BFI, retail Night and the City is the stand-out title here, a top-quality example of the genre with the unusual feature that the mean streets through which smalltime hustler Richard Widmark plies his trade are the still-familiar ones of postwar London. Like his lead character, Jules Dassin, whose direction is exhilarating, was on the run – from the McCarthy witchhunt in Hollywood. He’s best …
Anchor Bay, rental and retail Produced largely by the same team as the delightful Little Miss Sunshine, this is never as successful or as funny as that surprise hit, but does have the performances of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt to commend it. Not only are these strong and empathetic, but they are playing very much against type: the usually imperious Blunt is the family screw-up, while Adams, sunny …
Articifial Eye, retail, cert U More of a starter than a main course, Mid-August Lunch has the following plot: a middle-aged Italian caring for his mother, has three other elderly women to look after for a couple of days.
This sees Peter Greenaway in his element, examining Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in loving detail Some of Peter Greenaway’s films leave me cold, but this sees the writer-director in his element, examining Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in loving detail, spinning a murder mystery around it and providing fantastic compositions of his own. It is also notable for the surprise casting of Martin Freeman …
Artificial Eye, cert 18, rental and retail Lars von Trier’s latest shocker is extremely beautiful in places. Its black and white opening, shot with digital cameras at 1,000 frames per second, indelibly records the death of the young son of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, falling out of the window in the snow while his parents are having sex. The rest of the film is in three sections …
E1 Entertainment, cert 15, retail It’s about dolphins, but beware, there’s nothing cuddly to see here, and anyone with an interest in animals will be angry and sad at the end of this documentary about Taiji, Japan, described as “kind of like the Twilight Zone” in that it has a hidden bay with a shocking secret. Central figure Ric O’Barry is a longtime dolphin trainer who worked on the TV series …
After the intensity of Shane Meadows’ last two features, Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England, this feels like a small holiday project. Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) is a teen escaping a bad home life and a refugee of sorts; he meets a genuine one in Polish teen Marek (Piotr Jagiello), left to his own devices while his father works on the St Pancras redevelopment (Eurostar was the main financier). The …
Optimum, rental and retail Has any nice couple in a film ever adopted a sweet, charming child and had everything go just swimmingly?
James Cameron movie is brilliant at bringing a world to life you sometimes feel bludgeoned with his none too original green, antiwar message writ large. By Rob Mackie There is no 3D version on either DVD or Blu-ray planned for the near future but there will be a director’s cut out in the autumn. For now, a 2D version still feels like an event without that third dimension.
Universal, rental and retail Predictably outrageous, Sacha Baron ÂCohen’s latest sticks close to the Borat template without ever having quite the same impact. Partly, this is the law of Âdiminishing returns: this time our jaws drop almost by reflex