The Edinburgh Film Festival finished a couple of weeks ago. As ever, I went along and saw a bunch of films and stage interviews. The programme had been a little disappointing, mostly due to feeling a little constricted – some things that are usually present were dropped (Mirrorball being the most obvious example) and the [...]
One of my recent DVD acquisitions was Festen, the first of the Dogma 95 films. In spite of not having seen the film since it came out more than a decade ago (though I did re-watch it once then after first seeing it at the EIFF) it’s been one of the films I think back [...]
One of the best films that I saw at the EIFF this year was Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure about Abu Ghraib. It takes his usual approach: a series of interviews with those involved with limited narration. Here the most prominent interviewees are Lynndie England and Sabrina Harmann, together others who were either directly [...]
I saw Wong Kar Wai’s new film My Blueberry Nights a week or two back. It has had fairly poor reviews, mostly criticising the film for being insubstantial but pretty. This is fair comment but the reviews seem much harsher than is deserved – the film really is gorgeous and it never felt like it [...]
It’s new year’s eve in Los Angeles; Wilson and Vivian have met as a result of a craigslist advert posted earlier in the day. He’s had a terrible year – his attempts to pursue his dreams started to go wrong before he even reached the city – and as we find out during the film [...]