Tag: spanish film
A Silence & Spanish Film Festival 2024
Sunday, June 30th, 2024 Film Reviews,A Silence doesn’t announce that it’s Based on a True Story, but its origins are not hard to find. In this film by Belgian director, Joachim Lafosse, the crime that looms in the background is that of paedophile, rapist and serial killer, Marc Dutroux, who kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured a series of young girls from […]
Official Competition
Saturday, July 23rd, 2022 Film Reviews,Hubris, which comes from Greek tragedy, means “excessive pride or self-confidence”. Official Competition begins with a grand display of hubris, as a billionaire businessman commissions a movie as a monument to himself. It won’t be just any old flick but an instant cinema classic intended to win prestigious awards and stand the test of time. […]
The Good Boss
Friday, April 15th, 2022 Film Reviews,It’s a wonder there are not more movies like The Good Boss. Every small to medium-sized business is a potential comedy series, as management tries to maintain the illusion that a company is one big happy family, at least until the employees ask for a pay rise. Javier Bardem’s Julio Blanco is a master operator […]
Parallel Mothers
Friday, February 4th, 2022 Film Reviews,Anyone watching Pedro Almódovar’s films in the early 1980s would find it hard to believe him capable of the skilful, touching dramas he’s making today. The Spanish director’s first efforts, such Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom(1980) or Labyrinth of Passion (1982), put him in the same territory as provocative campmeisters such as […]
Spanish Film Festival
Saturday, July 7th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing, Uncategorized,Spain has always been known as a land of poverty, piety and cruelty, with a dark, fatalistic streak. The great break came with the Movida of the late 1970s – the counter-cultural awakening that followed the death of Franco. In the cinema the figurehead for this movement was Pedro Almodóvar, who has gone on to […]
The Skin I Live In & Albert Nobbs
Saturday, December 24th, 2011 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Celebrated directors are invariably cinemaphiles who have watched favourite movies so often they can almost recite them. This is the case with Francois Truffaut and Jim Jarmusch, for instance, but few wear their influences on their sleeve as boldly as Pedro Almodóvar. His new feature, The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito) is […]