Hal Holbrook

A Complete Unknown

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Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan walking the nighttime streets

James Mangold gave Johnny Cash Walk the Line. Now he gives Bob Dylan A Complete Unknown, a biopic and instruction manual on how to do this sort of thing. If you’re being picky, it doesn’t say much that hasn’t already been said about Dylan. And its criticisms are ones Dylan has made about himself. But if you’re happy to watch as Mangold and a brilliant cast burnish the legend, this is the film for you. It tracks Dylan from being “a complete unknown” in New York in 1961, where he visits his idol, folk superstar Woody Guthrie in his hospital bed, before being taken under the wing of fellow folkie Pete Seeger. And … Read more

Capricorn One

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Sam Waterston, Josh Brolin and OJ Simpson as the astronauts on the run

According to conspiracy theorists, Kubrick shot the Moon landings. Peter Hyams is in some respects a better candidate. His Capricorn One is all about a faked journey into space, and is undoubtedly the inspiration behind many of the whisperings about Nasa making the whole thing up. Why does Kubrick get name-checked so much more often than Hyams then? Probably because Kubrick is a better film-maker, even though the space sections of his 2001: A Space Odyssey look far more obviously bogus than Hyams’s later mission-to-Mars movie. 1977’s Capricorn One is also a bit of a mess, whereas 2001, for all the messing around, is not. Hyams does his best work early on and … Read more