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Watch and learn The full and rather clumsy title of Lee Daniels’ movie is Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Quite why Sapphire is name-checked, I have no idea, unless it was a contractual obligation. Rather like all the tunes in the charts where we get Boring Song by Nobody-I-Know featuring Some-Other-Nobody. It’s just [...] Kane scrutiny: Still able? An attempt to stand on the shoulders of giants – a look at Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), which is enjoying a return to UK cinemas. An offer you still can’t refuse… It’s ‘re-release city’ in the UK at the moment – Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal The Godfather (1972), an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel, has also returned to big screens in recent weeks. The nature of evil It’s rare, for me, to find a film that very nearly defies my capacity to describe it – and that’s not meant to be a self-aggrandising statement on my skills as a film reviewer, even if it sounds like it. I have loved film since I was very small, and feel very lucky [...] Secrets and lies In what was, quite remarkably, German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s first feature, we are taken inside the dark heart of East Germany in the mid-1980s. Communism still rules with an iron grip, the fall of the Berlin Wall is five years away, and Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a high-flying member [...] ‘I’ve been twelve for a very long time’ ‘Will you be my girlfriend?’ Vampires – they just won’t stay dead, will they? Please forgive the clumsy segue, and allow me to tell you why Tomas Alfredson’s Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In) (2008) (which lifted the Golden Raven at [...] [photopress:boy_in_stripped_pyjama.jpg,thumb,alignleft]The eye of childhood Following on from my thoughts on this year’s remake of The Last House on the Left (1972), namely that even a very-well made film of its kind (brutal rape followed by brutal revenge) asks certain questions of viewers as to what exactly they are seeking in terms of entertainment, I believe that [...] [photopress:Dead.jpg,thumb,alignleft]A dead cert With it only having had a sporadic release across Europe over the course of 2008, the start of a new year seems the perfect opportunity to remind Picturenose readers just how much they have to see Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), now that it’s available on DVD. As one of the few [...] [photopress:Life.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Decisions and debts Director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog (2003)) offers an unnerving and challenging perspective on decisions that must be made in the midst of horror, terror and emotion, and how such choices can bring irreparable consequences in later life. In reality, it is now nine years since the terrible Columbine school shooting – [...] |
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