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The Student review – a seductive satire of Russian Orthodox dogma
5 hours ago
This hypnotic adaptation of Marius von Mayenburg’s play finds the comedy in the actions committed by a devout teenager in the name of his beliefs
In another cinematic attack on the Russian Orthodox church, following 2014’s magisterial Leviathan, The Student’s scripture-spouting teenager Venya (Pyotr Skvortsov) launches a one-man protest against decadent modern education. He refuses to strip off for swimming practice, but getting naked to disrupt sinful contraception classes is fine, apparently.
Director Kirill Serebrennikov, adapting Marius von Mayenburg’s 2012 play for his eighth feature, wrings significant humour out of the Messiah/naughty boy dichotomy, particularly in Venya’s mother’s exasperated responses to her issue’s latest decree. Propelled by restless long takes and Skvortsov’s imposing presence (he shares the lofty pugnaciousness of Michael Shannon, whom he physically resembles), The Student finds a higher satirical calling. The toadying responses of the local priest and school principals »
- Phil Hoad
Chosen review – starchy heroics in ponderous second world war film
5 hours ago
This unfocused drama about a Hungarian Jew who joins the resistance in 1944 only ever scratches the surface. And Harvey Keitel’s appearance is disheartening
When he isn’t pimping Winston Wolf out to Direct Line, it’s disheartening to see a great actor like Harvey Keitel in the Werther’s Original role here: the white-haired “Papi” narrating to his grandson how things were in the bad old dog days of the second world war. The framing device, whatever the commercial reasons, also has the unfortunate effect of sapping a degree of urgency from this ponderous and unfocused 1944-set tale.
Hungarian Jewish lawyer Sonson (Luke Mably) is already in a forced labour camp when his wife’s sudden death from breast cancer pushes him into actively resisting the Nazis. He’s lit by love’s undying flame, walks to Poland in a third of the time it would take a lesser man, »
- Phil Hoad
Headshot review – ultra-violent Indonesian action-thriller
6 hours ago
Bad guys go on the rampage in this stylish and excessively gory iteration of the action genre
This Indonesian action film unfolds a story as old as time, or at least as old as film noir, in which a bad man (the undeniably charismatic Iko Uwais) experiences a trauma so severe (shot in the head, thrown into the sea) he wakes up with amnesia and somehow a completely different personality (which seems unlikely from a neurological point of view). Nerdy-cute medic Ailin (Chelsea Islan) nurses him back to health in the hospital and names him Ishmael after the narrator of Moby-Dick, which she happens to be reading at the time.
The film-making owes far less to any literary antecedents than it does to the kind of ultra-violent, stylish action films made in Hong Kong and Korea. As such, it’s a very good iteration of the genre, with moody lighting, »
- Leslie Felperin
The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood review – Makhmalbaf's essential early film returns
6 hours ago
The great auteur’s controversial 1990 critique of Iranian society is a rich meditation on family life, the legacy of violence and lost love
A survivor now living in exile, Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh, Kandahar) is one of Iran’s most important living auteurs, both literally and figuratively the father of a new generation of filmmakers, given he’s also the dad of Samira Makhmalbaf, Hana Makhmalbaf and Maysam Makhmalbaf.
This early feature, about an anthropology lecturer (Manuchehr Esmaili) and his daughter (Mojgan Naderi) living through the last years of the Shah, the revolution and its painful aftermath, was made in 1990 and shown publicly only once. However, the state censors objected to Makhmalbaf’s audacious critique of Iranian society, among other things, so they butchered the negative, cutting out 20 minutes of footage now thought to be lost for ever. In 2016, someone managed to salvage the surviving 63 minutes and smuggle it out of »
- Leslie Felperin
Fist Fight review – teachers' scrap brings fleeting snickers
6 hours ago
Ice Cube and Charlie Day play teachers who opt for an after-school ruckus in this rowdy but bland comedy
Charting the chaos that follows from aggrieved history teacher Ice Cube challenging meek colleague Charlie Day to an after-school ruckus, this fitful timewaster doubles rowdily down on all its flimsy-to-questionable ideas. Someone involved clearly believed there’s still mileage in watching grown men behaving like big kids, and that Day – whose oddball delivery on TV’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia remains a wonder – should be taking on those bland milquetoast roles rejected by Jason Bateman. Fleeting snickers result, but fellow Sunny parolee Richie Keen can’t hold a scene long enough for anybody to find a rhythm, let alone convert a looming backdrop of mass education layoffs into the basis of a socko funfest.
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- Mike McCahill
Kong: Skull Island review – only de-evolution can explain this zestless mashup
6 hours ago
Tom Hiddleston’s talents are lost in this jumbled jungle caper that repeatedly indulges in anti-climax and silliness
Deep in the distant jungle … the undergrowth stirs, the lagoons froth, the branches shake and a huge monster rears terrifyingly up on its haunches, blotting out the sun. Run for your lives! It’s a 700 ft turkey, making squawking and gobbling noises and preparing to lay a gigantic egg.
