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Showing posts with the label Film | The Guardian

‘You have to get over the me thing’: Kevin Bacon on money, marriage – and learning to live with himself

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Kevin Bacon, Hollywood’s great survivor, first set hearts fluttering in the 1984 classic Footloose. Now 65, he’s back on the big screen again. Here, he talks about his band, politics, family, embracing change and, most of all, learning selflessness… There’s a state that veteran Hollywood actors can reach, beyond ravenous ambition, but with retirement still distant, that seems to make them contented as professionals and mellow as people. Kevin Bacon, now 65, has hit that sweet spot. Continually employed for decades, he shares a Manhattan apartment as well as a Connecticut farm with his wife of 35 years, Kyra Sedgwick, and their two adult children, Travis and Sosie. Bacon is in a country band with his brother, Michael, and otherwise channels any musical overspill into adorable Instagram videos of the Family Bacon (barnyard animals included) covering pop songs old and new. The hunger of the 1980s lead-actor-in-waiting, the frustration of the bit-player in mid-career who kept a wary eye
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‘You have to get over the me thing’: Kevin Bacon on money, marriage – and learning to live with himself

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Kevin Bacon, Hollywood’s great survivor, first set hearts fluttering in the 1984 classic Footloose. Now 65, he’s back on the big screen again. Here, he talks about his band, politics, family, embracing change and, most of all, learning selflessness… There’s a state that veteran Hollywood actors can reach, beyond ravenous ambition, but with retirement still distant, that seems to make them contented as professionals and mellow as people. Kevin Bacon, now 65, has hit that sweet spot. Continually employed for decades, he shares a Manhattan apartment as well as a Connecticut farm with his wife of 35 years, Kyra Sedgwick, and their two adult children, Travis and Sosie. Bacon is in a country band with his brother, Michael, and otherwise channels any musical overspill into adorable Instagram videos of the Family Bacon (barnyard animals included) covering pop songs old and new. The hunger of the 1980s lead-actor-in-waiting, the frustration of the bit-player in mid-career who kept a wary eye
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Streaming: the best of the Brat Packers

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Two 80s teen dramas, The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire, made overnight stars of a band of young actors including Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Rob Lowe – and Andrew McCarthy, whose new documentary looks back on those years Depending on your age, Andrew McCarthy’s Brats (Disney+, from 5 July) will either be a cosy nostalgia trip or a window into another era of celebrity. As someone who was two years old at their zenith, I’ve only ever known the Brat Pack as a past buzzword: a gaggle of then-young American actors who became a collective cultural phenomenon before just as quickly dispersing into a very different array of career fortunes. To look back on that now, as McCarthy’s documentary does, is to learn more about 80s-era media and publicity machinery than anything particularly crucial about American cinema. The Brat Pack was defined in 1985 by a pair of coming-of-age films, The Breakfast Club and St Elmo’s Fire — one about high-schoolers, one about college grads, though made
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A Family Affair review – Nicole Kidman’s hot age-gap romance quickly goes cold

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Zac Efron plays a heartless airhead movie star who is much too hastily transformed into Kidman’s Mr Perfect When it comes to age-gap films starring Nicole Kidman, Jonathan Glazer’s Birth is surely impossible to follow. But newcomer screenwriter Carrie Solomon and director Richard LaGravenese are trying it with this romcom for Netflix which, despite a very cute high concept, resolves the unresolved sexual tension too early and jettisons the irony and comedy well before the end of the first act, leaving us with something a bit solemn. The film in fact reunites Kidman with Zac Efron; they starred together in The Paperboy in 2013. Efron plays Chris Cole, a shallow and vain young movie star in LA who mistreats his much put-upon assistant Zara, kookily played by Joey King. With much pouting and eye-rolling she has to cater to his every whim and it is especially her job to organise the purchase of the special “breakup” diamond earrings that Chris always gives to young women he’s going to
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Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles home named a historic cultural monument

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City council ends a year-long battle to save the ‘iconic’ Spanish colonial property from developers Marilyn Monroe ’s Brentwood, Los Angeles, home has been saved from destruction after a year-long battle to save the property from developers. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles city council unanimously voted to designate the movie star’s Spanish colonial home a historic cultural monument. “We have an opportunity to do something today that should’ve been done 60 years ago. There’s no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home,” councilmember Traci Park told the assembly. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/F71YK9m via IFTTT
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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, cr
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X Trillion review – all-women voyage to the ‘Pacific garbage patch’ packs a rousing punch

