Popular Reviews
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Though he had 40+ films to his name when he died in 1982 aged 37, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s roots lay in the theatre and it often showed. They’re clearly visible in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, a film playing out on one set where a handful of actors perform in a theatrical “back of the room” style. The action, what little of it there is, takes place in and around the bed of Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), a massively entitled fashion designer attended by an entirely silent aide, Marlene (Irm Hermann). As Marlene brings coffee, cake, champagne, opens doors to let people in and out, types letters and between times … Read more
100 Years of… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
Long before techno or Kraftwerk there was Richard Wagner, and in 1924 director Fritz Lang and his writer wife Thea von Harbou decided to put a story the German headbanger had popularised onto the screen. Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is the first of a two-part phantasmagorical medieval epic “dedicated to the German People”, a Tolkien-before-Tolkien, Game-of-Thrones-before-Game-of-Thrones tale of hair, helmets and hunting horns. Plus invisibility, dragons, fair damsels, derring-do, treachery and death. George Lucas clearly watched this first film (at least) before making Star Wars and the debt owed visually by Game of Thrones is also obvious here and there. What’s remarkable is how technically accomplished it is given given the crudity of the … Read more
Barber
When not appearing in moneyspinning TV shows like The Wire or Game of Thrones, or the Maze Runner franchise, or in smallish roles in big-money movies like Bohemian Rhapsody, actor Aidan Gillen can often be found in small-scale features, often as their anchor. Barber doesn’t quite fit into the same category as The Good Man, Mister John, Still or Rose Plays Julie (crackers all, marked out by brilliantly intense Gillen performances). But it is enjoyable, a wee Irish movie made for a small budget which has all the hallmarks of the tryout pilot for a possible TV series. By which I mean more characters than strictly necessary for the functioning of the plot, … Read more
100 Years of… The Three Musketeers
You’d have thought that the silent The Three Musketeers from 1921 would be the first film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s novel but it wasn’t. Depending on how you count these things it was around the seventh or eighth film version since 1903. It wasn’t even the first of 1921. That honour went to a French serial shot in 14 episodes, Les Trois Mousketaires. But this one, directed by Fred Niblo and starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr, eclipses all the forerunners and most of the successors, largely thanks to the presence of Fairbanks, cusping 40 when he made this but leaping around and larger than life from the moment he hits the screen. This happens … Read more
Pygmalion
Pygmalion was the name of a mythological sculptor who made a statue so beautiful that he begged the gods to bring it to life. Which they did. He called it Galatea. The myth has been worked and reworked over the millennia and still has purchase – Trading Places is a version of the basic idea, so is Damien Chazelle’s breakthrough film Whiplash. In all the best updates there’s a conversation going on in the subtext about appropriate behaviour. When does tough love become abuse? When should the sculptor accept that “his” creation now has a life of its own? It’s all here in this film version from 1938, an adaptation of George Bernard … Read more
Tobruk
If you love beige and taupe, can’t get enough fawn, dun and khaki, you’ll have an extra affection for Tobruk, the 2008 Czech movie written and directed by Václav Marhoul. It’s his second, after the Philip Marlowe-spoofing Smart Philip (Mazany Filip) of 2003, and has little in common with the 1967 film of the same name directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Rock Hudson and George Peppard. In fact it’s closer to The Red Badge of Courage, the 1951 war movie set during the American Civil War and starring Audie Murphy, since both are to greater (the older film) and lesser (this one) extents adaptations of Stephen Crane’s 1894 novel about a soldier … Read more
On the Rocks
A Sofia Coppola movie with Bill Murray as an agent of misrule? Lost in Translation II is the guiding principle of On the Rocks, though “stars” Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans might disagree. First up, we’re served Jones and Wayans hot and then cold – an opening scene shows Laura (Jones) and Dean (Wayans) in love and hot for each other sneaking away from their own wedding party to take a swim in the pool in the hotel basement. Cut to some years later and Dean arrives home late from a work thing, kisses Laura sleepily and then reacts with surprise when she says something. Was he expecting someone else? She was in … Read more
Paris-Manhattan
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 May Peter Minuit buys Manhattan, 1626 On this day in 1626, the German-born Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan off native Americans for 60 guilders (somewhere around $1,000 at 2013 prices). He had been sent to the New World the previous year by the Dutch West India Company to research possible new products to trade, and had taken over as governor general of the New Netherland colony. The tribe he bought the island off had little concept of anyone having a right to ownership of water or air and, being nomadic, their notion of the territorial right to land … Read more
The President’s Cake
A lyrical but punchy debut by writer/director Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake is a near-fairytale story about a poor little girl who is “chosen” by her class teacher to bake a cake to celebrate the birthday of the president, and then has to move heaven and earth to find the ingredients. Because the president is Saddam Hussein and because the little girl is a Marsh Arab – focus of Hussein’s genocidal wrath – the baking of the cake has a special importance. Get it wrong and it’ll be seen as an insult. Who knows where that could lead? And so Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) heads into Baghdad with aged grandma Bibi (Waheed Thabet … Read more
Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien aka A Radiant Girl
For her debut feature as a director, French actor Sandrine Kiberlain has decided not to take the easy route and instead go for something a bit bolder. Une Jeune Fille Qui Va Bien (A Radiant Girl) is a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way. Kiberlain returns to the grim history of the Jews of Paris under the Nazi occupation but filters it all – well, mostly all – through the eyes of a young drama student whose entire focus is on an upcoming audition to gain entry to the conservatory. As the film opens Irène (Rebecca Marder) is rehearsing Marivaux’s L’Épreuve with a fellow drama student. She faints. It might be part … Read more
The Breaking Point
Released in 1950 two years before the death of its star, John Garfield, aged only 39, The Breaking Point played to all Garfield’s strengths – he’s the tough guy military veteran attempting to maintain masculine dignity in a world that doesn’t want him any more. It was his favourite role. Harry Morgan (Garfield) is scraping along in the business he set up after he returned from the Second World War, chartering boats out for fishing and whatever comes along. Times are hard and he owes everyone money, and so, in hock to his eyeballs, a disappointment to his loving wife (Phyllis Thaxter), bossed by an offstage father-in-law dangling a job with his successful company, … Read more
