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Shun Li and the Poet – Andrea Segre – Simply a delight

Tweet   Shun Li and The Poet – Andrea Segre Like a glass of pure, fresh, home-made lemonade: with a hint of sweetness and a satisfying tang of fresh lemon on a sweltering hot, oppressive day – this delightful little gem refreshes one’s aesthetic palate, touches the soul and lifts the spirit. It is simply […]

Before Midnight – Linklater, Delpy and Hawke – an exploration of Love for grown-ups

Tweet        Before Midnight – Richard Linklater Simone Weil – “Perhaps love is an attempt to make permanent that which by its very nature is transient” Celine in Before Sunrise: “You know I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us; not you or me, just this […]

Hugo (3D) – Scorcese’s dazzling FOF (Front Of Frame) technical tour de force

Tweet         Technical        Entertainment Hugo (3D) – Martin Scorcese A technical tour de force. It is fascinating to see major Directors of regular 2D films grappling with the possibilities and limitations of 3D stereoscopic filming. Fast on the heels of Spielberg’s performance capture 3D Tin Tin we have Scorcese taking a radically […]

Passion and love; friendship and respect; philosophy and humanity

Tweet Stars Hankies My Afternoons With Margueritte – Jean Becker Rumpelstiltskinian: Director Becker has taken a few random narrative straws and spun them into a fragment of gold. Sentimental? Yes: but touching, truthful and with that rare quality in modern movies, heart. Semi-literate Germain Chazes (a superb Depardieu) was the unwanted result of a post-prandial […]

The Time of our lives at the movies

TweetThe Clock – Christian Marclay – White Cube Gallery London Not a movie but deeply cinematic. This Art installation at the White Cube Gallery, Mason’s Yard is a must for anyone interested in cinema. But be warned it is onnly on until 13th November Californian Christian Marclay has taken clips from thousands of commercial films […]

Il Divo – the extraordinary life of Giulio Andreotti* – an essay

Tweet Il Divo – Paolo Sorrentino (2008) Shakespearean in content, operatic in tone, writer director Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (the extraordinary life of Giulio Andreotti) is a masterly work. Richly textured and at times demanding, Sorrentino’s film is a profound study of power, and its irresistible affects on men who possess it and those drawn […]

The Passenger – austere, implacable, fate, masterpiece

Tweet The Passenger – Michelangelo Antonioni Uncompromising and austere, Antonioni, like a painter, demands everything of his audience. He once described his actors as ‘living pigment’ – mere elements in his ‘picture’, not its raison d’être. His is not a hostile universe: worse – it is an absolutely indifferent one. Hostility might induce rebellion. Our […]

Lost In Translation – Coppola’s Hollywood movie with European sensibility

Tweet Sadly, the fears I expressed in this review four years ago about Scarlett Johanssen have been realised. Lost In Translation – Sofia Coppola We can categorise films constructively in order to validate aesthetic comparisons. We more often do so lazily in order to file them away in ill-fitting pigeon holes to decide which Oscar […]

Elizabethtown – a superb little sleeper of a movie

Tweet Elizabethtown – Director Cameron Crowe (BBC Prize Review) Elizabethtown is a great, great movie. In both senses. It will make you laugh, and cry, and will keep surprising you throughout. It fits no pigeonholes. A bit like life really. But it takes a while to adjust to its quirky, eccentricities of tone and narrative. […]

3 – Iron: a series of visual haikus threaded into a perfect circle

Tweet 3-Iron – Director KIM Ki-Duk (BBC Prize-winning review) Of all the words a film critic needs least, ‘exquisite’ must be near the top of the list. Yet this is precisely the word for this hauntingly beautiful film which celebrates with a rare delicacy and sensitivity – love, life and our freedom just to be. […]