Film Reviews
Scrapper
Friday, September 22nd, 2023 Film Reviews,It’s no surprise that Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper should be drawing comparisons with Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun (2022): two debut features by young British directors, featuring dysfunctional fathers trying to bond with early teenage daughters. For reasons that remain mysterious to me, Aftersunhas generated an inordinate amount of gush from critics who seem to believe that vagueness, […]
Everybody Loves Jeanne
Friday, September 15th, 2023 Film Reviews,There should be a special ‘Quirky’ classification for films such as Everybody Loves Jeanne. The last movie I saw that combined comedy and strangeness in this fashion, was Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016), in whch a woman with a high-powered job is tormented by an embarassing father who wants to be part of everything. In […]
Past Lives
Friday, September 8th, 2023 Film Reviews,It’s no surprise to learn that Celia Song’s Past Lives is strongly autobiographical, as no purely fictional tale could resist so many opportunities for dramatic or romantic cliché. The temptation of fiction is to improve on life, to fulfil fantasies and repair omissions by turning back the clock and – this time – getting it […]
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story
Sunday, September 3rd, 2023 Film Reviews,Michael Gudinski was a serious burner of candles at both ends. In describing the flamboyant record executive and concert promoter, most of his friends talk about his “energy” and “passion”. Director, Paul Goldman, who admits to a spiky relationship with his subject, says he set out to avoid making a hagiography. Nevertheless, this is what […]
BlackBerry
Friday, August 25th, 2023 Film Reviews,We’ve recently entered a new world of cinema in which product placement is the entire rationale for a movie. No longer is it sufficient for a character to swig a wellknown softdrink or flash an expensive watch – now the softdrink or the watch are the heroes of the film. We learn about their inventors’ […]
Gran Turismo
Friday, August 18th, 2023 Film Reviews,Not long ago, when people were asked to declare their hobbies and interests, they might list swimming or stamp collecting, visiting art galleries, or going to the opera. Nowadays, it’s increasingly likely the average person’s Number One pastime will be Shopping – with a capital ‘S’. The trend is reflected in our near-religious veneration for […]
Asteroid City
Saturday, August 12th, 2023 Film Reviews,Whatever Wes Anderson is doing it might be better classified as ‘art’ rather than cinema. This was confirmed when he received invitations from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Fondazione Prada in Milan, to create exhibitions in 2018-2020. The Prada had already shown its affection for the director by getting him to design a […]
Chevalier
Friday, August 4th, 2023 Film Reviews,Chevalier stretches the bounds of credibility from the very first scene. We are at a concert in Paris, in the late 18th century, where a cocksure Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is conducting his own music and playing the violin. When he invites requests from the audience, a black man in a periwig comes striding down the […]
Oppenheimer
Friday, July 28th, 2023 Film Reviews,No figure stands more squarely at the crossroads of 20th century science and politics than J. Robert Oppenheimer, forever known as “father of the atomic bomb”. An epic story requires an epic film, and Christopher Nolan has given Oppenheimer the treatment he demands, in a three-hour bio pic that manages to balance a portrait of […]
Barbie
Friday, July 21st, 2023 Film Reviews,Barbie is the most unusual feminist statement ever to hit the cinema. It’s also a bizarre advertorial for the Mattel corporation, and one of the most original movies you’ll see in this or any other year. A word of warning: there is an awful lot of pink. From the moment she appeared in March 1959, […]