Category Archive: FILM
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
(Directed by Baz Luhrmann) (2025) Luhrmann’s biopic, Elvis – The Movie came out in 2022 (reviewed here), and whilst it was in preparation, Baz learned of the existence of over 60 boxes of 35mm and 8mm film footage of Presley in concert, in rehearsals and interviews. They were stuck in a Warner Bros vault in a salt mine in Kansas, of all places, negatives near to perishing, with no accompanying sound. Luhrmann had to spend a lot of his own money, and two or three years technical time, to have selections of the film retrieved and synced to existing audio….
Continue Reading →Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)
[Norwegian, 2025] Nora (Renate Reinsve) is an acclaimed actress. She lives in the family home which changes from traditional, dark and maximalist to sleek, pale and minimalist during the film. Which is better – messy, intricate family life or a cleaned-out refurbished freedom, with everything open to view? Nora, as a child, decided that the house was happiest when full of people, – namely her parents, her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) (Ibsen seems to be getting a workout here) and herself. Now that they are adult, Nora is a bit miserable. We think it’s more than just being Scandinavian….
Continue Reading →Eternity (dir. David Freyne – 2025)
This TVC reviewer avoids weepies because they are for weak girls and, if she does accidentally watch one, will sit with defiantly non-running mascara whilst yawning at the tear-jerky bits. Unfortunately, one or two weepies have snuck their way through her defences (when Beth dies in Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 Little Women) and when Eddie Scissorhands goes up his mountain to make snow. What is it about Winona Ryder?). Films about the afterlife and memory can be strangely compelling (Heaven Can Wait, The Lovely Bones, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or ghastly like the schmaltz we haven’t watched, so…
Continue Reading →The Brutalist
(Directed by Brady Corbet, 2024) The Brutalist has some fine scenes, some interesting set pieces, but it is all tip and no iceberg. Deadly at 3.4 hours, it makes Last Year at Marienbad look like an action film. We didn’t believe anything in it, which is a pity, as the film attempts to weave fact with fiction. The actors all act like clown statues and the ending is as pointless as the dénoûment to There Will be Blood. Even the architecture, bastardising the ‘F.U.’ style of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret or Marcel Breuer, is excessively repulsive, the “Community Centre” Adrien Brody glumly…
Continue Reading →Robert Redford
(18 August 1936 to 16 September 2025) In the wake of a violent death in Utah, another quietly slipped away in the Beehive State; Robert Redford, one of the last of the old school movie stars. He was not a particularly good natural actor but in the right role he could shine, and his directorial work was outstanding. On screen, he projected clean calm integrity – a look that Variety described as “strawberry blond California-born sun god”. He also campaigned for environmental causes and in the 1980s created the Sundance Film Festival that fostered a whole generation of interesting filmmakers….
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