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No going back Paul Greengrass has proved himself to be a world leader when it comes to the blending of fact and fiction – he is perhaps cinema’s most adept exponent of the ‘docu-drama’ approach, as he went on to prove with United 93 (2006), which was a far superior account of another day on which [...] Benito Mussolini – what a fascist! And I’m not talking only about his political ideology, writes Gerald Loftus. A worthy try Certainly, he’s a director in vogue. Clint Eastwood has made a remarkable transition over the years from the spaghetti-western, moody-strong-silent type and amoral urban avengers that characterized his earlier roles, as well as the broad (though thrilling) sweeps of his first directorial efforts, such as Play Misty For Me (1970) and High Plains [...] Suffer the children Directors before Michael Haneke have asked the same fundamental question that permeates his elegiac, trenchant study of darkness and light, Das weiße Band (2009) – namely, with specific reference to Germany, from whence did the affiliation with fascism rise, and how did a people turn a blind eye to the atrocities in their [...] Looking for America Writer-director Emanuele Crialese (Respiro (2002), Once We Were Strangers (1997)) sets his tale of immigrants’ dreams in Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century – the (at times brutal) immigrant experience is portrayed, stretching from a dirt-poor Sicilian hamlet to Ellis Island, the ‘Golden Door’ to the United States. ‘One more person. A person, Stern.’ There are some films that bypass critical carping and can lay claim to being perhaps the greatest ever made. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) is one such work, and it is my privilege to talk to you about it. [photopress:Angels_and_Demons.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Back and better Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, Dan Brown et al suffered in the critical backlash against Howard’s film version of Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006) – and somewhat unfairly, in this reviewer’s opinion. True, the film was never going to win any awards for screenplay writing, and there were one or two notables (Sir Ian [...] [photopress:2004_alexander_004.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Weep, for there are no more turkeys to conquer It just goes to show there’s not always a lot to be gained from being too lazy to get up and find a suitable DVD to slide into the player. Unlike The Constant Gardener (2005), a film which, again, I saw by dint of utter laziness but [...] [photopress:Defiance.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Passion gap It’s a curious thing – while there’s no doubting the talent of director Edward Zwick, he followed his film The Last Samurai (2003) with Blood Diamond (2006) which seemed largely bereft of passion and the same, unfortunately, must be said of Defiance (2008). Despite its inspiring source material (Nechama Tec’s true-life account [...] |
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