Challengers

In most of his recent films, Director Luca Guadagnino seems fascinated by rich people. He shows them living ostentatious lives full of empty privilege often in exotic locations. His “Desire” trilogy is characterised by languid, sensual scenes with a veneer of eroticism which masks, but cannot completely disguise, a persistent undercurrent of disdain. It’s a…

The Teachers’ Lounge

A Best International Feature nomination at this year’s Oscars, Director Iker Catak‘s latest is unusual in that it conjures gradually escalating intensity from a scenario which begins with a relatively trivial incident. It produces a chain reaction which Oppenheimer would have been proud of. At a secondary school in provincial Germany a new teacher is…

Evil Does Not Exist

This could have been sub titled “A Day in the Life of a Junior Planning Officer”, because for much of its running time it dealt with the bureaucratic minutiae of a development proposal. It took me back to my early days as a hapless young development control officer trying to balance the competing demands of…

Drive Away Dolls

As an only child I’m probably not best placed to comment on the dynamics of sibling relations. But I’ve enjoyed the Coen brothers’ films for so many the years, that their parting of the ways filled me with a sadness tempered only by the knowledge that each was continuing to work on individual projects. Early…

One Life

So you think you’ve lived a good life; you’ve loved those around you, worked for the common good and tried to do no harm. If so then don’t go and see this film – because you’ll be forced to recalibrate. Contemplating the life of Nicholas Winton (born 1909 died 2015) will make you feel sadly…

Eileen

Well it’s nowhere near as enjoyable or subversive as Thelma and Louise, nor as erotically charged as Carol, but William Oldroyd’s latest is still an intriguing watch. It’s built on a couple of strong performances from Thomasin MacKenzie and Anne Hathaway who play Eileen and Rebecca respectively. And they are well served by a quality…

Maestro

Co written, directed and starring Bradley Cooper, the oddest thing about this siren song to the great American musician Leonard Bernstein, is that it choses to concentrate quite so much on the maestro’s marriage to Felicia (Carey Mulligan). This had two main consequences. First there is almost no room to explore Lenny’s homosexuality, or even…

Dream Scenario

10 years ago a woman called Justine Sacco posted a casually racist comment on twitter and boarded a plane to South Africa. By the time she landed her post had gone viral and a salivating press corps was waiting to devour her. Her life imploded. You might remember it. I kept thinking about her as…

Klokkenliuder

Which apparently is Dutch for “whistleblower” and confused me because the film is set in Belgium. So if you liked In Bruges because of its darkness, absurdity and the charm of its cast, you’ll probably like Klokkenliuder too – just not quite as much. The humour is there but it lands only intermittently. The situation…

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

With Indy’s fifth outing, director James Mangold had a key decision to make. Perhaps the time had finally come for a challenging reboot reflecting the reality of Harrison Ford’s age and fully exploiting the comic potential of Phoebe Waller-Bridge as his new side kick. Or was the franchise just so revered that nothing but a…

The Three Musketeers : D’Artagnan.

There have been over 30 film adaptations of Dumas’ classic novel over the years. Many hail from the silent era where you could see why a familiar story with lots of action would appeal. The Douglas Fairbanks film of 1921 is probably the best remembered. Less expected would be one from 1933 featuring John Wayne,…

Lunana – A Yak in the Classroom

There’s a Yak in the classroom what am I gonna do? There’s a Yak in the classroom what am I gonna do? I’m gonna teach that Yak. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna teach that Yak. Sorry. And with due apologies to UB40 – but I couldn’t resist. The Yak here was Norbhu and…

The Fall

Take two girls. Extreme sports enthusiasts. In love with the memory of the same man and about to climb a derelict TV tower in the desert to scatter his ashes. What could possibly go wrong? Well I’m guessing being eaten alive by vultures didn’t figure in their risk assessment. Not that the girls seemed to…

Cyrano

Less miserable than Les Miserables………tho not by much. This was an essentially downbeat version of the Edmond Rostand’s classic. Anyone expecting the rambunctious fun of Gerard Depardieu’s 1990 version or the scatterbrained antics of Steve Martin’s Roxanne, will be sorely disappointed. Because this was a singing and dancing version from director Edgar Wright, based on…

The Real Charlie Chaplin.

A solid documentary biopic from Peter Middleton and James Spinney built around a couple of long forgotten but revealing audio interviews. One given by the man himself to Life magazine in 1960 and a second by Effie Wisdom (93) a childhood friend to Kevin Brownlow in 1979. These were dramatised very effectively to augment the…

Mothering Sunday

I really liked the way director Eva Husson approached this adaptation of Graham Swift’s novel. She made a real effort to shake up the usual staidness of period drama, not just with the frankness she brought to the love scenes, but also by focussing attention on the least likely but most interesting character. That would…

The Last Duel

In 1977 Ridley Scott burst onto our screens with The Duellists, the story of an ongoing feud between two officers in Napolean’s army. It was brilliant, baffling, beautiful, brutal and probably did as much as anything to convince me that film could be so much more than visual story telling. It was an enigmatic work…

No Time to Die

Well I don’t know about NO time to die, it took nearly 2hrs 45 mins. The thing about Bond which is both it’s strength and it’s weakness is the extent to which the franchise is in thrall to audience expectations. So Q (Ben Whishaw) predictably, has to provide ever more ingenious gadgets as well as…

Herself

Cathy Come Home meets Grand Designs in Phyllida Lloyd’s homespun yarn about an abused mother battling seemingly impossible odds to keep herself and her two young daughters safe. The film really belongs to Clare Dunn who co wrote and stars as Sandra, a Dublin mum trying to forge a life apart from her abusive husband…

Wildland

Have to confess that the only thing which drew me to this dark family melodrama was the prospect of renewing my acquaintance with Sidbe Babette Knudsen. She plays Bodil the matriarch of small but noxious crime family somewhere in provincial Denmark and she doesn’t disappoint. Maintaining the appearance of a normal loving family albeit one…