Popular Reviews
Interrogation
It took real courage to make Interrogation. Known as Przesluchanie in the original Polish, it looked like career suicide for everyone involved in the making of it. Even given the easier political situation in Poland once the Solidarity union had started making headway from 1980 onwards, the film’s message – that the regime was inhumane, Nazi even – was never going to be tolerated by the authorities. And it wasn’t. Banned before it appeared in 1982, it was nevertheless widely seen in Poland, thanks to pirate tapes played on VHS machines, which had only recently been introduced to Poland. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 it finally got its official release and … Read more
The Super 8 Years
Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for literature for a body of autobiographical body of work charting her own life. The Super 8 Years is pretty much more of the same, except in filmic form. At its most basic and off-putting level it’s a “what I did on my holidays” narration over clips from a family’s home movies. At another a snapshot of a lost era and the history of a development of a writer. In 1972 Annie and husband Philippe Ernaux (always addressed by his full name) bought a Super 8 camera. It was, she says in voiceover, “the ultimate desired object… much more than a dishwasher or TV”, and set about … Read more
Magic Trip
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 January Mantra Rock Dance, 1967 On this day in 1967 one of the key events of the era of psychedelic rock, and the hippie era generally, took place. It was organised by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, who saw it as an opportunity for their founder, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami, to speak to a broader public than normal. The reason why there would be a broader public was because of the other people taking part – the bands Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company (lead singer: Janis Joplin), Moby Grape, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, LSD guru Timothy … Read more
The Cremator aka Spalovač mrtvol
Spooky at first, then chilling and eventually utterly grim, Juraj Herz’s remarkable The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol in Czech) entirely lives up to its billing as the pre-eminent film of the Czech New Wave. Here’s where advocates for Closely Observed Trains, The Firemen’s Ball, Daisies and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders pitch in. And on another day one of those might have topped this fictitious list. But I watched The Cremator last night and I can report that after all these decades it remains powerful and seems timeless. The theme is the corruptibility of the human soul and the subject is a man who is running a crematorium in Czechoslovakia as the Nazis … Read more
Every Little Thing
Every Little Thing is a documentary about a hummingbird sanctuary. A funny sort of documentary if you’re interested in the birds themselves and want to know how much they weigh, or how long they live, what they feed on or how big their eggs are – tiny, presumably, since the birds are only as big as your thumb. Based on the book Fastest Thing on Wings, by its subject, Terry Masear, it’s an emotional rather than informational portrait of the woman who runs this animal hospital, seemingly on her own. Masear is the woman to call in California – where hummingbirds flourish – if you’ve found an injured or orphaned bird and don’t … Read more
30 March 2009-03-30
Out in the UK this week Celia (Second Run, cert 15) Oz director Ann Turner’s classic 1989 rites-of-passage debut, about one girl’s amply furnished fantasy childhood. It’s the story of a child, from a child’s point of view, rather than adult looking back, and set in 1950s Australia overrun by rabbits and the Red menace. Celia – at Amazon Of Time and the City (BFI, cert 12) Back with a bang, grumpy, poetic old man Terence Davies’s elegy to his lost, native Liverpool, composed almost entirely of archive footage, brilliantly welded together by a master. Wait till you hear what he has to say about the Beatles. Of Time and the City – … Read more
After Midnight
A few years ago Jeremy Gardner wrote, directed and co-starred in The Battery, a criminally underrated zombie movie that just had two guys in it… and a horde of zombies. It examined a relationship that had gone on too long – two guys who’d played together in a baseball team and who were then thrown into too-close proximity by an apocalypse – and watched as its final stages played out… with a horde of zombies. Gardner, now co-directing with The Battery’s producer and cinematographer Christian Stella, pulls off something similar with After Midnight. No zombies this time, just a mystery monster lurking outside and a relationship going wrong inside. Gardner is again in a lead … Read more
Haunters of the Silence
I got sent a link to Haunters of the Silence by its director, Tatu Heikkinen, with a nice note attached. Would I like to review it? Yes, of course, though my heart sank slightly. Not because I have anything against indie Finnish directors who have made a film for nothing ($2,000!) with friends and family taking on most of the duties (his wife, Veleda, is co-director, co-writer, co-star and cinematographer). The worry was that I wouldn’t like it and would feel obliged, out of a misplaced sense of personal integrity, to say so. Who wants to kick a struggling artist who’s just getting going? Well so much for that. I liked it! And … Read more
Winnie the Pooh
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 January AA Milne born, 1882 On this day in 1882, Alan Alexander Milne was born in Hampstead, London, UK. The son of a Scottish teacher, he was educated at his father’s small public school in Kilburn, London, where one of his teachers was HG Wells. After that he attended Westminster, one of the country’s leading private schools, before going to Cambridge University on a mathematics scholarship. While there he was noticed by the humorous Punch magazine, to which he started contributing. After Cambridge he got a job at Punch and became a prolific writer, producing 18 plays and three novels. … Read more
Run Lola Run
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 November Schicksaltag, Germany In Germany 9 November has in recent years become known as Schicksaltag (the Fateful Day), a day which has been on five separate occasions the turning point for the country. The string of seeming coincidences was first noted after the Second World War but Schicksaltag as a concept really picked up momentum after 1989. In 1848, with the execution of poet and democrat Robert Blum on this day, the 1848 Revolutions were seen to come to an abortive end. In 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II was deposed as head of state, bringing to an end the notion of … Read more
The Nature of Love
A cliche sits at the centre of The Nature of Love, caught by its original French title, Simple Comme Sylvain (which translates as Simple Like Sylvain). Namely, that what a nice middle class woman with a white-collar job really wants is a no-nonsense big-handed guy who knows his way around a toolbox and a woman’s body. After putting up the shelves he’ll take her roughly from behind, or from any other direction he fancies. Writer/director Monia Chokri introduces us to nice middle-class Sophia (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) at a dinner party, where she and her partner Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume) are having a lovely evening with old friends, chatting about things in a conceptual, liberal … Read more
25 July 2016-07-25
Out This Week Disorder (Soda, cert 15) Like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Disorder is a love story masquerading as something else – a home-invasion thriller, in this case – and so is the perfect date movie for traditionally minded peeps. The casting is bang on. Matthias Schoenaerts, an expert in beefy angst, is ideal as a security guard with PTSD falling for trophy wife Diane Kruger – Kruger’s “because I’m worth it” ex-model coolness actually being a real advantage here. The bit of posh going for a bit of rough is hardly a new idea, but director/writer Alice Winocour stokes the tension early on, setting many scenes in tight little corners, and even … Read more
