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Showing posts with the label Film | The Guardian

Streaming: Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and the best haunted house films

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The director’s witty supernatural thriller joins Psycho, Hereditary, The Brutalist and more – films in which buildings are characters in their own right The first more-or-less horror movie in the lengthy, genre-skimming career of director Steven Soderbergh , Presence is a film about grief, trauma, familial dysfunction and abusive masculinity. But it’s also, to a significant and compelling extent, about property. Beginning with a family’s first viewing of a handsome Victorian home in an unidentified stretch of suburbia, the film never ventures outside its walls for the next 85 minutes, as the ensuing chills make us consider the merits of that purchase. Wittily and unnervingly shot from the perspective of the restless spirit roaming its halls, it’s a haunted house film in which much of the tension feels determined by the shape and flow and light and shade of the house itself. It’s a while since I’ve seen a film where I could quite so exactly draw the floor plan of its primary location,...
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Streaming: Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and the best haunted house films

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The director’s witty supernatural thriller joins Psycho, Hereditary, The Brutalist and more – films in which buildings are characters in their own right The first more-or-less horror movie in the lengthy, genre-skimming career of director Steven Soderbergh , Presence is a film about grief, trauma, familial dysfunction and abusive masculinity. But it’s also, to a significant and compelling extent, about property. Beginning with a family’s first viewing of a handsome Victorian home in an unidentified stretch of suburbia, the film never ventures outside its walls for the next 85 minutes, as the ensuing chills make us consider the merits of that purchase. Wittily and unnervingly shot from the perspective of the restless spirit roaming its halls, it’s a haunted house film in which much of the tension feels determined by the shape and flow and light and shade of the house itself. It’s a while since I’ve seen a film where I could quite so exactly draw the floor plan of its primary location,...
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‘One agency called me Thunder Thighs’: Twiggy and Sadie Frost on sexism, self-esteem and the swinging 60s

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The actor-models have made a documentary about Twiggy’s life that is as lively and sunny as her personality – but it doesn’t shy away from exploring the misogyny they both endured The woman in the jade-green suede biker jacket and tartan trousers sticks out her hand. “’Allo, I’m Twig,” she says. The name still sounds funny after all these years, even for those of us who can’t recall a time when we hadn’t heard it. This perpetually effulgent figure was styled “Sticks” by a friend on account of her skinny legs, only for that to morph into “Twiggy” by the time her picture was splashed across the Daily Express, which named her “the face of 1966” when she was 16. Yet it feels stranger still to think of her as Lesley Hornby, the name inked on to her birth certificate 75 years ago. Twiggy is not one for looking back, she says, but today there is no avoiding it. For one thing, we are joined by Sadie Frost, who has directed a new life-and-times documentary about her . They met when F...
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Picture This review – Bridgerton star can’t save tinny romcom

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Simone Ashley tries her best in Amazon’s gimmicky romantic comedy but it’s too flimsy and forgettable to demand our attention I am generally wary of streaming platform originals, so often do they feel like the fast fashion of the film world: cheap, disposable, chasing ephemeral interests and brittle with repeat use. But I will give Netflix, Amazon and co props for this: for nearing a decade now, they have attempted to fill a void left by the theatrical box office, whose hollowed-out market rarely supports the mid-budget adult films – particularly romcoms and erotic thrillers – that routinely entertained non-franchise audiences in decades past. Only occasionally do they succeed, as in the case of Netflix’s Do Revenge or Players , but the mission remains worthwhile. Picture This, a new romcom from Amazon Prime Video, has promising elements suggesting it could be one of the better entries. Namely: the presence of Simone Ashley, the always luminous breakout star of the Netflix confectio...
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‘We didn’t see who she is’: Anora missed chance to spark real change, say sex workers

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Sean Baker’s film accused of lacking representation, as some say he and Mikey Madison could have used speeches to call for policy reform As well as winning five Oscars and catapulting its lead actor, Mikey Madison, into true stardom, the film Anora has been mooted as a signifier of society taking another step towards sex work being normalised as an occupation. The film is a dark love story about a stripper who marries the feckless son of a Russian oligarch and slowly watches her vision of a fairytale ending disappear before her eyes. But real-life sex workers have said the film portrays an optimistic view of the industry. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/zA4T2jm via IFTTT
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‘I want to see that movie’: Brighton Beach residents on Anora’s Oscar triumph

