Articles de cet auteur (185)
-
Biutiful
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has made some arresting and thought-provoking films : Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. This is also arresting, thought-provoking – and very sad. The setting is Barcelona. Uxbal means well, but is involved in all kinds of shady deals, especially with illegals from Africa and from China. He is divorced from his wife (...) -
Un homme qui crie (A Screaming Man)
A film that begins in bright sunlight in a fashionable hotel swimming pool in Tchad, a father and son competing in holding their breath underwater. A film that ends in darkness with father and son at a river after experiencing the horror and wounds of civil war. The central character is Adam, a former central African swimming champion and the (...) -
La Princesse de Montpensier
The setting is the 1560s with the wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, truces and battles, leading up to the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. The first words of dialogue are, ‘In the name of Christ, fire’, as a Huguenot soldier attacks a Catholic home. Disgusted by what he has done, he gives up fighting. He is Francois de (...) -
You Will Meet a Tall Dark stranger
The title is what fortune tellers often tell future hungry-clients who are prepared to believe anything. Most of the characters in this Woody Allen confection, filmed in London (a Woody Allen world of writers, artists, publishers and galleries), have created their own fantasies. One does go to a futune teller. The others tend to poo-poo (...) -
Another Year
Another fine Mike Leigh portrait of real human beings, one of his best. When Mike Leigh says ‘Another Year’, we surmise, rightly, that he does not mean a happy new year. It is for some, not for others. In fact, one of the characters says, ‘same old, same old’. Counsellor Gerri (Ruth Sheen who has been in several Leigh films but shines here in a (...)