There’s an anecdote Martin Scorsese often tells about his childhood that turns up in some variant or other in most of his gangster films. It concerns the future director walking around Little Italy with his mother, noticing that some people seemed to be wearing better clothes and driving better cars […]
Movies & Documentaries
Dunkirk – a very loud introduction to war
Leaving the cinema after watching Dunkirk, you’d forgive your brain for thinking that you had just gotten off a rollercoaster. The relentless pace at which the movie depicts the frightening realities of war is as thrilling an experience — if not the biggest thrill — offered by any war movie […]
Heal the Living (2016) An admirable but soul-crushing medical drama (Review)
For some, Katell Quillévéré’s third feature film, ‘Heal the Living’, has slotted itself nicely in the honourable mentions for a film of the year in 2017. As of writing, Mark Kermode just put out his annual mid-term report of his favourite films from January – June where ‘Heal the Living’ […]
Wolf Warrior II (2017) Flag waving aside, this is the perfect antidote to modern action cinema (Review)
How American cinema has changed since the 1980s, I’ll use the action film as the conduit to make this point. Back then we had ridiculously over the top, jingoistic, star vehicles centred around a handful of names. Now, those films are shot and financed exclusively in Europe, the quality of […]
Westfront 1918 & Kameradschaft (1930/1) One of Germany’s best at the peak of his powers (Review)
During the late 1920’s to the early 1930’s, G. W. Pabst’s directorial career was on fire. In 1929, he crafted three films. The two Louise Brooks movies that made him synonymous with silent film, ‘Pandora’s Box’ and ‘Diary of a Lost Girl’, and the mountaineering movie starring Leni [Yes, THAT […]
J’Accuse (1938) World War I Historical Epic with Silent Film and Grindhouse Brio (Review)
In literature, the phrase J’accuse is most associated with Émile Zola, who used it for the title of an essay accusing the French government of corruption and anti-Semitism in the case of Alfred Dreyfus. (Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer, was charged with treason in a clumsy attempt to cover up […]
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) A gruelling and essential World War II documentary (Review)
We British have a very simple way of boiling down WWII in our school history lessons. We were the good-hearted nation prone to stop any violent conflict. The Nazis showed up and did evil things, we went to war with them and we won. But for the documentary filmmaker, Marcel […]
Aquarius (2016) Sonia Braga towers over this bloated love affair with the home space (Review)
What I will say about Aquarius, the latest film from Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho is that it is an absorbing, detailed and considerate character study of its female protagonist – and more, that protagonist happens to be a woman in her mid-sixties. There really isn’t enough major roles or stories […]
The Levelling (2016) An incredible, sympathetic film to the plight of the modern farmer (Review)
It would be wrong to say British film hasn’t dealt with the countryside, but it certainly hasn’t dealt with it in any depth. For the first half-century or so of British cinema it might as well have been a painted backdrop, just some pretty, quintessentially British scenery against which melodramas […]
Stormy Monday (1988) Mike Figgis’s Anti-American moody noir (Review)
It would probably be impossible to make a genuinely anti-American film; as with rock and roll, the USA has contributed so much to the history of the art form that any political stance has to be tempered by the sheer cultural debt. Mike Figgis’s debut film Stormy Monday, now reissued […]