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Australia and Bedtime Stories
2:17pm Tuesday 23rd December 2008
Since his eye-catching 1992 debut, the ugly duckling fairy-tale Strictly Ballroom, Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann has left us in a swoon with beautifully crafted stories of romance across the social and cultural divide. His daring reinterpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes married dazzling spectacle with devastating emotion, qualities echoed in the Oscar nominated musical Moulin Rouge!.
Comments (0)Bicycle Thieves
2:19pm Tuesday 23rd December 2008
Among a film critic’s duties, as another year draws to a close, is to assess the trends that have shaped our viewing habits over the past 12 months. Among the notable aspects of 2008 has been the number of classic pictures that have been revived for theatrical release.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S. Thompson
3:00pm Wednesday 17th December 2008
aving explored the corrupt nature of US corporatism in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and exposed abuses at Guantanamo Bay in the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Alex Gibney has scaled down with his latest outing, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. That’s not to say that his documentary lacks ambition, however, as this is a warts ‘n’ all insight into the thoughts and deeds of the maverick who revolutionised journalism in the 1960s.
White Christmas, la Boheme and Mum & Dad
2:58pm Wednesday 17th December 2008
ith the exception of It’s a Wonderful Life, there probably isn’t a firmer festive favourite than Michael Curtiz’s White Christmas (1954). It’s essentially a sentimental rehash of Holiday Inn (1942), in which Bing Crosby first introduced Irving Berlin’s hokey yuletide anthem, which remains the best-selling song of all time. How you view it very much depends on your tolerance threshold for Danny Kaye, as his shameless mugging overbalances a slight conceit that was largely contrived to exploit the patriotic nostalgia attending the passage of the first decade after the Second World War.
The Man from London and Lemon Tree
3:52pm Wednesday 10th December 2008
Henri Decoin filmed Georges Simenon's novella The Man from London in 1943. Had anyone but Béla Tarr produced the latest adaptation, it would probably have been hailed as an intriguing mystery and a sumptuous exercise in cinematic artistry. But we’ve come to expect more of the Hungarian auteur and there’s a vacuum at the heart of this slow-burning, existentialist noir.
Dean Spanley, North Face and Love and Honour
3:50pm Wednesday 10th December 2008
On first reading the blurb for Dean Spanley in the London Film Festival programme, it seemed as though Toa Fraser’s adaptation of Lord Dunsany’s obscure 1936 novella, My Talks With Dean Spanley, was destined for a mixed reception. But such is the quiet charm of this rarified period piece that it looks set to become a firm Christmas favourite and one of the sleeper hits of 2008.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
3:37pm Wednesday 3rd December 2008
Animal magic is in short supply in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, a colourful computer-animated sequel for the entire family which cheekily recycles the plot of The Lion King. Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath's film strands its menagerie of misfits in the wild, where they discover the courage to follow their hearts and to reclaim a birthright as king of the jungle.
Flawless, Rivalsand Julia
3:35pm Wednesday 3rd December 2008
The older he gets, the more Michael Caine seems to be happier with nostalgia than novelty. He featured in Sylvester Stallone’s dismal remake of Get Carter, assumed the Laurence Olivier role in Kenneth Branagh's wholly unnecessary reworking of Sleuth and spoofed his Harry Palmer spy persona in Austin Powers in Goldmember. He’s even butled for Batman. But nowhere has Caine seemed more comfortable of late than as the janitor planning a diamond heist in Michael Radford’s period romp, Flawless.
Four Christmases and Changeling
3:01pm Wednesday 26th November 2008
Rumours of an on-set feud between lead stars Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn hardly echo the tidings of comfort and joy espoused by Seth Gordon’s romantic comedy Four Christmases. "We've just got to get through these four Christmases as quickly and painlessly as possible,” grimaces Witherspoon's plucky heroine as she stares down the barrel of back-to-back celebrations with her divorced parents and the in-laws. By the end of the first act, we realise with mounting horror that director Gordon and his four screenwriters have no intention of granting her (and therefore us) that wish.
Before the Rains, Año uña and The Silence of Lorna
3:00pm Wednesday 26th November 2008
Having impressed with The Terrorist (1999) and Asoka the Great (2001), cinematographer-turned-director Santosh Sivan makes his English-language debut with Before the Rains. Set in Kerala in southern India in 1937, the action centres on spice baron Linus Roache, as he tries to secure from banker John Standing the funding for a road that will enable him to expand his business. A committed colonialist, Roache plans to share his wealth with factotum Rahul Bose. But the project is endangered when Roache is spotted with his housemaid mistress Nandita Das and Bose has to devise an elaborate cover-up to maintain appearances with the locals and prevent memsahib Jennifer Ehle from learning the truth.