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Mikey Madison called out the Brooklyn seaside setting on Oscar night. How did locals feel the morning after? Anora’s Mikey Madison may have won the Oscar for best actress, but the real star of Sean Baker’s madcap anti-love story was New York’s Brighton Beach. Situated on the southern shore of Brooklyn, next to Coney Island, the tight-knit Russian and eastern European enclave retains a midcentury, pre-gentrification charm. In the film, it is the fairytale setting for Madison’s Anora, a sex worker who falls for and marries the childish son of a Russian oligarch. When the honeymoon period abruptly ends, Anora’s husband runs away and leaves her the hostage of his father’s goons – and Brighton Beach’s boardwalk begins to feel more sinister. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/UA5aW2s via IFTTT
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Giants of La Mancha review – kids cartoon sticks Don Quixote Jr into the modern world

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Alfonso Quixote, a descendant of Cervantes’ idealistic hero, is on a mission to save his town in this unsatisfying animated adventure Films of Don Quixote have a notoriously rough time of it. Orson Welles ran out of money making his doomed adaptation. Terry Gilliam’s first stab was such a catastrophe it went down as one of the unluckiest films in screen history. Disney bosses abandoned a version after reportedly deciding it was too adult. The makers of this family animation dodge the age-inappropriate issue with a central character who is Don Quixote’s modern-day descendant: an 11-year-old boy dreamer. Though to be fair, the film shares more DNA with other loud crashy kids’ movies than Cervantes. Our misguided hero is Alfonso Quixote, the great-great-great-and-then-some grandson of the legendary 17th-century Don. Alphonso is blessed with the family trait of crackpot idealism. He is hated in La Mancha for repeatedly causing carnage in the pursuit of his hare-brained schemes. Actually,...
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Flow wins best animated feature Oscar

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Latvian adventure centered on a cat has triumphed over blockbusters Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot Oscars 2025 — follow live Academy Awards updates See complete list of winners and photos from the red carpet The Latvian adventure Flow has won the Oscar for best animated feature. The dialogue-free film, which debuted at the Cannes film festival, triumphed in a category that included the higher-profile blockbusters Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot. It is the first Latvian film to ever be nominated for an Oscar. Watch or stream the Oscars Review our guides to best picture , actor , actress and director Peter Bradshaw’s final predictions Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/kKwD6JR via IFTTT
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Kieran Culkin wins best supporting actor Oscar for A Real Pain

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The Succession actor adds to the Golden Globe and Bafta he had already won for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s serio-comic film • Follow the ceremony live! • Full list of winners Kieran Culkin has won the best supporting actor Oscar in Hollywood for his work in A Real Pain. Culkin, 42, was the favourite for the prize, having taken almost all of the equivalent awards in the run-up to the Oscars, including a Golden Globe , Bafta and Screen Actors Guild award. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/lHaLZkS via IFTTT
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Oscars 2025: the complete list of winners – updating live

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Here’s the complete list of winners for every category at the 97th Academy Awards Yura Borisov, Anora Kieran Culkin , A Real Pain Edward Norton , A Complete Unknown Guy Pearce , The Brutalist Jeremy Strong , The Apprentice Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/oM7VI6E via IFTTT
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Oscars 2025 live updates: Academy Awards red carpet, ceremony and winners

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Join us for full coverage of the 97th Academy Awards. Will it be The Brutalist or Anora’s year? Or might we see white smoke for Conclave? • The complete list of nominees Director of The Brutalist and award nominee, Brady Corbet has arrived with his parner, the Norwegian actor Mona Fastvold. The black sunglasses and suit, the off-white drop shoulder gown, it looks like a nice little his and hers monochrome double act. Except squint, and you’ll see Corbet is actually wearing a ‘blavy’ (black/navy) shirt. Ask any politician and they’ll tell you that ‘blavy’ is the safest colour you can wear. The most exciting part of the whole outfit is actually the brooch, though. Designed by Sauvereign, they also made Cillian Murphy a bespoke brooch the night he won his best actor award. Not saying the two things are linked but the two things are probably linked. Peter Bradshaw , Andrew Pulver and Catherine Shoard have all had their say on Oscar predictions, so here’s my stab at them. I’m bravely/i...
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James Bond nightclubs, vodka, aftershave: 007 writer on the spy’s future with Amazon

