Movies

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Scary habit: How a period drama star embraced horror

Known for period movies such as Atonement and Suffragette or the BBC newsroom drama The Hour and Jane Austen’s Emma on the TV, you might call it a surprise that British actress Romola Garai, for her first feature as director, has made a blood-curdlin..

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Lilli Palmer: The refugee who starred alongside Fred Astaire and Clark Gable

In the spring of 1954 Lilli Palmer, star of Hollywood and Broadway, walked onto the floor of the Bavarian Film Studio on the outskirts of Munich to meet the crew on her first day filming the Kurt Hoffmann project Feuerwerk (Fireworks). She was still..

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Capturing the Chinese dream

“No tattoos, no earrings,” barks another recruitment hawker, attracting a decent crowd. “No metal rods in your body. And no sitting down.” Damn, I thought, that would rule me out of earning the advertised $2.29 an hour. Work Hard And Your Dreams Will..

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The American ugliness that has its base in race

If you grew up African American, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian, part of another community of colour, Jewish, sometimes Roman Catholic, you know of an American phenomenon. RWP: Rampaging White People. Its latest manifestation came on January 6 last ye..

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This documentary about a cow is udderly compelling

Fêted in Europe, invited to festivals and on to major juries (last summer, she oversaw the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes), could it be that British audiences don’t know a good thing when they see it? She admits her films do better in France an..

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How Dougal and the Blue Cat became a glorious advert for pan-European eccentricity

A trip to the pictures in early 1972 was a challenging affair. Settling down with your carton of Kia-Ora, you squinted through wisps of cigarette fumes (only Rank cinemas then offered non-smoking sections) at the likes of A Clockwork Orange, Roman Po..

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Father Christmas is Back Review: Is this the worst Christmas film ever?

In the long, lonely lockdown of winter 2020, I became dangerously fixated on Christmas. I had been dedicated to Halloween too, mindlessly carving pumpkins for hours at a time with John Carpenter’s back catalogue playing in the background. Time was fl..

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From West Wide Story to Into the Woods: The (film) feast of Stephen

Stephen Sondheim, who died last month, was a noted cineaste. So much so that Steven Spielberg, whose reboot of Sondheim’s West Side Story opens this week, said: “He knew more about movies than almost anyone I’d met.” The composer once said: “Movies w..

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The Hand of God: A love story of Football and Naples

When accepting the Oscar for his 2013 masterpiece The Great Beauty, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino dedicated the win to his parents and family, and mentioned his other key influences: “Talking Heads, Federico Fellini and Diego Maradona.” It shoul..

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Céline Sciamma: The world’s most important film-maker

Sweeping statement though it may be, I don’t think there’s a more important film-maker in the world right now than Céline Sciamma. The French director is at the vanguard of female film-makers who have gradually tilted one of the oldest and most per..

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Was a CIA operative the vital piece in the Kennedy puzzle?

Remember Zelig, the Woody Allen mockumentary about a human chameleon who, through his desire to fit in, finds himself at the centre of the 20th century’s key events? Well, de Mohrenschildt was pretty much a real-life Zelig, only it was his business t..

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Arsene Wenger: The invincible man

It is co-directed by Gabriel Clarke and Christian Jeanpierre. Clarke is well-known in the UK as ITV Sport’s touchline reporter, delivering the preview features and post-match interviews at England games and throughout the first, formative 25 years of..

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