Film

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

Boldly and brilliantly unoriginal: Kermode and Mayo’s Take reviewed

Last April Fools’ Day, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo wound up their award-winning film review show on BBC Radio 5 Live after 21 years on air. A little more than a month later they are back with Kermode and Mayo’s Take, a podcast so similar in flavour and format that you could call it an up-yours to their critics. While Mayo stressed that it was their decision to go their own way – ‘we have decided, and to be clear: that’s no one else has decided’ – he was slightly more candid about his experience in an interview with the Radio Times a few weeks ago. People of my generation

Deborah Ross

Quietly devastating: Benediction reviewed

Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness. The result is quietly powerful, quietly devastating and, happily, is not afflicted by the usual clichés that afflict this genre. Sassoon never, for example, crumples what he’s just written and throws it across the room. For this we must be grateful, and are. The film juggles two timelines, with the young Siegfried played by Jack Lowden – once a rising star, it is probably now fair to say he has fully risen; he is wonderful here – and the old Siegfried played by Peter Capaldi. We only ever encounter the

Craig Raine

The nightmare of making films about poets

Television and film are popular mediums. Poetry has never been popular. This is Sam Weller’s father in Pickwick Papers, when he discovers his son writing a valentine, alarmed it might be poetry: Poetry’s unnat’tral; no man ever talked poetry ’cept a beadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’, or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; never let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy. In 1994, I made a short film about Kipling. The director, Tony Cash, a man with a first-class Oxford degree in Russian, objected to a two-second reference to Aristotle’s ‘pity and terror’ in my script. ‘If you mention Aristotle, they [the TV audience] will

Friday

Stephen Arnell

The art of the love triangle: from Conversations with Friends to Closer

The BBC3/Hulu 12-part adaptation of Sally Rooney’s debut novel Conversations with Friends (2018) comes hot on the heels of the success of Normal People (2020) – the author’s second work (2018). Normal People surprised some with its graphic but sensitive depiction of sex but won over even older viewers (well my mum liked it) due to the finely drawn characters and convincing acting by the two leads, relative newcomers Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. Indeed, for Edgar-Jones, Normal People has provided a calling card with producers, leading to her being cast in comedy-thriller Fresh (2022, Disney+),  true crime drama Under the Banner of Heaven (2022, FX) and upcoming adaptation of Where

Thursday

Christopher Howse

Should have been even longer with less gore: The Northman reviewed

In Rus, which we now call Ukraine, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) begins his pursuit of revenge. A sea captain who later aids him is called Volodymyr. But these incidentals have no relevance to the current war, except in one aspect that I want to come on to. Though the film’s hero is called Amleth, the original of Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet, you can forget Elsinore. The director Robert Eggers’s world in The Northman is that of the Norse sagas, of corpse-eating ravens, runes, mud, gore, human sacrifice and sudden violence. One of the runes on the title cards between scenes is named after the word for ‘ulcer’. The sun never shines. It

Friday

Stephen Arnell

The subterfuge movies that rival Operation Mincemeat

Until recently a ‘special military operation’ typically referred to a particular action/plan rather than all-out war. Unless you happen to live in Putin’s Russia, that is. John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) take on the real-life Operation Mincemeat is a solid entry in the canon of WWII movies that concern themselves with a particular military objective and the various forms of subterfuge that are used to achieve it. The plot of Operation Mincemeat centres on a ruse designed to distract the Germans from the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 by secreting false plans for the landing in Greece on a civilian corpse kitted out as a Royal Marine courier. The picture boasts a first-class

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Fellowes fluffs it: Downton Abbey – A New Era reviewed

Downton Abbey: A New Era is the second film spin-off from the TV series and, like the first, it doesn’t have to try especially hard if at all. It could be two hours of Mrs Hughes darning socks or two hours of Mrs Patmore concocting something disgusting (kidney soufflé?) or two hours of Lady Grantham requesting tea in bed and fans would still love it to the tune of whatever the last film made. (Millions.) That said, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for it. As the theme music starts up and we get that first sweeping vista of the estate, it feels reassuring and familiar,