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This film following a group travelling 3,000 miles to investigate plastic pollution reveals some shocking truths, even if it feels a little light on science Co-founded by environmental activist Emily Penn in 2014, not-for-profit organisation eXXpedition has made waves with their all-women voyages to remote sea territories, where their members witness firsthand the startling scale of marine plastic pollution. Taking part in the project in 2018, film-maker Eleanor Church was among a multidisciplinary cohort who set sail across 3,000 miles towards the North Pacific gyre , the infamous “garbage patch” where ocean plastics have been accumulating since the 1950s. The arduous journey is one of both heartache and beauty. There are moments of sheer wonder, as the awestruck women observe a pod of dolphins spin, jump and glide across the cerulean sea. The same shimmering waves, however, also carry countless pieces of plastic, which irreversibly disrupt existing ecosystems. Throughout their thre
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The Last Breath review – Julian Sands’s last film is solid shark-meets-shipwreck thriller

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A group of friends are terrorised by a shark while exploring a shipwreck in an unremarkable film that marks Sands final outing onscreen In most respects this suspense-thriller with aquatic antagonists is pretty unremarkable, apart from the sad fact that it was British actor Julian Sands’s last film before he died while hiking. It’s a shame that he didn’t have a more interesting role, but few get to choose their swan song. Sands has a strictly functional supporting role here as Levi, a grizzled boat captain originally from Blighty, looking for the wreck of a ship that went down in the Caribbean during the second world war. Unable to dive any more because of an injury, Levi stays onboard supposedly knitting (even though the red hat he wears looks more like a misbegotten crochet project) while his younger crewmate Noah (Jack Parr) searches the ocean floor. Then not long after they finally find the wreck, a posse of Noah’s friends from New York show up hoping to enjoy a diving holiday. L
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The Investigator review – harrowing documentary details search for justice after Balkan wars

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Viktor Portel’s film follows Czech investigator Vladimír Dzuro as he returns to sites of torture and death, and meets survivors as well as supporters of perpetrators Revisiting the blood-soaked conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Viktor Portel’s harrowing documentary follows Vladimír Dzuro, a Czech investigator committed to bringing war criminals to justice. Drawing from Dzuro’s bestselling book The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War, the film primarily focuses on the atrocities committed by Serbian forces; as Dzuro returns to sites of torture and death, his encounters with the survivors as well as supporters of the perpetrators are at once riveting and heartbreaking. The Vukovar massacre , one of the most infamous incidents of the war, is recounted in eye-opening detail. In 1991, in the final days of a battle between the Croatian National Guard and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) during the Croatian war of independence, the latter vetoed a
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The Exorcism review – Russell Crowe v the Devil in cursed horror about a cursed horror

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The actor plays an actor struggling with a demonically bad film shoot in a well-made yet increasingly messy chiller Like many other dethroned A-listers of his generation, Oscar winner Russell Crowe has found himself a steady career hustling far further down the food chain, headlining B-movies he once would have balked at. The last few years have seen the famed actor crop up in gonzo road rage thriller Unhinged , shepherd the other Hemsworths in war drama Land of Bad , lead the barely released crime thriller Sleeping Dogs earlier this year and become the pope’s exorcist in The Pope’s Exorcist . The latter became something of a surprise hit, first theatrically and then on Netflix, albeit in a rather jokey way, the film most easily remembered for the many memes of Crowe on a scooter. Its success was such that it not only guaranteed a sequel (The Pope’s Exorcist 2 is coming), but it also led to another of his exorcism movies getting saved from streaming hell and being delivered to th
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Paris arthouse cinema La Clef to reopen after buyout from squatters’ collective

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Filmmakers and students evicted by police in 2022 make a triumphant return to the historic venue after raising funds to buy it for €2.7m Two years after being evicted by Paris police, a collective of students and film-industry professionals returned to the arthouse cinema they had occupied from 2019 to 2022 on Thursday to reinstall the wheels of a 35mm projector. The crucial difference is that this time they did so as legal owners of the keys to the 600 sq metre community cinema in the French capital’s Latin quarter, appropriately called La Clef (The Key). Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/1YpWkjG via IFTTT
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Donald Sutherland was an irreplaceable aristocrat of cinema

