Barbican Film: Mark Gatiss and Jonathan Rigby ScreenTalk
On 11 October, Halloween began early at the Barbican Centre with a screen talk by Mark Gatiss and film critic Jonathan Rigby, followed by...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
On 11 October, Halloween began early at the Barbican Centre with a screen talk by Mark Gatiss and film critic Jonathan Rigby, followed by...
★★★☆☆ Nagisa Ôshima is no stranger to controversial topics and challenging conflicts, mixing life, death, love, sex and passion into ultimately powerful experiences. He...
★★★★☆ Claimed by many to be a film that blurs the boundaries between art and pornography, Nagisa Ôshima’s In the Realm of the Senses...
★★★★☆ If, like me, you felt modern horror movies had lost the plot, Shiver (2008) – a wonderfully stylish chiller from Spain – may...
★★☆☆☆ No, this is not an in-depth look at the daily running of one of Britain’s top broadsheets, though that may have been more...
★☆☆☆☆ You know those films which are so bad they’re good? Well, unfortunately The Devil’s Kiss (1975) isn’t one. This (apparent) ‘Euro-terror’ classic from...
★★★★★ A categorical success at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist is a gloriously executed love letter to the silent era...
★★★★☆ The cinematic adaptation of a stage play can offer a filmmaker many creative challenges. Either the film can largely ignore its theatrical origins...