Latest Posts
8 September 2014-09-08
Out in the UK This Week Blue Ruin (4DVD, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) Most vigilante thrillers fall into one of two camps – either the seriously pissed off professional killer who decides enough is enough (Point Blank/Kill Bill), or the utterly unlikely avenger whose anger makes him/her as good or better than any professional (Death Wish/Law Abiding Citizen). Blue Ruin comes at it from a fresh angle, introducing the killer who is utterly unsuitable for the job, is forced into a corner and has to fight his way out, doesn’t learn anything along the way, and remains a bumbling milquetoast to the end. Macon Blair plays that man, a timid creature we first meet in the … Read more
Little Children
A tale of American white-picket suburbia, disturbia perhaps, from director Todd Field, opening out a touch from In the Bedroom, whose focus was all there in the title. Our heroine, a Madame Bovary figure called Sarah (Kate Winslet), scandalises the harpies at the school gate by striking up a relationship with the only hot male on the school run (Patrick Wilson). Back home Sarah’s husband (Gregg Edelman) is big on internet porn, something Sarah doesn’t know till she catches him masturbating with a pair of panties on his face. But he’s small on most other things and so we sympathise with Sarah as she seeks solace in the arms of the hunky Brad. … Read more
A Good Year
In 1989 former adman Peter Mayle wrote a book about how he left the rat race behind and started a new life in France. A Year in Provence was its name and this humorous memoir set the tone for the TV series that followed, starring John Thaw as the escapee to the good life. Though director Alan Parker had been at the Ogilvy agency where Mayle was the UK’s creative head, it was another UK former commercials director, Ridley Scott, who decided to turn Mayle’s novel, about a stockbroker who gets fired and then inherits a vineyard from his uncle, into a film. And Scott stays true to type, laying on the warm … Read more
1 September 2014-09-01
Out in the UK This Week The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Sony, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Marc Webb’s reboot of Spider-Man in 2012 was artistically unnecessary but Webb did at least inject a welcome note of young love into it – he directed indie weepie 500 Days of Summer, let’s not forget. This even more unnecessary sequel sees Andrew Garfield’s Catcher in the Rye webslinger taking on an unnecessary plurality of villains – Electro and Green Goblin. Electro is a nice bit of racist stereotyping for Jamie Foxx, who starts off as a mild mannered janitor and winds up as “angry nigger” Electro, all exaggerated features and steroidal rage, capable of bringing a city to its knees … Read more
Tulpan
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 August Princess Diana dies, 1997 On this day in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in the Pont D’Alma road tunnel in Paris. Also in the car were Henri Paul, the driver, and Dodi Fayed, her boyfriend. The accident happened after Fayed and Diana had spent the evening at the Ritz in Paris, owned by Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed. At the end of the evening they had got into a Mercedes S280 and driven off from the rear entrance of the hotel, a decoy car having already drawn off a sizeable number of journalists by leaving … Read more
11.6
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 August Warren Buffett born, 1930 On this day in 1930, the business magnate Warren Edward Buffett was born, in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of the three children of a father who was a US congressman and stockbroker. At age 11 Warren bought his first shares. He filed his first tax return aged 14, on income earned from delivering newspapers and selling door to door. The following year he bought a pin table and installed it in a barber’s shop. On leaving school in 1947, his report read – “likes math; a future stockbroker”. After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln … Read more
Hours
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 August Hurricane Katrina, 2005 On this day in 2005, Hurricane Katrina touched down for the second time in Louisiana, USA. The seventh most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded up to that point (three of the other six were also from the 2005 hurricane season), it was the costliest natural disaster the country has ever had to bear. The hurricane had formed to the south east of the Bahamas on 23 August 2005, at which point it was termed a tropical depression. By the next morning it had developed into a tropical storm, and was given the name Katrina. As it … Read more
Faust
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 August Johann Wolfgang von Goethe born, 1749 On this day in 1749, the writer, philosopher and German statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, in Frankfurt am Main, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire, to a local lawyer and the daughter of the city’s mayor. Home-schooled, Goethe learned a variety of languages, the liberal arts and the social niceties (dancing, riding, fencing). He went on to study law, but was writing copiously on the side, often love poetry to one of the various women he fell for. Falling under the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder after … Read more
Sounds of Sand
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 August Anglo-Zanzibar War, 1896 On this day in 1896, the shortest war in world history was fought, between the United Kingdom and the Sultanate of Zanzibar. It lasted around 40 minutes and was caused by the death of the old Sultan, Hamad bin Thuwaini, who had been pro-British. According to a treaty of 1886, the Zanzibaris had to get British acceptance for any new sultan they chose. They didn’t. Instead they chose Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British immediately issued an ultimatum calling on Khalid to yield to their authority. He refused and barricaded himself in his palace. At 9am … Read more
Philomena
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 August Mother Teresa born, 1910 On this day in 1910, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, Albania (now in the Republic of Macedonia). Raised a Catholic, from an early age she was interested in the work of missionaries and by the age of 12 had decided to devote herself to the religious life. At 18 she joined the Sisters of Loreto, became a missionary and never saw her mother or sister again. After a stint in Loreto Abbey, Ireland, where she learnt English, she went to India, arriving there in 1929, aged 19. Twenty five years later she became … Read more
25 August 2014-08-25
Out in the UK This Week Locke (Lionsgate, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) A film set entirely in a car driving along a motorway needs a lot going for it to work. Locke has it. A tight, believable script, Tom Hardy as a methodical yet inwardly erratic concrete specialist (metaphor alert) who has spent his entire life trying not to be like his loser dad, and is now trying to avert the collapse of his entire life by making call after bluetooth call while hurtling towards London. That’s it – a man and a phone and the voices at the other end. Some you might recognise – Olivia Colman as the pregnant one-night stand Locke is trying … Read more
Broken English
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 August Paris liberated, 1944 On this day in 1944 the German garrison in Paris surrendered and Paris was liberated, after a battle lasting six days. It had started with an uprising by the French Resistance on 19 August, who were augmented by General de Gaulle’s Free French Army of Liberation and Third Army troops under General Patton. France had been occupied since June 1940, but the allies had considered it a low priority for liberation; the thrust was towards Berlin. However, the issue was forced by the outbreak of a general strike and the uprising of the Resistance, and compounded … Read more