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The late actor was a commanding and versatile presence on the big screen, perfecting everything from villainy to sensuality in films such as Don’t Look Now and Klute Donald Sutherland, Don’t Look Now and Hunger Games actor, dies aged 88 Donald Sutherland: a life in pictures Donald Sutherland was an utterly unique actor and irreplacable star: possessed of a distinctive leonine handsomeness that the white beard of his latter years only made more majestic: watchful, cerebral, charismatic, with a refinement to his screen acting technique comparable perhaps only to Paul Scofield and his Canadian background (together with his early stage training and experience in England and Scotland) gave his American roles a certain touch of Anglo-international class. Sutherland was commanding and exacting, he gave each of his roles and films something special: he addressed his co-stars and the camera itself from a position of strength. Even playing a weak or absurd character, as he did starring as
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A Dry White Season review – Marlon Brando heads starry cast in ground-breaking apartheid drama

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This first Hollywood studio feature with a black female director is a compelling account of a South African who turns against the ruling caste In the late 80s, there were a number of films about apartheid South Africa that somehow made the black experience dramatically subordinate to white liberal activism. Chris Menges’s A World Apart from 1988 had Barbara Hershey as the white campaigner based on anti-apartheid activist Ruth First ; the year before that, Richard Attenborough’s excruciatingly well-intentioned Cry Freedom was supposedly about the friendship between white journalist Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) and Steve Biko (Denzel Washington), but contrived to put Woods at the centre of the action, all but forgetting about Biko. Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season from 1989, now released on Blu-ray, looks on the face of it to be the same sort of thing. And yet this movie is much tougher and shrewder on what it would actually mean for white people in apartheid South Africa to side again
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The G review – Dale Dickey is gamechanging gangster granny out for vengeance

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Dickey is a revelation as a harder-than-nails woman exploited by the US’s legal guardian system in an otherwise overcooked thriller The “G” in this low budget revenge thriller is 72-year-old Ann Hunter. That’s “G” as in “Granny”, a nickname given to her by her granddaughter. The joke is that Ann does not fit anyone’s stereotype of a granny. To call her hard-as-nails would be an understatement: nails can bend, but the G is harder, cold, mean and sarcastic. When she reaches for a bottle, dirty washing stacked up around the sink, no clean glass to hand, she pours her vodka neat into an empty yoghurt pot. The G is played by character actor Dale Dickey, whose TV credits include Breaking Bad and My Name Is Earl. On film, she’s best known for a supporting part in Winter’s Bone , but I have to confess I didn’t recognise her. Having seen her in action here, I’m a convert. The G is heartless and unlikable, her battered face set in a permanent scowl – and yet Dickey conveys a woman shaped by he
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Deadland review – melancholy horror smuggles deep themes across the US-Mexico border

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Lance Larson’s feature debut uses horror tropes to tackle themes of racism, immigration and post-traumatic stress disorder Screened at SXSW last year but still relevant given the ongoing debate about immigration in the US, an especially live issue in election year, this offers a border-set ghost story that’s haunting in more ways than one. For a start, it’s not especially gory or scary; the tone is more melancholy and guilt-freighted, offering a study of masculine and, in particular, paternal anxiety that’s aggravated by divided loyalties. The main protagonist is Angel Waters (Roberto Urbina), a Mexican-American border guard who is the head of his small patrol unit not far from El Paso. The son of a Mexican father he never knew and a white American woman who has recently died, Angel is now devoted to his pregnant wife Hannah (Kendal Rae, achieving a lot with a thinly written part); he only wants to do the best he can for the people who cross the border every day, even if he’s seldom
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Pongo Calling review – Roma lorry driver turns viral activist after political persecution

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Film-maker Tomáš Kratochvíl follows the story of Czech-Mancunian trucker turned activist Štefan Pongo Centring on an ordinary man with extraordinary determination, Tomáš Kratochvíl’s documentary shows how one simple video can ignite a revolutionary movement. After emigrating to the UK nearly 15 years ago, Czech Roma lorry driver Štefan Pongo built a new life for himself and his family in Manchester. At the same time, the persecution faced by his community never strayed far from Pongo’s mind. After hearing a speech in which Miloš Zeman, then the president of the Czech Republic, claimed that 90% of the Roma people were “socially unadaptable” and resistant to work, Pongo started a viral appeal online where he and countless other Roma compatriots posted selfies of themselves at their workplaces. The appeal was straightforward, yet hugely impactful. Its aim was to battle harmful stereotypes thrust upon Roma people, which Pongo himself had experienced first-hand from a young age. In one p
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Every Little Thing review – hummingbird documentary shimmers with the best of humanity

