Tag: biography
The Monuments Men
Saturday, March 15th, 2014 Film Reviews,When you see German soldiers with flame throwers destroying works of art in one of the most striking scenes from The Monuments Men, remember that it never actually happened. The Raphael picture we see going up in flames is still listed as “missing” today, not officially torched. One might think the Nazis were bad enough […]
Hannah Arendt
Saturday, March 15th, 2014 Film Reviews,The jollities and distortions of The Monuments Men would not have impressed Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish intellectual who wrote an impressively forensic account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, whom some describe as the architect of the Final Solution. Neither would they go down well with Margarethe von Trotta, who has made a long line […]
Tracks
Saturday, March 8th, 2014 Film Reviews,In April 1977 the 26 year-old Robyn Davidson set out with a dog and four camels to walk 2,700 kilometres from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. Tracks, her memoir of the journey, was published in 1980 and became a world-wide best-seller. The film rights for the book were first sold in the early 1980s […]
Dallas Buyers Club
Saturday, February 22nd, 2014 Film Reviews,It was startling enough to see Christian Bale porking up to play a middle-aged conman in American Hustle, but this seems like a piece of cake – or perhaps lots of cake and donuts – alongside Matthew McConaughey’s drastic transformation for Dallas Buyers Club. Anyone can pile on the kilos but it takes extraordinary discipline […]
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Saturday, February 8th, 2014 Film Reviews,There is a special tone reserved for the bio-pic of some major historical figure. Such films tend to be stately, respectful, almost in awe of their subject. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a textbook example of the genre. Despite the obligatory disclaimer that it will show us the hero as we have never seen […]
12 Years a Slave
Saturday, February 1st, 2014 Film Reviews,It used to be commonplace for directors to cut their teeth in the theatre before moving on to the cinema. In the future it seems likely there will be more directors who begin their careers at art school making videos and installations before progressing to full-length features. Steve McQueen is currently the most prominent example […]
The Wolf of Wall Street
Saturday, January 25th, 2014 Film Reviews,With most films if we can’t find any sympathy for the lead characters it’s a bad night at the cinema. The Wolf of Wall Street is the exception to the rule. A three-hour roller coaster ride that keeps us clinging to the handrail from start to finish, this orgiastic vision of greed and excess on […]
Kill Your Darlings
Saturday, December 21st, 2013 Film Reviews,Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr. The first three were among the most famous writers of their generation, the last worked for 47 years as a news editor for United Press International. Yet in the formative years of the Beat Generation, Lucien Carr was the hippest of the hip. This brief, glittering […]
Fruitvale Station
Saturday, November 9th, 2013 Film Reviews,“Based on a true story” is a claim that confers a special moral distinction on a movie. We are not talking about the fantasy adventures of James Bond or Superman, or some frivolous rom com. The film we have chosen to watch is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If only. […]
The Butler
Saturday, November 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,When a film touches on shameful events that are still raw and painful it exerts a strange moral blackmail on the viewer. In terms of script and character development, The Butler is a horribly corny movie. As a nose-to-the-glass chronicle of the civil rights movement, Lee Daniels’s melodrama strikes at the heart of America’s good […]