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Barbican Film: Andrei Konchalovsky’s ‘House of Fools’
This Saturday will see Russian director and writer Andrei Konchalovsky at the Barbican Centre for a screen talk on his internationally acclaimed and award winning film, House of Fools (2002). After the screening he will be in conversation with Sight & Sound’s Edward Lawernson, followed by a Q & A session.House of Fools is a…
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DVD Releases: ‘Betrayal’
Having just said goodbye to 2010 – a year which few would argue had been a particularly impressive one for the world of cinema – it is with a hint of disappointment that I must bring to your attention a DVD release of such crashing and unbridled nonsense so early on in 2011. The…
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Baftas 2011: ‘The King’s Speech’ bags fourteen noms
The nominations were announced this morning for the 2011 Baftas, with Tom Hooper’s period drama The King’s Speech (2010) leading the way with fourteen nominations including Best Film and Best Actor for Colin Firth’s turn as the stammering King George VI. American director Darren Aronofsky’s highly anticipated psychological ballet thriller Black Swan (2010) – released…
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DVD Review: ‘Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment’
★★★☆☆ As a film that deals with themes of insanity, jealousy, romance and class division, whilst simultaneously skipping between madcap comedy and tragic love story, it is little wonder that Karel Reisz’s Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) achieves rather mixed results.The film details the descent into madness of the already psychologically unstable Morgan (David Warner),…
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DVD Review: ‘Soul Men’
★★★☆☆ It amazes me that Soul Men (2008) didn’t get much exposure when it was first released in November 2008, given the two star names attached to the feature, namely Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. In fact, on release in the States it only managed to make back a measly $12 million (just…
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DVD Releases: ‘Certified Copy’
Certified Copy is the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s features to be filmed outside his native Iran. He is renowned for his use of non-professional actors, but here he employs the considerable talents of Juliette Binoche (winner of the Best Actress award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival) to work alongside British opera-singer William Shimmel, in…
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Special Feature: ‘Bruce Lee, My Brother’
Acclaimed Chinese director Raymond Yip’s Bruce Lee, My Brother (2010) is not the high kicking martial arts amalgamation one might expect from the title, but instead takes a sentimental journey from the renowned actor’s childhood through to his late teen years, and is adapted from a book written by his younger brother, Robert Lee. Told…
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Film Review: ‘Amer’
★★★☆☆ Amer (2009) co-director Bruno Forzani has himself admitted that Dario Argento’s cult classic Tenebrae (1982) was one of the main inspirations for the movie, having seen it 17 times as a self confessed “giallo” fan (“giallo” being the Italian equivalent of pulp fiction, named after the Italian word for yellow due to the fact that most pulp crime novels had yellow covers).There…
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Film Review: ‘Conviction’
★★★☆☆ Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction (2009) treads the well worn path of many of its BFI London Film Festival contemporaries this year – Julian Schnabel’s Miral (2010) and Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) to name but two – in prefacing their story with the phrase “Based on a true story/real events”. Apparently nothing is quite as compelling as…
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Barbican Film: Andrei Konchalovsky Directorspective
Gloss, released in 2007, will be screening at the Barbican this month on Saturday 20 with an introduction from the director himself as part of the ‘Andrei Konchalovsky Directorspective‘. Each film has been chosen by Konchalovsky and the season will reflect the breadth of his critically acclaimed work.Gloss exposes the obsession western culture has with beauty…
EIFF 2026