We Bury the Dead review – Daisy Ridley tackles the undead in solid zombie twist

Star Wars alum gives an impressively modest performance in this slightly smarter-than-average survival tale Unlike some other less resilient horror subgenres, the zombie movie is, fittingly, never going to really die. Neither will film-makers attempting to add their own twist, understandable given how repetitive the die, wake up, lumber, bite and repeat formula has become. Australian director Zak Hilditch’s attempt, the rather buried We Bury the Dead, is therefore not quite as striking as it might have seemed a decade and change ago. Using words such as “contemplative” and “mournful” to describe a film that includes its fair share of gnarly head-smashing has become something of a cliche, so much so that last month’s meta-comedy Anaconda reboot had its characters joke that these days, even a film about a giant snake needs “intergenerational trauma” to work. But Hilditch mercifully avoids drowning his film in drab self-seriousness. Yes, it’s a zombie survival thriller that’s also abo...

‘I am all for strangeness’: Tilda Swinton on artistic integrity, acting and the afterlife

The Oscar-winning Scottish actor answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Pedro Almodóvar, Wes Anderson and Elton John

Tilda Swinton has been posing in different costumes for the Observer’s photographer and, as I arrive, has just changed into tartan trousers, saucy two-tone shoes and is standing perfectly still as a hairdresser attends to a blond quiff that makes her look like an incredible exotic bird – or a dandy hooligan, although her face looks too seraphic to mutate into aggro. What you see almost at once is that Swinton is giving 100% to the task at hand while being obligingly considerate to everyone around her. The mix of professionalism with warmth disarms, especially when you might have expected a superstar loftiness.

For Swinton is a superstar – ranked by the New York Times as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Original, distinctive and questing, she has played everything from a distraught mother in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) to the ancient, querulous Madame D in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the White Witch in the Narnia series (2005-2010). She was in Almodóvar’s short The Human Voice (2020) and is about to star in his next full-length feature (details still under wraps). She is a chameleon yet always herself. She has won an Academy award, a Bafta, been nominated for three Golden Globes and, having just turned 63, is still seen as a fashion icon of androgynous beauty with an unchanging profile – like a figurehead on the prow of a ship. What a difference there must be, I’m thinking as I watch her in front of the camera, between her “real” life in the Scottish Highlands by the sea and all this London razzmatazz.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/gPev51s
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Miracle Club review – Maggie Smith can’t save this rocky road trip to Lourdes

BREAKING: Interstellar back in cinemas due to public demand; Dune: Part Two to also re-release on March 14 in IMAX

‘I lost a friend of almost 40 years’: Nancy Meyers pays tribute to Diane Keaton