Delicacy
François, sitting at a table in a Parisian café, watches a beautiful girl sitting at another. As she hesitates over the menu, he wonders what she will order. He decides he will talk to her – if she orders apricot juice; not as exotic as guava or papaya, and not as commonplace as orange or … Read more
Carnage
When eleven-year-old Zachary Cowan, armed with a stick – I’m sorry, carrying a stick (armed is a bit of a strong word, don’t you think?) – strikes his classmate Ethan Longstreet’s face one day in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the boys’ parents meet up to discuss the situation responsibly, as adults do. Naturally, Zachary’s parents, Nancy … Read more
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Hollywood greats like Casablanca, An American in Paris and An Affair to Remember have a lot to answer for. They have misled us to believe that loving someone is letting them go, in love at first sight and that love can withstand the ultimate test of distance and time. But real life and love isn’t … Read more
Drive
September 2011 at the Cambridge Film Festival. In between sentences about his latest film, Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn wolfs down handfuls of popcorn. A director scoffing popcorn is a strange sight to behold. It’s a bit like a priest throwing back communion wine on his day off; an act so banal, you don’t expect it … Read more
The Artist
1927. Life screens in silence. A cinema auditorium full of gleaming faces and clapping hands. A sombre shadow cast on a vacant film screen in an empty room. Film reels burn in an inferno of increasing self-pity. A man slumps over a flat mirror, peering at his reflection as though a stranger’s. Pours his drink … Read more
Into the Woods: Dreileben
In the darkness of the vast Thuringia forest in Dreileben, Germany, a killer flees from the hospital where he is detained. Dreileben, a trilogy of films with the surtitles, Beats Being Dead, Don’t Follow Me Around and One Minute of Darkness, uses Frank Molesch’s escape not so much as its starting point but rather as its locus, from which the … Read more
An American in Paris
Americans have long swooned for Paris. It is a love that has lasted, at the very least, for 60 years, since MGM married the two nations in Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris. Its re-release this autumn, courtesy of the British Film Institute, is a welcome reminder of why the Americans fell and continue falling in love … Read more
Page One, Inside the New York Times
Page One takes a look at the happenings of the media desk at the New York Times within the narrative of the print media debate. I interviewed the film’s director, Andrew Rossi and New York Times media columnist and culture reporter, David Carr at the Cambridge Film Festival. Leading up to the UK release of … Read more
The Skin I Live In
We last saw Antonio Banderas on the screen a year ago in Woody Allen’s mediocre London-set movie, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger in which he played a smooth-talking, suit-wearing museum magnate (think Charles Saatchi but with oodles of Latin charm and swarthy sex appeal). The Skin I Live In sees Banderas stepping out … Read more
Bridesmaids
Don’t believe the chick flick packaging. Bridesmaids is ballsy stuff. There’s toilet humour, fast cars, questionable belches, and weird sex stuff with sandwiches. On paper, these might sound like the ingredients of a testosterone-filled film. Given its audacious, raucous and, at times, filthy behaviour, it’s no surprise that Bridesmaids has been dubbed The Hangover for women. Though … Read more
