New Order
Michel Franco’s latest movie, New Order, opens with a scene of sick people in hospital being forcibly removed from their beds so that people who have been seriously injured in some affray out on the
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Quo Vadis, Aida?
Jasmila Zbanic’s powerful drama Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, starts with a sad irony. As the production company idents come up, and various “with the support of” and “in collaboration with”
Shorta aka Enforcement
Shorta (this film’s original Danish title) is the Arabic word for police. Enforcement is how it’s being sold in the rest of the world, as in “law enforcement”, but the truncation adds an extra shot
The Disciple
If you want it enough you can have it. Believe. Be passionate. Follow your dream. Movies are often insistent on this point. The Disciple begs to differ. You wouldn’t guess from his face, but Sharad
Stalker
Time to rewatch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, I thought, having recently seen Abel Ferrara’s Siberia (2019) and Gan Bi’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), and noticed how influenced both were by the 1979 film. As
The Outside Story
Brian Tyree Henry goes from second string actor to star in The Outside Story. He’s probably best known from the TV series Atlanta, which has acted as a finishing school for talents including LaKeith Stanfield
Bill & Ted Face the Music
Quick show of hands, did anyone actually ask for Bill & Ted Face the Music? Thought not, though here it is, around 30 years on from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and their Bogus Journey,
Rising Phoenix
As the documentary Rising Phoenix makes clear, the rebranding of what were previously regarded as “disabled” people as a kind of army of X-Men type characters was what transformed the Paralympics. Before London 2012 the
The Mitchells vs the Machines
A cross-pollination of Deadpool and The Lego Movie might result in The Mitchells vs the Machines, a mad, meta-referential animation full of smart ideas and packed with enough jokes for repeat viewings. It’s refreshing, also,
Class Action Park
Class Action Park is a punning title for a reasonably even-handed documentary about Action Park, Vernon, New Jersey, a trailblazing theme park when it opened in the 1970s, which later became infamous on account of
Lucid
Adam Morse’s feature debut, Lucid, is an ideas-driven supernatural drama that could almost double as an instructional video for shy boys who’d like to meet girls. In The Matrix style, it’s got a nerdy guy,
Waxworks
In probably the best condition it’s ever going to be seen, the Eureka Masters of Cinema 2019 restoration of Waxworks is a good 25 minutes shorter than the German original, all trace of which has