This fantastically muddled and exasperatingly dull quasi-update of the King Kong story looks like a zestless mashup of Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now and a few exotic visual borrowings from Miss Saigon. It gets nowhere near the elemental power of the original King Kong or indeed Peter Jackson’s game remake; it’s something Ed Wood Jr might have made with a trillion dollars to do what he liked with but minus the fun. The film gives away the ape’s physical appearance far too early, »
- Peter Bradshaw
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars review – grainy rock-doc records Bowie's brightest moment
6 hours ago
Da Pennebaker’s intimate record of one of rock history’s defining moments – David Bowie’s final concert performance as Ziggy Stardust
Related: David Bowie on Ziggy Stardust, white funk and other theatrical matters – a classic interview
David Bowie’s retiring of his alter ego Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Apollo in 1973 was one of those lightbulb moments, allowing Bowie to segue seamlessly into his Thin White Duke era, and expanding the horizons of what pop stars could and couldn’t do. The documentarian Da Pennebaker was present with a crew to capture the event for posterity, either through dumb luck or premeditation (Pennebaker swears it is the former), and the result is this concert film, rereleased into cinemas this week for a single-night show.
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- Gwilym Mumford
Don’t Take Me Home review – inside story of Wales's Euro 2016 run
7 hours ago
A brisk documentary follows the Welsh football team from 2012 to their incredible European Championships performance four years later
Were it not for the Premier League-winning exploits of Leicester City, the Welsh national football team’s performance in the European Championships would have unquestionably been last year’s great sporting underdog story – remarkable not only because of Wales’s minnow status in international football (this was their first tournament appearance since the 1958 World Cup), but also because it came just five years after the team lost their manager Gary Speed, who took his own life. Jonny Owen’s film takes up the story as new manager Chris Coleman is put in charge in 2012 and follows it all the way through to the Euros and ultimately Wales’s semi-final defeat to eventual winners Portugal, with Coleman, the team’s star player, Gareth Bale, and some of the fans who went along for »
- Gwilym Mumford
Critics assemble: our writers pick their favorite superhero films
8 hours ago
Batman v Superman v Captain America v all of the X-Men. Which cape-wearing, civilian-saving adventures are worth cheering?
Given the repetitive influx of superhero films in recent years, you’d be forgiven for wanting very little to do with anything involving a cape, a mask and a post-credits teaser for a long time. But wait, the R-rated Wolverine sequel Logan hits cinemas this week and critics agree that it’s worth getting over yourself for.
Related: Logan review – Hugh Jackman's Wolverine enters a winter of X-Men discontent
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- Peter Bradshaw, Lanre Bakare, Catherine Shoard, Benjamin Lee, Jordan Hoffman, Ben Child and Andrew Pulver
Tom Hanks sends espresso machine to help White House press fight for truth
9 hours ago
Coffee machine includes cartoon and note from actor to reporters covering the Trump administration
Tom Hanks has delivered an espresso machine to the White House press corps to provide a caffeinated boost to their efforts in the “good fight for truth”.
The gesture continues a long-running tradition by Hanks, who first bestowed a new coffee machine for the journalists covering the White House in 2004, during George W. Bush’s presidency.
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- Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Mr Gay Syria: ‘A beauty contest in this crisis? It’s a way of surviving’
10 hours ago
Gay Syrians have suffered horrific persecution under Isis. But a new documentary by Turkish director Ayşe Toprak about a beauty contest, Mr Gay Syria, hopes to follow Moonlight in changing perceptions
When the Oscar for best picture can go to a low-budget film with a gay protagonist and an entirely black cast, there is perhaps a temptation to assume that the struggle to tell diverse or unfamiliar stories must be over at last. The new documentary Mr Gay Syria should serve as a corrective to any such complacency.
Its title has about it the whiff of a tasteless joke. So successfully has Islamic State disseminated its doctrine of hatred that the mere idea of gay Syrians calls to mind gay men and boys being thrown to their death from rooftops. But that was one of the reasons why Mahmoud Hassino, who works with Lgbt refugees in Berlin, set up a »
- Ryan Gilbey
The Love Witch director Anna Biller: ‘I’m in conversation with the pornography all around us’
11 hours ago
Biller’s latest film is a stylish feminist fantasy of witchcraft in the modern era – and, she says, Trump has made it more relevant than ever
‘The big question,” says Anna Biller, “is what would happen if men loved women as strongly as women want them to; the way women crave to be loved by men. Men are known for being much less emotional than women, but, in my experience, they’re much more emotional. And that’s why they won’t, or can’t, open that gate – it would destroy them. And that’s what kills all the men in my movie – having to experience their own feelings.”
Biller is the director of The Love Witch, a feminist, style-drenched fantasy of witchcraft in the modern era, rendered in self-consciously stilted and melodramatic dialogue against a mise-en-scene of eye-popping coordinated colours and costumes. Elaine (Samantha Robinson) is a young witch »
- John Patterson
Certain Women review – quietly mysterious tale of lives on the edge | Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
13 hours ago
Michelle Williams, Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart are utterly engaging in Kelly Reichardt’s heartfelt study of three women in small-town Montana
Delicacy, intelligence, compassion and control are what writer-director Kelly Reichardt brings to her muted but utterly involving new film, about separate women’s lives in the prairie towns of southern Montana in the United States. It features Laura Dern as provincial lawyer Laura, Michelle Williams as discontented wife and mother Gina, and Kristen Stewart as law student and teacher Elizabeth.