Friday

Stephen Arnell

A cinematic guide to Watergate

This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex. This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects. Both upcoming drama Gaslit (STARZ, from April 24th) and Netflix’s documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect concern the outspoken spouse of Nixon’s loyal Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who (to her husband’s ire) helped blow the whistle on Watergate. For her efforts, Mitchell was hounded and vilified as a drunk by Nixon’s cronies, with the former President declaring

Thursday

Deborah Ross

A hoot: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent reviewed

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent stars Nicolas Cage playing a version of Nicolas Cage, in a parody of Nicolas Cage and the many, many films of Nicolas Cage. This couldn’t, you will have already surmised, be more Nicolas Cage, and if you are wondering how much Nicolas Cage is too much Nicolas Cage you could say any amount of Nicolas Cage is always too much Nicolas Cage. But that’s exactly what this film is playing with and it’s a hoot. Cage fans will want to fill their boots. My own face hurt by the end It is directed by Tom Gormican, who co-wrote the film with Kevin Etten, and

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Disney’s rococo roots

Extensive research went into the writing of this piece. First, I lay on the sofa watching Disney’s Cinderella. Then, Beauty and the Beast. Then, because I’m assiduous about these things, Frozen. The singalong version. I wish I could tell you that the sofa was a rococo number with ormolu mounts and a pink satin seat, but that would upholster the truth. My excuse – who needs one? – was the Wallace Collection’s delightful exhibition Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts. It’s not often that I leave a show smiling, humming and near enough twirling my way through the West End. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. What a clever and original exhibition

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

The best films about faith to watch this Easter

The best religious films aren’t always the obvious ones, featuring either clerics or bible stories (though there are some good movies of both kinds – and an awful lot of terrible ones). Rather, some of the best capture Christianity sideways, expressing the numinous or the fundamentals of faith through a human story or through a portrait of a way of life. This being Holy Week, when we’re right in the middle of The Greatest Story Ever Told (one to watch), it’s a good time to explore how film reflects religion, straight or infused. The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson, 2004 It’s hard to imagine how even Mel Gibson got

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Mostly gripping – and boasts not one but two Mr Darcys: Operation Mincemeat reviewed

Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper called ‘the most spectacular single episode in the history of deception’. It is so spectacular that the film doesn’t have to do much aside from tell it, and that’s what it does, straightforwardly, plainly, no bells and whistles. It’s a classic tale of British second world war derring-do and the sort of film you’ll watch with your dad on a Sunday afternoon, before or after Ice Cold in Alex. Plus it has a terrific cast that includes not one but two Mr Darcys (Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen). It’s 1943

Oliver-James Campbell

Was Thomas Edison guilty of murder?

In September 1890 a Frenchman called Louis Le Prince left his brother in Dijon and boarded a train to Paris, with the intention of connecting to London and then to Leeds, before finally joining his wife Lizzie and family in New York. But the weeks turned into months, and to his wife’s astonishment and dismay he never arrived or saw his family again. He had disappeared. A mere eight months later Thomas Edison would unveil the ‘Kinetograph’ to the world, claiming his apparatus to be the birth of the moving image, featuring ‘pure motion recorded and reproduced’ for the first time. Recognising the device as a version of one invented

Friday

Stephen Arnell

Ten thrillers with twists to rival Sleuth

Joe Mankiewicz’s classic Olivier/Caine two-handed mystery thriller Sleuth will mark its 50th anniversary later this year, fortuitously in time for the release of Knives Out 2, which promises to be a similarly intriguing whodunnit – at least on the basis of 2019’s initial movie. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s Tony award-winning play, Sleuth depicts a battle of wits between snobbish mystery writer Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier) and hairdressing salon owner Milo Tindle/Tindolini (Michael Caine). Despite Wyke’s self-description as an ‘Olympic sexual athlete,’ his wife Marguerite has left him for the younger charms of Tindle, dubbed variously as ‘a jumped-up pantry boy’ and a ‘snivelling, dago clown’ by the cuckolded author, who is keen to

