Film

In the 1970s, Italian film-makers forgot spaghetti westerns and made Poliziotteschi – violent detective thrillers that echoed the likes of Dirty Harry.., and their own crisis at home Here is a hypothesis for you: if you’re looking for art that explains the mood of times past, you should look not at the acclaimed, serious-minded and […]

From The Ladykillers to The Elephant Man, Jason Solomons celebrates some of the best movies set in London When the pandemic stopped cinema in their tracks and the flow of new movies became an online trickle, many film fans took the time to look back and catch up on classics. In the UK, one of […]

Celebrating a dreamlike cult British take on the American road movie… with German influences We begin in a flat in London. We end on a train to nowhere somewhere in the south west. In between times, a man half-heartedly investigates his brother’s suicide, listens to some very good music, takes a detour with a nice […]

King of TV commercials, Roy Andersson is also the auteur behind a series of bizarre, playful full-length masterpieces.  There are a good many film directors who got their start making commercials. Which would be fine if most of them didn’t make it so blindingly obvious, with their flashy-yet-vacuous imagery and pointlessly fast cutting.  Let’s not […]

Danny Huston’s grandfather, his dad and his sister all won Oscars, creating a Hollywood dynasty. No pressure, then.  Movie night when Danny Huston was a kid probably sounds a little different to the ones we’ve all held with our families in lockdown. “There was always a big palaver about getting the projector out,” he says […]

Jason Solomons has known Noel Clarke for 15 years and admired his refusal to be denied by the British film industry. But that was before the allegations that have left his career, and BAFTA’s reputation, in tatters… Whichever way you look at it, the Noel Clarke allegations are disastrous for British cinema.  It’s a story […]

Jason Solomons looks at how Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman helped take The Father from French fringe play to the Oscars It started life as a one-set play in a fringe theatre in Paris. Nine years later, The Father is now, as they say, a major motion picture and a very strong contender for this […]

As Gregory’s Girl turns 40, Richard Luck chronicles his decades-long love affair with Bill Forsyth’s masterpiece  It was made for next to nothing, it starred nobody famous and it was written and directed by a man whose only previous film had been seen by next to nobody south of the border. Still, no sooner had […]

Amid the moralising and propaganda, the Soviet Hollywood also produced dark fantasy movies that were a world away from Disney’s saccharine output – and created a troubled relationship with the communist authorities.  In the grand scheme of things, there are worse things about dictatorships than them telling audiences what they were allowed to watch, but […]

The new film The United States vs Billie Holiday is part of a canonisation the singer would have disliked, says BONNIE GREER.

The life of Black Panthers leader Hampton is the subject of a new movie starring Daniel Kaluuya. Bonnie Greer remembers the Hampton she knew briefly You never really go back to your youth. You move on, things happen to you. But your youth is still there, on the edges, and as you get older it moves […]

A new four-part HBO documentary assembles a compelling and gruesome case against Woody Allen. JASON SOLOMONS, who has written a book on the director and a long-time fan, describes how watching the series has changed his attitude towards his hero forever. Starting in the pit of my stomach and rising to the bottom of my throat, […]

Fifty years ago, Michael Caine strode onto screens as the eponymous hero of Get Carter. In a navy-blue three-piece suit, with shotgun in hand he not only dragged British cinema into the 1970s but captured a great city on the cusp of change. By Roger Domeneghetti As the thrumming sound of the train segues into Roy Budd’s classic funk […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the astonishing film CV of Max von Sydow. In the summer of 1959 Max von Sydow was attending the Cannes Film Festival. Two years earlier The Seventh Seal, his first high-profile starring role and arguably the best of his collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, had picked up the Cannes jury’s Special Prize […]

Had enough of lockdown winter and are longing for the spring? RICHARD LUCK selects 10 films that reflect the optimism of the changing seasons. Movies – is there anything they can’t do? I mean, most of us have already had a gutful of winter and yet, with the season not officially over until the end […]

Jackie Chan is too often dismissed as a mere action star and overlooked for his largely forgettable Hollywood films. But a re-release of one of his finest early works gives an opportunity to appreciate his amazing artistry.  You don’t hear too much about Jackie Chan these days. Indeed, it’s possible that name will mean nothing to […]

New French film Slalom creates a creepy atmosphere amid the beauty of the Alps and hothouse atmosphere of its resorts. JASON SOLOMONS talks to its director, and comes up with his favourite movies set in the mountains. Snow falls outside, settling softly on the cars and on the muddy green of a little park. It’s an […]

