‘Oddball characters, single-minded goals and bitingly funny one-liners’ A good biopic should make you understand the subject under the microscope. Dark comedies, however, turn their scourging brushes on the easy targets – the worlds or people ripe for comedy. Owen Kline’s directorial debut Funny Pages takes the easiest of shots, but with such showmanship. In his crosshairs are comic books, which have ...
More French than impeccable food, fiery politics, or chic clothing; Both Sides of the Blade dives headfirst into an ever-so-stormy love triangle. Delicate performances from our trio strive to pull the story back from its pedestrian premise, and on the whole succeed. As in 2017’s Let the sunshine Claire Denis collaborates with the writer Christine Angot and actress Juliette Binoche. The ...
Deep beneath the Ham Yard Hotel, Cyrano de Bergerac is brought once again vividly onto the silver screen. Sadly, this beloved farce has an identity crisis in the chrysalis and comes out bewildered. Satirising the romantic French novels of the 1600s, Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac is known for its ludicrous, comic tone and linguistic gymnastics, being almost entirely in ...
Wilton’s Musical Hall Wilton’s music hall is an utterly distinctive venue, from its 1859 theatrical incarnation, it’s been everything from a church to a rag warehouse. Period details, lovingly distressed walls, and small holes in the ceiling, history coming out the wazzoo! I can’t think of a better place to see Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror with an original piano accompaniment, can ...
Julian Schnabel’s latest Biopic At Eternity’s Gate explores Vincent van Gogh’s time in the southern French town of Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise: his mental illness and eventual death (not really a spoiler. Although the film is chocked full of heavy dialogue and artistic cinematic magic the whole journey is an incredibly slow experience. Almost, some would say, like watching paint dry ...
The 13th installment of the cult 1989 straight-to-video hit Puppet Master has landed in UK cinemas, drenched in blood, a cloak of “offensive humour” and killer Nazi puppets. Yes, you heard me right, killer.Nazi.Puppets. The success of this franchise must come from an ironic enjoyment of the B movie style but S. Craig Zahler has tumbled from quite a height ...
Managing to make Black Swan look like a bit of fluff we follow the true story of Rudolf Nureyev and his eventual defection to the west focusing on his early life growing up in poverty in eastern Russia. Directed by Ralph Fiennes (who also plays Pushkin) and written by David Hare you can expect the world to balance on the ...