Resurrection review – fascinating phantasmagoria is wild riddle about new China and an old universe

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In Bi Gan’s ambitious alternate reality, where humans can live indefinitely, a reincarnating dissident dreamer travels through history in different guises Bi Gan’s new movie in Cannes is bold and ambitious, visually amazing, trippy and woozy in its embrace of hallucination and the heightened meaning of the unreal and the dreamlike. His last film Long Day’s Journey Into Night from 2018 was an extraordinary and almost extraterrestrial experience in the cinema which challenged the audience to examine what they thought about time and memory; this doesn’t have quite that power, being effectively a portmanteau movie, some of whose sections are better than others – though it climaxes with some gasp-inducing images and tracking shots and all the constituent parts contribute to the film’s aggregate effect. Resurrection is, perhaps, a long night’s journey to the enlightenment of daybreak; it finishes at a club called the Sunrise. It is also an episodic journey through Chinese history, finishi...
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A Kid for Two Farthings review – Carol Reed’s East End market-street caper still charms

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An array of stars portray warm-hearted Londoners in comedy pivoting around a young boy who is a sunny ancestor to Kes

Carol Reed’s 1955 film is a rich slice of gentle, sentimental comedy, adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own novel. It’s a little bit broad and not in the class of The Third Man or The Fallen Idol, but forthright and heartfelt, and boasting a veritable aristocracy of British character acting talent.

In the bustling world of Petticoat Lane in London’s East End, then the traditional home of the Jewish community, a shy little boy called Joe mopes and daydreams around the place; he’s played by Jonathan Ashmore, with the rather non-East-End stage-school child actor voice that was common in those days. (Ashmore left showbusiness after this one screen appearance and grew up to be a distinguished scientist.) His cheerful but careworn mum Joanna (Celia Johnson) is sadly missing her husband, Joe’s dad: he’s away chasing get-rich-quick schemes in South Africa.

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