Motionless for 90 minutes, I could not even remove my coat. I sweated and shivered. I felt in shock. Was the film recreating scenes from my sleep? I had never seen, as far as I can recall, The Night of the Hunter. That is until a cold, wintry night in the 1990s when, working in Glasgow, I went to the city’s GFT cinema to catch a new 35mm print of Charles Laughton’s 1955 masterpiece. It was his only film as a director. Critics panned it on its release, consequently killing off the actor’s career behind the camera, and perhaps robbing history of further works of greatness.
It was a film I’d heard of, but knew nothing about; I wanted to see it, but had no idea why. Then came that dizzying sense of already having dreamt it. So strong was this impression, I felt a bit like the character of architect Walter Craig in 1945′s brilliant Dead of Night, wondering if he is trapped in a repeating chain of interlinked ghost stories. Unlike Craig, though, I didn’t have repressed urges to strangle anyone. Tricks of the mind? Scarier than ghosts.
Paddy Considine collects best film and best debut director awards while Olivia Colman is best actress
Tyrannosaur, Paddy Considine’s gripping and gruelling study of rage, has become the biggest winner at the 14th British Independent Film Awards.
Starring Peter Mullan as a drinking, gambling, washed-up widower, it was surprise winner of the best film award from a particularly strong shortlist that included Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shame, Senna and We Need to Talk About Kevin.
It is not a first date movie, or rather would be one for unusual people. The tone is set in the first minutes when Mullan’s character kicks his dog to death after he is kicked out of the bookies. While it is not easy to watch, critics have showered the film with praise.
Ken Russell, the veteran director of Women in Love, The Devils and Tommy, has died at the age of 84
Ken Russell, the director behind the Oscar-winning Women in Love has died aged 84. Russell died on Sunday in his sleep, according to his friend, the arts writer Norman Lebrecht.
Known for a flamboyant style developed during his early career in television, Russell’s films mixed high and low culture with rare deftness and often courted high controversy. The Devils … a religious drama that featured an infamous scene between Oliver Reed and Venessa Redgrave sexualising the crucifixion – was initially rejected by Warner Brothers. It will be released in its entirety in March next year, 42 years after it was made, when it will form part of the British Board of Film Classification’s centenary celebrations.
Xan Brooks is impressed and alarmed by Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols’s brooding take on societal unease, in which family man Curtis (Michael Shannon) can see that a storm is gathering, even though it may be only in his head. Should he protect his family from the weather? Or from himself?
A silent film hasn’t won the Oscar for best picture since Wings took the top prize at the very first ceremony in 1929. A year later, the talkies had taken hold, and it’s fair to say they have dominated the awards ever since. But now, for the first time in more than 80 years, a silent movie is being talked up as a real Oscars contender.
The Artist is a French film, but set in Hollywood at the end of the silent era, and shot like one of the very best films from that time. That means it’s black-and-white, it uses the squarer “Academy Ratio” frame rather than widescreen and, yes, it’s silent. It’s a beguiling, A Star is Born/Singin’ in the Rain story of two lovers whose paths and careers cross – a leading man from the silent days falls down on his luck, while a young flapper named Peppy makes it big in talking pictures.
Was it a dream or is it a nightmare? In the early years of the 21st century a frail old woman totters around her London home, assailed by memories that rise up unbidden. They tell her that her husband still lives, and that she remains the prime minister, the cherished daughter of a nation of shopkeepers, called upon to save Britain from ruin. For the old woman, these ghosts provide reassurance, a sunny remembrance of days gone by. Others, by contrast, may be hard pressed to keep the horrors at bay.
While one doubts whether Baroness Thatcher would wholeheartedly approve of any large screen biopic, it seems likely that she’d have a certain, sneaking affection for The Iron Lady, which prints the legend and keeps the dissent on spartan rations. Yes, the film provides glimpses of a blustering Michael Foot, and archive footage from the poll tax riots. At one stage angry protesters slap on the window of the heroine’s limo to tell her she’s “a monster”. Yet there’s little sense of the outside world, the human cost, or the ripple effect of divisive government policies. It is a movie that gives us Thatcher without Thatcherism.
The Iron Lady, directed by Phyllida Lloyd from an Abi Morgan script, opts for a breezy, whistle-stop tour through the unstable nitroglycerin of Thatcher’s life and times. The tone is jaunty and affectionate, a blend of Yes Minister and The King’s Speech, fuelled by flashbacks that bob us back through authorised history.
Fittingly enough, the first time I saw The Princess Bride I was languishing in bed with flu. Bizarrely, that’s an ideal state for a tale which begins with a grandfather determined to read a proper story to a similarly sickly boy.
At first glance an opening scene of a child playing a computer game and the entrance of Peter Falk, looking inescapably like Columbo, even without the cigar and overcoat, does not bode well. One’s own scepticism at what is to come is mirrored by the boy’s uncertainty over the prospect of his grandfather reading from a book. “Has it got any sports in it?” he asks warily. “Are you kidding?” asks Columbo. It has “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles …”
And so it does, and from then on we are in the world of Buttercup and Westley, of Prince Humperdinck and the Dread Pirate Roberts, of Vizzini, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya. It’s an enchanting land of silly names and sillier dialogue and sillier-still cameos. But all this silliness is underscored by soaring themes – true love, ultimate suffering and the all conquering power of friendship – not to mention a score by Mark Knopfler that punctuates the climaxes with perfect comic timing.
It has all the hallmarks of a vintage Channel 4 controversy: not only does the broadcaster’s new drama feature the abduction of a princess bearing a distinct similarity to the Duchess of Cambridge, but the kidnapper’s demands involve the prime minister having sex on live TV – with a pig.
Written by Charlie Brooker, the hour-long comic drama The National Anthem, to be broadcast next month, uses the farcical set-piece to examine the way we interact on the internet, and the consequences of the influence of social media.
“Opinion shifts harder and faster it seems to me with Twitter and rolling news. Those two forces combined create a strange situation,” said Brooker.
In our writers’ favourite films series, Rosie Swash explains why she is bowled over by the Coen brothers’ surreal masterpiece
Before we get into this, I should say that my other favourite film isCasablanca. Romance, sacrifice, heroism, war; Casablanca has it all. But does it have the Dude engaging in a plan to confront an adolescent car thief while watching his landlord perform an interpretative dance while dressed as a tree? No, it does not.
Like a teenager who discovers Che Guevara T-shirts, there is nothing original or particularly inspired about liking The Big Lebowski. So predictable, you’ll say. Dear God, it’s not even the best film by the Coen brothers, have you not seen Barton Fink? Year after year, I watch films that make me cry, films that make me laugh, and films that keep reappearing in my head for days, weeks after, because they’re so good – but I’ve never watched anything that I love as much as The Big Lebowski.