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Will put you in mind of Lost in Translation: Compartment No. 6 reviewed

Compartment No. 6 is set aboard a long train journey across Russia, a country we don’t hear much of these days (I wish!). It has won multiple awards, including the Grand Prix at Cannes, and is by the Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen, who has said of his films: ‘Basically, they are boring.’ It’s true, this is not eventful, even if the restaurant car does run out of hot food at one point. This is a character-as-plot film and if that isn’t your style it is going to feel like a very long journey indeed. The trip is from Moscow to Murmansk, which is way up north. It is days long

Friday

Stephen Arnell

Bruce Willis on screen: from Die Hard to Looper

The sad news that Bruce Willis is ‘stepping away’ from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis came as a surprise to fans, but the film industry has been rife with rumours about his possible medical problems over recent years. The slew of cheap straight-to-DVD action thrillers (with relatively little screen time) he starred in since 2014 made observers wonder whether Willis was making as much money as he could to ensure both care in his retirement and a decent inheritance for his family. The fact that the famously motor mouthed actor of Moonlighting and his long run of hit movies opted for increasingly taciturn roles led insiders to wonder whether something

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Didn’t deserve an Oscar: Coda reviewed

This year the Oscar for best film went to the drama Coda – ‘Child of Deaf Adults’ – but the ceremony will now probably only be remembered for Wsscrfmhw (‘Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock For Mocking His Wife’). And we thought that mix-up over envelopes was exciting! But back to the film, which beat the favourite, The Power of the Dog, although Jane Campion did win best director, making her the third woman ever to do so. That’s three women in 93 years of the awards. If we carry on at that rate, by the turn of the next century it may even be five. Coda is only viewable on

Joan Collins

Oscars diary: a jaw-dropping night

Oscar week is intense – and it’s been a while since it’s been as intense. The red carpet is full of eager paparazzi and interviewers waiting for a photo opportunity or a quotable gaffe. My husband and I went to a couple of parties, but the most coveted is the Vanity Fair Oscar viewing dinner at the Annenberg Center. About 100 people are invited by editor Radhika Jones, and we were delighted to be among the chosen few. The ceremony was long and snoozy, and people were scrolling down their phones for entertainment when suddenly one of the most celebrated actors in Tinseltown, Will Smith, rushed to the stage and

Friday

Stephen Arnell

Ten mobster movies to rival The Godfather

This August will see the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic crime drama The Godfather. The picture and its 1974 sequel raised the cinematic depiction of The Mob from being crowd-pleasing shoot ‘em ups to a subject worthy of serious filmmakers and subsequent movies in the genre made explicit comparisons between organised crime and wider society, specifically government. Indeed, thanks to The Godfather, the mobster movie has become a permanent Hollywood fixture – a genre that top directors seek to reference, if not wholeheartedly embrace, at some point in their careers. 2022 is no exception: this month sees the release of Graham Moore’s The Outfit. Mark Rylance plays an English tailor who finds himself making suits for a

Thursday

Deborah Ross

You will feel nothing: The Worst Person in the World reviewed

The Worst Person in the World is a Norwegian film that has made a big splash. To date, its star (Renate Reinsve) has won Best Actress at Cannes and it has been nominated for two Oscars (Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film). It has also attracted rave reviews. I can now only conclude: I must be the Hardest to Please Person in the World as I can’t fathom what all the fuss is about. It’s not atrocious. It’s not Batman. But it’s nothing special. And until I read that it is a ‘romantic comedy’ I hadn’t realised it was a comedy at all. Perhaps I am also afflicted