Few people have names more applicable to the way they lived than Amy Winehouse. How many hours did she spend in such establishments? She died at 27, thereby becoming a member of the ‘27 Club’, an ill-fated gathering of rock legends that also included people like Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, Janis…
Marlon Brando would have been 100 yesterday. Born on April 3, 1924 he was, by fairly common consensus, the greatest actor of his generation. Was he a ‘Method’ actor? This is the school of acting he’s always identified with, focusing as it did on reaching into one’s inner self for inspiration. He claimed not to…
The devil – and angel – is in the detail. Great movies come from moments. Mother’s Instinct (15A) is threaded together like a labyrinthine tapestry of ominous vignettes where every slight movement or gesture becomes charged with an opaque threat. It’s a horror film that plays out like a symphony. Stanley Kubrick would have…
The Oscar ceremonies, Hollywood’s annual ritual of patting itself on the back for delights real or imagined, are taking place next Sunday night. Unless you’re one of those obsessives who likes to stay up into the wee hours to hear the results, California time being ten hours behind us, you won’t know who won until…
Bob Dylan’s career ran chronologically alongside that of another iconic singer with the same Christian name. Bob Marley is less well known to most people than Dylan but Bob Marley: One Love (12A), a biographical drama of the Jamaican singer-songwriter, may change that. The casting of Kingsley Ben-Adir in the title role received the blessing…
Whenever anyone signs up for a research experiment in a film – especially if they’re locked in the kind of laboratory you associate with David Cronenberg – you get the sneaky feeling that things are going to go horribly wrong. Soon. Such suspicions are copper fastened when the person conducting it says things like, “You…
When Pope Francis recently approved the blessing of same sex couples by priests, he polarised many Catholics. Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (16) may polarise them even more. It deals with the struggle of a gay man, Adam (Andrew Scott), with his sexuality, mixing reality and illusion in an intense operetta of the emotions.…
It’s 1988 and we’re coming up to Christmas. Elderly Jew Sir Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is decluttering his study to please his wife Grete (Lena Olin). In the process he discovers a scrapbook from World War II. Flash back half a century. Nazism is about to sweep across Europe. The young Nicky (Johnny Flynn) is…
I refused to become a Barbenheimer during the year. When I was growing up there was a perfectly respectable practice of showing ‘small’ pictures and ‘big’ ones, despite the threat of the infamous ‘Paramount decree’ of 1948.
John Mulderig One promising way to get in the holiday mood is to watch a Christmas-themed movie. And, since yuletide films naturally tend to qualify as family-friendly, they can also provide an opportunity to gather the clan, make some popcorn and relax together. Following, in alphabetical order, are capsule reviews of eight such pictures with…
Aubrey Malone