Waltz With Bashir
3:31pm Wednesday 19th November 2008
The Japanese have been making grown-up cartoons for decades. But the emphasis of so much anime has been on sci-fi and fantasy and it's only recently that animators have begun to tackle weightier topics in the graphic novel style of, say, Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Conversations with My Gardener and Belle Toujours
3:30pm Wednesday 19th November 2008
Two superb films about ageing are released this week and it’s wonderful to see that cinema is still being made somewhere in the world whose main constituency isn’t adolescent males.
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
10:09am Thursday 13th November 2008
Almost 20 years ago, Rob Reiner's seminal romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally posed the age-old question: can men and women truly be friends without sex getting in the way? For Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, carnal desires wrecked their characters' friendship, reducing a previously rock solid relationship to a morass of anger, regret and razor-sharp one-liners.
'Go Where he Will, the wise man is at home' Frederick Wiseman documentaries at the Ultimate Picture Palace
10:06am Thursday 13th November 2008
Oliver Stone's W
10:51am Thursday 6th November 2008
Oliver Stone has cultivated a reputation as the bruiser of modern cinema. He highlighted the moralcomplexities of Vietnam (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven & Earth), savaged his fellow Americans's relentless pursuit of wealth (Wall Street), satirised the glamorisation of violence (Natural Born Killers) and remembered one of the US’s darkest days (World Trade Center).
Of Time and the City, OSS 17 Cairo, Nest of Spies. L:et's Talk About the Rain and IN Prison My Whole Life
10:50am Thursday 6th November 2008
Occasionally, a film makes such an impression that it's impossible to view it objectively. For a Liverpudlian who will have been in Oxford for 30 years next October, Terence Davies's Of Time and the City is such a film. Having looked forward to this hometown essay-cum-elegy seemingly as long as for Liverpool's next championship win, it was difficult to contain the disappointment on watching what felt like a betrayal of the city and its people. Only on the fourth viewing was it possible to concede that Davies was entitled to say what he likes about Merseyside – after all, that's what auteur visions are for – and to accept with envy the detachment of a London critical corps who could only see a masterwork of audiovisual acuity and integrity.
The Times BFI London Film Festival;
2:23pm Thursday 30th October 2008
The Times BFI London Film Festival always excels itself where foreign-language cinema is concerned and the French Revolutions strand at the 52nd edition is particularly strong. Agnes Jaoui's impeccable comedy of political, domestic and cinematic manners, Let's Talk About the Rain, is the standout. But Laurent Cantet's Palme d'or winner, The Class, and Arnaud Desplechin's sophisticated family soap, A Christmas Tale, are also exceptional, and while there's much to enjoy in Marc Fitoussi's backstage romp, La Vie d'artiste, it's impossible not to be moved by the plight of the farmers going to the wall in Raymond Depardon's Modern Life.
Sorry Bond: Bourne does it better
2:26pm Thursday 30th October 2008
Agent 007 returns, all guns blazing, in Quantum of Solace, action-packed follow-up to Casino Royale, set in the immediate aftermath of the blockbusting 2006 film. The film opens with a spectacular car chase through the historic streets of Siena, in Tuscany, culminating in a pursuit over the rooftops which recalls the breathtaking Morocco sequence from The Bourne Ultimatum.
Burn After Reading and The Rocker
10:30am Wednesday 15th October 2008
After the agonising tension and brutality of their Oscar-winning opus No Country For Old Men, writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen return to comedic territory with Burn After Reading, a pithy tale of espionage and infidelity. The film is not classic Coen brothers fare, but there are enough flashes of brilliance to keep us smirking for almost the entire 95 minutes.
Young@Heart, Afro Saxons, Tue£day and Sisterhood
10:28am Wednesday 15th October 2008
There are so many reality talent shows that it's not always easy to get enthusiastic about documentaries about singing. Stephen Walker's Young@Heart starts off pretty predictably, as it focuses on maverick conductor Bob Cilman trying to teach a senior citizen choir in Northampton, Massachusetts, such quirky numbers as Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia, The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go and James Brown's I Feel Good. Even though the ensemble has toured the world, Walker derives some gentle amusement from watching the geriatric amateurs struggling to stay in tune or stumbling over complicated lines. But he then decides to concentrate on a handful of compelling characters and the fondly deristory tone gives way to a deeply moving analysis of coping with age and loss.
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