really get going, but now three major series have set out to realise the breakdown of […]
★★★☆☆ Reeling from the commercial failure of 1982’s One from the Heart and perhaps wary of his growing reputation as an obsessive monomaniac, in 1983 Francis Ford Coppola decided on The Outsiders – starring Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe […]
★★★☆☆ Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011) – with a large ensemble cast including Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet and Jude Law – marks a re-emergence of the old ‘revenge of nature’ genre, but rather than sharks, bees or birds, the […]
★★★★☆ The cinematic adaptation of a stage play can offer a filmmaker many creative challenges. Either the film can largely ignore its theatrical origins (Casablanca [1942] was based on a pretty unsuccessful production called Everybody comes to Ricks), or then […]
★★★★☆ In Alps (Alpeis, 2011), Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to the sensational Dogtooth (2009), a group of four people – a young gymnast, her coach, a medic and a nurse – have an enterprising idea: when someone dies, they […]
★★★★☆ It’s tempting to say that Todd Solondz’s seventh feature, Dark Horse (2011) – starring Justin Bartha, Selma Blair and Zachary Booth – is something of a departure, but in truth it never really escapes the universe of Planet Solondz. […]
★★☆☆☆ Every European country seems convinced that it is an especial victim of illegal immigration. The UK sees itself as a soft touch, as do Germany and France. For Italy, the geographical proximity to Northern Africa and a long coastline […]
★★☆☆☆ Ami Canaan Mann’s (daughter of Michael Mann) debut film Texas Killing Fields (2011) is a run-of-the-mill police procedural, which really has no place this year’s Venice Film Festival. Detectives Souder (Sam Worthington) and Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are investigating […]
★★★☆☆ This week sees the cinematic rerelease (ahead of its Blu-ray release on 17 Oct) of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s modern day fairytale Amélie (2001), the film that launched the career of Audrey Tautou in the role of the eponymous Parisian waitress, Amélie […]
★★★★☆ You hold a memory clear in your mind and then years later you meet someone who shared the experience with you, a family picnic, a wedding, whatever, but their remember it in such a way as to make you […]
★★★★☆ Alexander Sokurov’s Faust (2010) – awarded the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival – begins high above the earth, gazing into a mirror that looks like a cinema screen, before we – flapping and twirling in the […]