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As the Bond franchise heads to the online giant, thriller author William Boyd foresees a slew of spin-offs and says AI is not a threat to human screenwriters Among the people best placed to predict how any James Bond of the future might look is a British writer with a strong feel for spies and for spying. William Boyd has been drawn back to the terrain repeatedly in his books. What’s more, he wrote his own official Bond novel, Solo , in 2013 . Now Amazon has picked up the rights to the character, Boyd foresees a succession of 007 spin-off products and entertainments. Perhaps even be new AI-generated novels? “Certainly wait for Bond aftershave – and for the theme park and the dinner jackets,” he said. “The new owners will have to commodify everything about their billion-dollar purchase, so there will be nightclubs and vodkas.” Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/wGuJBax via IFTTT
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Licence to kill: could a James Bond horror emerge when book copyrights expire?

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Character and plots of Ian Fleming’s original literary works become open for public use in most countries in 2035 Amazon may have captured James Bond, paying billions to get creative control of the super spy, but a clock is now ticking that means 007 – or at least a version of him – could escape into the wider world in a decade’s time. The character and plots of the original literary works by creator Ian Fleming become open for public use in most countries in 2035, raising the prospect of Bond starring in rival film and TV stories of espionage, comedy or even horror. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/aeVYxJ3 via IFTTT
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Gene Hackman and wife’s deaths ‘suspicious enough’ for investigation, warrant says

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Warrant raises questions about scattered pills, after Betsy Arakawa’s body had ‘mummification in hands’ An active investigation is under way into the deaths of the Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, after their bodies were found “in a state of decomposition” along with that of one of their dogs in their home in New Mexico , the local sheriff’s department has confirmed. The local gas provider, the New Mexico Gas Co, was involved in the investigation alongside the Santa Fe county sheriff’s department, the Associated Press reported, raising speculation that carbon monoxide poisoning was behind the deaths. The emergence later on Thursday of a search warrant, however, cast doubts about a possible gas leak and raised alternative questions about the discovery of prescription pills near Arakawa’s body. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/jbLuT6Z via IFTTT
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Last Breath review – thrilling underwater survival drama

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Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu star in a terrifyingly well-constructed adaptation of a documentary about a nightmarish accident It does not take much to convince that, as an opening title card for Last Breath states, the job of a saturation diver is one of the most dangerous on earth. The facts, also summarily listed in the survival thriller’s introduction, speak for themselves: thousands of miles of pipeline traverse the ocean, dependent on human divers to maintain them; said divers spend days in pressurized chambers to reach depths of more than 1,000ft (300 meters), in near-freezing darkness. It may as well be outer space, as the fiancee of one diver bluntly but correctly puts it. Thankfully, Last Breath, Alex Parkinson’s feature film adaptation of his 2019 documentary of the same name , lets the divers’ work – a maze of levers, pulleys, gas valves, imposing machines and the human capacity to detach from existential risk – largely speak for itself as well. And luckily for viewers, su...
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Tornado review – windswept samurai western set in apocalyptic Scotland

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The second feature from John Maclean is an almost surreal tale of itinerant martial arts performers and a band of thieves in 18th-century Scotland J ohn Maclean ’s new movie is a dour, pessimistic, almost surrealistically downbeat revenge western set in Scotland in the late 18th century – but it could as well be happening in some post-apocalyptic landscape of the distant future or on another planet. This is the follow-up to his debut Slow West , and as with that film it is shot by Robbie Ryan with music by Jed Kurzel (director Justin’s brother and collaborator). I have to admit, though, that this does not quite have the energy or the fluency of that previous film, perhaps not the same production resources either – and by comparison it is more strenuously contrived. Yet the pure strangeness of the movie commands attention and there is a charismatic lead performance by Japanese actor-musician Mitsuki Kimura, or Kôki. She plays a dancer called Tornado, who travels around what looks like...
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Chang’an review – animated Chinese tale of poet-warriors is spectacular work of art