Related: Kelly Reichardt: 'Faster, faster, faster – we all want things faster'
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- Peter Bradshaw
Susan Sarandon: 'It’s an easy place to put your frustrations, to blame me'
15 hours ago
The actor discusses playing Bette Davis in the new small-screen drama Feud and why she’s tired of people criticizing her for refusing to support Hillary Clinton
Susan Sarandon is here to talk about a much-publicized feud between two successful women. But, as the Oscar-winning actor and activist had made crystal clear the week before I spoke to her, during a tense interview on MSNBC’s All In, she’s not interested in talking about that feud.
Related: ‘I wouldn’t sit on her toilet …’ Screen revival of Davis and Crawford feud sparks sexism debate
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- Benjamin Lee in New York
'The audience got the gag immediately': how London cinema spoofed Oscar mixup
15 hours ago
The Rio in Dalston teased viewers by playing part of La La Land trailer before screening Moonlight
The Rio cinema in Dalston, London, pranked its audience after the notorious best picture announcement fiasco by playing a short snippet of La La Land before a screening of Moonlight, as a “mistake”.
Oliver Meek, executive director of the Rio, said that after the events on Oscar night, when La La Land was announced as winner of the best picture Academy award instead of the actual winner, Moonlight, “we thought: wouldn’t it be funny if we played a bit of La La Land?”
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- Andrew Pulver
Moonlight's Barry Jenkins on Oscar fiasco: 'It’s messy, but it’s kind of gorgeous'
16 hours ago
In a joint interview with La La Land director Damien Chazelle, the director of the eventual best picture winner shares his emotions on the Academy’s most eventful night
The two men whose movies won best picture at this year’s Oscars – albeit one of them only briefly – have talked about their solidarity in a joint interview.
Speaking to Variety the morning after an Oscars ceremony that will be remembered for the final-reel fiasco that saw La La Land wrongly named best picture, before the award was rightly given to Moonlight, Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle discussed the camaraderie they found had come with a long campaign, climaxing in such strange style.
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- Catherine Shoard
Oscars president: accountants responsible for best picture mix-up banned
21 hours ago
PwC representatives Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz will not work awards show again, said Cheryl Boone Isaacs, four days after wrong winner was announced
The president of the film academy says the two accountants responsible for the best-picture flub at Sunday’s Academy awards will never work the Oscars again.
Related: Anatomy of an Oscars fiasco: how La La Land was mistakenly announced as best picture
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- Associated Press
Beauty and the Beast to feature first 'exclusively gay moment' in a Disney movie
1 March 2017 9:19 AM, PST
Director of forthcoming live-action reboot, starring Emma Watson, says film features same-sex love story
The upcoming live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast will feature Disney’s first gay character, according to the film’s director.
Speaking to Attitude Magazine, Bill Condon has said that he and the movie’s writers and producers have developed the admiration felt by sidekick LeFou (played by actor Josh Gad) for Gaston, one of the film’s male leads. LeFou’s gradual reconciliation with his sexuality acts, says Condon, as a way of increasing Lgbt visibility on screen.
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- Catherine Shoard
Table 19 review – divorce yourself from this unfunny wedding comedy
1 March 2017 7:55 AM, PST
Anna Kendrick, Lisa Kudrow and Stephen Merchant are all wasted in an embarrassingly tone-deaf film filled with thin characters and bad writing
At weddings – or at least at weddings in the movies – there’s that moment when the officiant says: “If anyone knows of a reason to prevent this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace.” I only wish I could have been present when so many actors I admire said “I do” to this tone-deaf, embarrassing motion picture.
To be fair, there is a kernel of a good idea in Table 19. It’s all set at a wedding, where beloved family and friends are close to the action at tables one, two and three. In the back, and close to the bathrooms, is the table of “randoms”, the guests invited out of social obligation who ought to have had the decency to send their regrets.
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- Jordan Hoffman
Alien: Covenant trailer: five things we've learned about the xenomorph saga
1 March 2017 7:13 AM, PST
The Covenant crew are more intent on getting drunk than contemplating the cosmos, and the Engineers have reason to have beef with mankind
The “big boy” is back. Five years after the sporadically thrilling yet utterly obtuse Prometheus left us with more questions than answers about the Alien universe and the mysterious, godlike Engineers, the latest trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant restores the iconic xenomorph to centre stage – or at least, its 21st-century cousin. But can the veteran film-maker’s latest venture into the drool-dripping maw of extra-terrestrial purgatory satisfyingly pick up all those lost threads from its frustrating predecessor? What happened to Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw and Michael Fassbender’s David the android, last seen setting off for the Engineers’ home world in a borrowed ship? Will the new crew prove any more canny than their forebears at sidestepping completely avoidable demises? And do our space »
- Ben Child
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