In the Hand of Dante review – Gerard Butler is jaw-dropping in bizarre Renaissance mafia reverie

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Julian Schnabel’s combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art – along with cameos from Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino – powers this outrageous black comedy revolving around Dante’s Divine Comedy The worlds of Renaissance manuscript scholarship and organised crime come together like a mix of Umberto Eco and George V Higgins in this flawed but fascinating reverie from director and co-writer Julian Schnabel. Switching between monochrome and colour, and freely adapted from the Nick Tosches novel of the same name, it is hilarious and shocking, at least at first, with a quite extraordinary tough-guy role for Gerard Butler. It is a mysterious, scabrous and bizarre adventure in violent larceny and spiritual crisis which unfortunately unwinds in the end into sentimental fantasy. In the Hand of Dante amounts to an epic and self-aware jeu d’ésprit with amazing cameos from Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino and Franco Nero, beckoning its audience over to peep into the fathomless abyss of heaven and ...
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Dance Revolutionaries review – performers dance like nobody’s watching

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This two-part homage to dance greats Robert Cohan and Kenneth MacMillan captures the intimacy of live performance

Here is a two-part documentary that pays homage to dance greats Robert Cohan and Kenneth MacMillan. Directed by David Stewart, Dance Revolutionaries essentially presents two pieces performed by dancers from the Yorke Dance Project and the Royal Ballet, and with the noble intention of making modern dance immersive and accessible.

The first part, Portraits, is choreographed by Cohan (who died in 2021) and aims to “explore life’s private moments” in six solo performances created in collaboration with its cast. In theory, you’d think a dance film would fail to capture the intimacy of a live performance, but somehow Portraits accentuates it; the uninhibited passion of the dancers and lack of direct performance to the camera make it borderline voyeuristic. Each dance is set in a public but desolate place, from office buildings, and a seafront to a graffiti-scrawled tunnel, creating a sense of vulnerability and familiarity. You feel you are peeking in on an individual’s emotional turmoil that can only be expressed through dance, and it’s hard to look away.

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