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The historic capital of China is rendered in gloriously intricate detail, but this animated feature feels like a state-sponsored history lesson The first thing you need to know about this animated feature from China is that it is 168 minutes long, or two hours and 48 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend watching a story about Chinese poet/warriors from the eighth century, celebrated via a screenplay that’s dense with historical incident drawn from the subjects’ biographies. If you know nothing about this period of history, which unfolds during the Tang dynasty, you’ll certainly learn a lot, but you’ll need to pay close attention to the welter of journeys to far-flung provinces, battles fought in mountain passes, and characters of note met along the way. The two main characters are governor and general Gao Shi (voiced as a young man by Yang Tianxiang, as an elder by Wu Junquan) and poet Li Bai (Ling Zhenhe and then Xuan Xiaoming). The latter was considered one of the greatest poets ...
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Johatsu review – poignant account of Japan’s ‘voluntarily disappeared’

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Melancholy documentary follows the owner of a ‘night moving’ business in Japan, helping people abandon their own lives ‘Johatsu” means evaporation in Japanese, and is used to refer to those people who choose to disappear, severing all ties with their past lives and their families. It became a phenomenon in Japan in the 1960s, and intensified during the 1990s as the country struggled with a debt crisis. While some plot their departures on their own, others call on the services of “night movers”: companies that help people vanish without trace. Following the owner of one such business named Saita, Andreas Hartmann’s and Arata Mori’s poignant documentary surveys the circumstances that drive people to desperate measures. Unfolding like a suspense thriller, the opening sees a man hurriedly get inside Saita’s van, his voice trembling with fear. Unable to cope with a possessive partner, he finally manages to flee. Interviews with Saita’s other clients reveal that, besides financial catastro...
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Sag awards 2025: Timothée Chalamet, Demi Moore, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña win major categories

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Screen Actors Guild awards go to Shōgun and Conclave ensembles, while Jane Fonda gives a rousing political speech while accepting a life achievement award Timothée Chalamet has won best actor in a surprise upset at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, with Demi Moore and the ensembles of Shōgun and Conclave also winning big. Chalamet won best male actor in a leading role, his first in an awards race that has been led all season by The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, who has picked up the Golden Globe, Bafta and Critics’ Choice awards and is still widely predicted to win the Oscar next week. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/160WIFe via IFTTT
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Patricia Arquette on Trump, communes, art and ageing: ‘When I was growing up the whole world was pretty creepy’

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She won hearts with True Romance – and an Oscar for Boyhood. The actor reflects on her TV show Severance, political chaos in the US and why human beings are a disaster If escaping the world by running for the hills looks increasingly attractive to many of us – perhaps living on a commune – Patricia Arquette feels like that too. Head to the mountains, she says. “Plant seeds and farm.” But maybe not the commune part – she lived in one as a child and it wasn’t always utopian. If our conversation is more dystopian than usual, it’s probably because we’re talking about Severance, the hit Apple TV+ show now in its second season. In the first series, we were introduced to Lumon Industries, where some workers, tasked with doing something unknown but probably malevolent with data, were willingly “severed”; their work selves detached from their outside selves, with no memory between the two. If the drama started as an off-kilter take on work-life balance, it soon morphed into something much dark...
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Geneviève Page obituary

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Beguiling French actor who appeared in films such as Belle de Jour and El Cid, but whose true love was the stage Screen and stage were not equal suitors for the affections of the French actor Geneviève Page, who once described working in cinema as a case of coitus interruptus. “You start a scene, you rehearse it, you’re ready. Then they do the sound and lighting. There comes a moment when you’ve got to charge in. And then: ‘Cut!’ It annoyed me each time,” Page told France Culture in 2009. “Whereas when you arrive in your theatre dressing room in the evening, you know it’ll start soon and you’ll see it through right to the end.” Page, who has died aged 97, built a heavyweight theatre portfolio over more than five decades; she played roles such as Hermione in Euripides’s Andromache, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and the Fassbinder heroine Petra von Kant. But her film career had a stuttering rhythm, with the French industry never truly finding a place for her. Her melodramatic ardour and throat...
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