Tag: drama
Living
Friday, March 17th, 2023 Film Reviews,Bill Nighy has been in so many frivolous films I had begun to think of him as a lightweight, mannered actor, forever striking poses and talking in a languid drawl. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot with Love, Actually (2003), a movie I loathed at first sight. Whatever the reason, Living has forced […]
Empire of Light
Saturday, March 4th, 2023 Film Reviews,Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes listings this week, I was amazed to see that Charlotte Wells’s debut film, Aftersun, scores a 95% approval rating from the critics, while Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light clocks in at 45%. This suggests that Wells has given us a masterpiece and Mendes has made a dud. Despite this apparent […]
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once & All Quiet on the Western Front
Friday, February 24th, 2023 Film Reviews,With another Academy Awards looming, I’m taking the opportunity to look at the two remaining candidates for Best Picture. Both have form. The first, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, leads the pack in 2023 with 11 nominations. The second, All Quiet on the Western Front, has been nominated in nine categories, and won seven BAFTAs this week, […]
Women Talking
Friday, February 17th, 2023 Film Reviews,Women Talking proves that dialogue can supercharge a film no less successfully than action. The box office blockbusters of our era are short on talk and long on CGI, hardly more than a few lame jokes and the odd sentence required to introduce the next fight or explosion. Canadian director, Sarah Polley, has reversed this […]
Corsage
Friday, February 10th, 2023 Film Reviews,Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-98) was the original ‘people’s princess’. She hated the pomp and ceremony of the Habsburg Court and would absent herself from Vienna for months on end. She was known for her charitable works and her affection for the common people. A famous beauty, she kept her weight down to a terrifying […]
The Whale
Friday, February 3rd, 2023 Film Reviews,Brendan Fraser had fallen off the map when he was invited by Darren Aronofsky to play Charlie in The Whale. It’s a strange comeback role for an actor who used to be an action hero, as Charlie is the very definition of inertia. Weighing in at approximately 270 kilos, he spends his life in a […]
Tár & Babylon
Friday, January 27th, 2023 Film Reviews,Last week I thought Michelle Williams was unbeatable for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars, but after watching Tár, it’s hard to see Cate Blanchett coming second. Todd Field’s film about a musical genius who falls for the seductions of fame and power, is a classic Faustian tale. Blanchett’s Lydia Tár doesn’t exactly sell her […]
Emily
Saturday, January 21st, 2023 Film Reviews,Emily Brontë remains one of the most mysterious figures in world literature. When she died at the age of 30 in 1848, she had written one novel and a sheaf of poems. The poems were immediately acclaimed for their “genius” but are little read today. The novel, Wuthering Heights, is a classic for the ages, […]
The Fabelmans
Friday, January 13th, 2023 Film Reviews,At a certain point in an illustrious career, many a writer has turned to autobiography. That moment usually arrives when an author has become so famous that he or she is more fascinating to the public than any work of fiction they may produce. It does, however, require a special kind of ego. Gore Vidal […]
White Noise
Friday, January 6th, 2023 Film Reviews,Some novels leave an indelible impression. I read Don DeLillo’s White Noise shortly after it appeared in the mid-1980s but can still remember whole passages and even certain sentences. It is a book of verbal gymnastics that Noah Baumbach has made into an equally wordy film, largely by quoting DeLillo verbatim. Baumbach shows an unusual respect […]