NATHAN O’HAGAN on a cinematic near-miss that would have resulted in one of Hollywood’s weirdest productions. At this point in 2020, it sometimes feels like every other film released over the past decade is an adaptation of a comic book superhero. The all-conquering Marvel Cinematic Universe films have so far grossed over $22 billion worldwide, […]

Director’s cuts often seem overindulgent and overlong. But as Francis Ford Coppola takes a fresh whack at The Godfather Part III, Richard Luck celebrates 10 occasions where the reprise outdid the original. Truth be told, The Godfather Part III was a pretty decent movie from the outset. Admittedly it had a hard time living up to episodes […]

The hunting of truffles in the foothills of northern Italy remains one of the world’s most clandestine activities. JASON SOLOMONS reports on a charming new film which attempts to lift the lid on the secret society responsible for bringing this most expensive ingredient of all to the dinner table. This time of year, film critics are […]

You may have to watch them via streaming, rather than in your local cinema, but the first half of 2021 offers some intriguing new films. Richard Luck selects 10 to get you through to summer. Despite the best efforts of cinemas everywhere and my local movie house – Campus West, Welwyn Garden City – in particular, […]

Few years produced as many great films as 1946, the first year after the end of the Second World War, says BONNIE GREER. Might 2021 produce a similar post-pandemic glut of classics? 1946 is a year when most of us humans were not even alive. And of those who were, the majority experienced it as children. So our idea […]

Shane MacGowan is a challenging subject for a new documentary film. JASON SOLOMONS talks to its director about a hard to love character and staying the right side of romanticism With his rotten-looking mouth, pallid grey skin and slurred speech, Shane MacGowan is the alternative face of Christmas. The Pogues singer and drunken Anglo-Irish poet […]

JAMES OLIVER suggests 12 festive movies – a combination of the familiar and the less so – that best reflect the complexities of the season. Just don’t call his list a ‘best of…’ It was always unlikely, in this year like no other, that we’d have anything like a normal Christmas and so it has […]

Jean-Pierre Melville’s recent work oozes sophistication and turns 50, JAMES OLIVER offers a retrospective. There were those who said Jean-Pierre Melville’s films were all style over substance. Astonishingly, they seemed to mean it as criticism. Few directors have ever controlled the presentation of their films so carefully, erasing the extraneous and obsessively refining what remained […]

Jason Solomons finds actor Viggo Mortensen in characteristically ebullient mood in their over-running Zoom catch-up. Although still best-known to audiences as heroic Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings films, actor Viggo Mortensen has a reputation in the business as cinema’s Renaissance Man. He acts, writes poetry, composes music, sings, paints, runs a publishing imprint, […]

Overshadowed by her music, modelling and private life, Richard Luck says Jane Birkin’s career in film deserves a reappraisal – even if not all of her movies themselves do. She has many stories to tell, Jane Birkin. Little wonder her recent book – Munkey Diaries, published for the first time in English this summer – concentrates […]

A century after his first appearance, and with a new film out next month, which incarnation of the Belgian detective has been the finest? Benjamin Ivry exercises his little grey cells to assess the candidates. It is a classic puzzler worthy of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction… why some actors who have excelled in […]

British actors have been told not to audition for the role of a young Duke of Cambridge in a forthcoming film about Diana, Princess of Wales, due to new rules faced by the country post-Brexit. A casting invitation posted online calls for boys aged between nine and 12 to apply for the role of the […]

RICHARD LUCK counts down his 20 favourite movies about politics of all time. Which one gets your vote? 20) The Ides of March (2011)George Clooney not only adapted, produced and directed The Ides of March, he also plays the anchor role of governor Mike Morris, a presidential candidate who’s almost too good to be true. […]

A new film about three giants of football, who not only revolutionised their clubs, but galvanised communities, defined cities and shaped modern Britain. Footballing dynasties feel like a thing of the past. Certainly these days, when football itself plays out in empty stadia around most of Europe, vast bowls echoing to the sound of bellowing […]

The two films – and a TV show – that helped make conspiracy theories mainstream. So let’s recap. This virus that you’re all so scared of isn’t actually real, just a flammed-up cold that’s been exaggerated to enslave the easily-led. But if it is real, then it was cooked up in a government laboratory either […]