Film Shapes

Here's the first of a few films I'm planning to catch at the British Film Festival so I'll attempt to keep the reviews relatively brief. This a documentary directed by Stephen Soucy about the legendary filmmaking team, Merchant Ivory Productions. The formidable ensemble consisted of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins. After meeting in 1961, Ivory and Merchant started a fruitful partnership, both professionally and romantically.  The film shows us their somewhat ramshackle early films, made in India, moving on to marginally more assured productions in the US, and finally to the English period dramas they became known for in the 80s and onwards. Together, they made over 40 films, some absolute gems among them. A Room with a View , Howard's End , and The Remains of the Day are probably their best, though you could throw in Heat and Dust , Maurice , and The Golden Bowl as very strong examples of their

There's a lot to enjoy in this sequel to Sir Ridders' original from 2000. The film picks up about 16 years after the end of the first one, where we find Rome ruled by a pair of foppish twats, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Tasked to expand the empire, General Acacias (Pedro Pascal) leads an attack on Numidia in North Africa, coming up against Paul Mescal's Verus.  Once this speccy set piece is over, now-widower Verus finds himself on route to the fighting stadia, where he catches the eye of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a kind of antiquity Don King. Verus is driven by rage, hungry for revenge on those who killed his wife, but there seems to be more to his story. And those familiar with the original (or anyone who's read anything online about this film) will probably know what, but I'm not about to drop the cat bag. It's beautifully shot by lenser supremo, John Mathieson, especially one silvery sequence near the start where Deaths arrive on a

Biopics are tough to get right. For every Lawrence of Arabia , there's a Diana , for every Raging Bull , there's an Ali . The film Lee shines some natural light of the life of renowned war photographer Lee Miller, played by Kate Winslet. She gives it full welly in this - physically and emotionally nude, with camouflage painted boobs, close-ups with no make-up, moles, wrinkles, rage and tears. It's very much the kind of 'brave' performance that the Academy loves to reward. The film starts with Miller crustily answering questions to a young man in 1977, and as she remembers things from her past, we head to flashback territory. It seems a fairly cack-handed framing device until we realise why it's happening. A modicum of research reveals that the film is a pretty accurate retelling of Miller's life - first her carefree bohemian days in pre-WW2 France (including her intro to future hubby, Roland Penrose, played by Alexander Skarsgård), then how she started with

Popped down to Palace cinema in the city for a packed screening of Sand Land , part of the Japanese Film Festival Australia . Created by Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball fame), this started as a manga book series in 2000. It seems this film was made slightly before, or at the same time as a TV series covering similar ground. That ground being a Mad Max style wasteland where the water supply is controlled and sold by a rotund King (Chafûrin). An old, local sherriff, Rao (Kazuhiro Yamaji), suspects there's a source of water in the desert a few days drive away and so decides to investigate. Knowing he'll need help, he approaches the gang of demons who live nearby. The demons chosen to accompany Rao are the keen Beelzebub (Mutsumi Tamura) and the less enthused Thief (Chô). The trio head off but are soon beset by issues, including enormous sand snakes, marauding punks and the King's military units. As their vehicles tyres were punctured by said punks, Rao commandeers a tank, set

The idea of having a doppelganger replace us has been around for ages, at least since Dostoevsky wrote his famous novel, The Double , possibly even earlier. Great films like The Machinist , Fight Club , Enemy , Stranger Than Fiction and  Infernal Affairs have all taken inspiration from the source. It's hard, though, to imagine it being done with more verve and ridiculousness than in Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man . This film is a treat. It stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, who has a form of neurofibromatosis (a condition that affects the nervous system), which causes his face to swell up in lumpy tumours. Early on, he meets a new neighbour, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), and they become close friends, bonding over their shared passion for the theatre - he's a struggling actor, she's a hopeful playwright.  Partially due to this new relationship (and maybe the hope of furthering it), partly due to fatigue at his 'abnormal' life, Edward decides to try an experimental n

This is a very strange film - is it a domestic violence comedy? A neo-realist fantasy? A kitchen-sink musical? All of these sound wrong but director (and star), Paola Cortellesi manages to combine the disparate elements into a unique concoction. Set in post-war Rome, the film opens with Delia (Cortellesi) saying good morning in bed to her husband, Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), only to receive a hefty backhander. Her reaction tells us this is not an unusual occurrence in her life, as the rest of the family are introduced - a couple of shit-headed boys, a grown-up daughter, and an irascible father-in-law. Cue a glorious slow-motion credit sequence of Delia walking along her local street, getting on with the day's duties. The accompanying musical track is pretty incongruous, another oddity in this head-scratcher of a film (though not as surprising as when an Outkast song bursts in). The story revels in the time and place, and the black and white cinematography, by Davide Leone, is exqui