Nice vistas and a scenery-chewing Famke Janssen aren’t enough to save this absurd scriptural rehash from movie hell The latest from evangelical Christian producers Pinnacle Peak – formerly Pure Flix, the money behind the surprisingly enduring God’s Not Dead series – is an adaptation of a Francine Rivers novel that remaps the biblical tale of […]
Read More “Redeeming Love review – pious Bible-story western struggles for salvation”
Ted Fendt’s enigmatic and unhurried conversational feature offers existential issues in a casual, naturalistic narrative Vienna was a pitstop between adolescence and adulthood for Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise, and this short, equally conversational 16mm feature by Ted Fendt picks up that baton. At one point one of its three twentysomething seekers, […]
Read More “Outside Noise review – slacker hangout drama follows in footsteps of Before Sunrise”
The actor, severely injured in a car crash on 5 August, had been legally declared dead, but had life support maintained to facilitate organ donation Anne Heche has been taken off life support, a family representative said, following the announcement of her death on Friday. Heche, 53, had been severely injured in a single-vehicle car […]
Read More “Anne Heche ‘peacefully taken off life support’ after death announcement”
The vibrant 97-year-old geographer sparkles as she discusses love, life and her groundbreaking research Luisa Homem’s documentary portrait of 97-year-old geographer Suzanne Daveau has the intimacy of family stories being passed down from one generation to the next. Guided by the scholar’s vibrant recollections of her astonishing career, the mix of archival photos and Homem’s […]
Read More “Suzanne Daveau review – intimate, sparkling portrait of an astonishing career”
This disarmingly sincere autobiopic tackles a northern lad’s struggles with disability with an unselfpitying eye, evoking the goodwill of vintage of British studio-era films While we’re waiting for Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham AFC film, here is a lower-league paean to Darlington FC in the shape of a sometimes clunky but disarmingly sincere autobiopic. It’s written by […]
Read More “Give Them Wings review – paean to Darlington FC and the power of compassion”
Film-maker Jonas Carpignano continues his ’Ndrangheta mafia series with a drama where crime tests the bonds of a close-knit Calabrian family The idea of a teenage girl discovering her father is in the mob gave us one of the great moments in television history, when Meadow in The Sopranos asked her dad Tony: “Are you […]
Read More “A Chiara review – a teenage girl takes on the Italian mob in tense coming-of-ager”
Susanne Kovács’s investigation into her Jewish Hungarian family’s past reveals untidy truths about memory and history In Susanne Kovács’s intimate dive into her family history, memory is a tempestuous mistress. Brittle like glass, the ghosts of the past haunt generations of the Kovács family. Guided by the director’s desire to learn more about her grandmother’s […]
Read More “It Takes a Family review – a family broken by the Holocaust unpick their trauma”
West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy and The Godfather would all have been very different if Elvis had got his way – or if his manager Col Tom Parker hadn’t turned down so many roles on his behalf According to Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, Elvis Presley’s dream was to be a great actor. But his Hollywood ambitions […]
Read More “Elvis Presley as Willy Wonka? The films the King of Rock’n’Roll almost made”
The great director remembers the actor’s astonishing performance in his gangster classic – and the day the distraught star had to play a euphoric scene right after receiving tragic news We had some problems trying to get Goodfellas made. It came at a low moment in my career and the studios were not exactly eager […]
Read More “Martin Scorsese on Ray Liotta in Goodfellas: ‘The new guy never missed a beat’”
This evocative compilation of British documentary shorts, dating from the 1930s to the 1960s, comes with content warnings about racism – though the sexism can be just as shocking Here is a feature-length selection of documentary shorts from Britain’s pioneering women film-makers from the 1930s to the 1960s – a theatrical “touring version” from the […]
Read More “The Camera Is Ours review – pioneering women film-makers on the issues of their day”