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This film about an avian rescuer is a densely layered meditation on love, resilience and letting go Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Encounters with hummingbirds are not easily forgotten. I vividly remember my first, on a visit to Los Angeles 15 years ago: walking the streets of Beverly Hills, it buzzed towards me like a supersized bee, eyeballed me, pivoted, and zipped across the road, leaving me slack-jawed with wonder that something so miraculous could even exist. Miracles abound in Australian director Sally Aitken’s film Every Little Thing, which is inspired by Terry Masear’s 2016 book Fastest Things on Wings . Masear, who has dedicated her home (also in Beverly Hills) to the rehabilitation of injured hummingbirds for 18 years, is the star. But it’s the supporting cast she cares for that will capture hearts. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/jE9fw2S via IFTTT
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Neil Jordan claims ex-taoiseach told him of money-for-endorsement agreement

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Irish director says Garret FitzGerald said he was expecting payment from Warner Bros for endorsing Michael Collins biopic – which son refutes When the Irish film director and screenwriter Neil Jordan’s biopic of Michael Collins was released in 1996, it unleashed criticism from historians and politicians who contested its depiction of the rebel leader and Ireland ’s war of independence. Some disputed Liam Neeson ’s portrayal of the doomed, charismatic guerrilla chief and his romance with a character played by Julia Roberts. Others cited inaccuracies in the film’s depiction of the 1919-21 conflict with Britain and ensuing Irish civil war. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/GbIdxTH via IFTTT
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Neil Jordan claims ex-taioseach told him of money-for-endorsement agreement

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Irish director says Garret FitzGerald said he was expecting payment from Warner Bros for endorsing Michael Collins biopic – which son refutes When the Irish film director and screenwriter Neil Jordan’s biopic of Michael Collins was released in 1996, it unleashed criticism from historians and politicians who contested its depiction of the rebel leader and Ireland ’s war of independence. Some disputed Liam Neeson ’s portrayal of the doomed, charismatic guerrilla chief and his romance with a character played by Julia Roberts. Others cited inaccuracies in the film’s depiction of the 1919-21 conflict with Britain and ensuing Irish civil war. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/GbIdxTH via IFTTT
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Ultraman: Rising review – endearing kaiju animation battles the monster that is parenting

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Appealing superhero film saddles a kaiju fighter with an orphaned infant, who brings challenges to test supernanny’s domestic mettle In this family superhero animation with a twist, the monster that must be grappled with by our hero is parenthood – and specifically baby-care. We open in Odaiba, Japan, with a flashback to the childhood of Ken Sato, whose dad is passionate about kaiju , the giant monsters of Japanese pop culture (of which Godzilla is probably the best known in the west). Twenty years later, Ken is a baseball star by day and gigantic kaiju fighter Ultraman by night (or indeed, whenever the kaiju show up) though like his father before him, it’s more about protecting people and monsters from each other than a standard slay-the-beast trajectory. Things get complicated when he finds himself unexpectedly landed with an orphaned baby kaiju to look after. Ken is not prepared for single parenthood, and is duly rushed off his feet managing the competing demands of work and adopt
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Àma Gloria review – amazing performances in sensitive drama about a kid and her nanny

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Six year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani is wonderful as Cléo, strongly bonded to her carer Gloria, who has to leave her By rights Louise Mauroy-Panzani should be at the front of the queue for every acting award going for her role in this gorgeous French drama. Just six years old at the time of filming (the casting director spotted her in Paris arguing with her brother in the street), she gives a performance so open and natural, it has an almost transparent quality. You feel what her character Cléo feels as her world is turned upside down over one summer. Equally brilliant is another first-time actor, Ilça Moreno Zego, a real-life nanny playing Gloria, who has taken care of Cléo since she was tiny and is now moving back to Cape Verde. The opening scenes showing us Cléo’s life with Gloria are beautifully detailed. Cléo’s mum died when she was a baby, and she lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini), who is gentle but remote, still reeling from grief. It’s Gloria who is the sun in Cleo’s life. R
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