December again. For some years, I've posted recommendations for recent BluRay/DVD releases, CDs and books that might be of use for anyone wondering what Christmas gifts to buy. (I find choosing presents very difficult, so am myself always open to ideas from friends.) So here we go once more. I hope some of the suggestions … Continue reading Movies, music and books for Christmas – and beyond…
Until the recent release of a three-disc BluRay set on Criterion’s ‘Eclipse’ series, most of the films by the late, very great Iranian writer-director Abbas Kiarostami made before his 1986 breakthrough feature Where Is the Friend’s House? have been almost impossible to see, surfacing only at occasional retrospectives around the world. With the sole exception … Continue reading Kiarostami at Kanoon: Early Jewels from a Cinematic Giant
I’ve generally been more admiring of Alan Bennett’s books and his writing for television (particularly the superb Talking Heads monologues) than of the films either adapted from his plays or based, in the case of A Private Function, on an original screenplay. Still, I’ve counted myself a Bennett fan since first encountering him in the … Continue reading Singing of Love and War: Alan Bennett’s The Choral
It is our loss that Michael Haneke, undoubtedly one of the most important writer-directors of recent times – and, in my opinion (for what that’s worth) probably our greatest living filmmaker – seems no longer to be at work. Before Covid hit, the Austrian had apparently written a television series about the effects of globalisation … Continue reading More Gems from Michael Haneke: the TV Films
I have always failed to understand why the films of the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have seldom attained the box-office success they’ve deserved in the UK. I had been totally knocked out by the first film of theirs I saw – La Promesse - when it played in the 1996 London Film Festival, … Continue reading Modest but Masterly: the Dardennes’ Brilliant ‘Young Mothers’
There are currently a couple of very fine French movies playing in and around London and the UK, but since each is what many in the industry regard as a ‘small film’ – lasting a mere 100 minutes or so, with no stars, dealing with more or less ordinary people leading more or less ordinary … Continue reading Two Very Impressive New French Films: Catch ’em While You Can…
While little contemporary American filmmaking is to my taste – most of it’s not made for people of my age – there are a number of dependably rewarding directors whose new movies I always make a point of catching; one such, undoubtedly, is the prolific Steven Soderbergh. Since I first saw sex, lies and videotape back … Continue reading Black Bag and Steven Soderbergh: a talent to treasure
I’ve been posting my ‘best of the year’ lists since I first started writing here in 2016, and on each occasion I felt a need to mention in passing the state of the UK and of the world. Well, we may have got rid of the wretched Tories, but what with Trump, Musk et al, … Continue reading My Best Movies, Music, Books, etc, in 2024
So it's December again. For quite a few years now I've posted recommendations for recent BluRay/DVD releases, CDs and books that might prove useful for anyone wondering what to buy as gifts for Christmas; they appear to have been popular, so here we go again. (I myself find choosing presents enormously difficult, so I’m always … Continue reading Movies, Music and Books for Christmas… and Beyond
For me at least, there could be few BluRay releases more welcome than a new boxed set of four classic crime serials by Louis Feuillade. ‘Louis who?’ you may be wondering, and not without reason, even if the French filmmaker was enormously successful back in the 1910s, i.e. in the years when the cinema was … Continue reading Crime, Conspiracy and the Prospect of Chaos: Four Filmic Triumphs from Louis Feuillade
notes and observations by Geoff Andrew 