Reviewed by Lee Hill Film critics are known for superlatives with a shelf-life that makes the average fruit fly seem like one of the immortals. As newspapers and magazines became as quaint as brass rubbings, fewer critics make any money from what they do and being asked to contribute a blurb for a sub-adolescent comic book tie-in, paint-by-numbers rom com or earnest biopic now qualifies as a career high, I…
Read MoreFilm Review: Zama
Reviewed by Lee Hill Zama is a sly historical anti-epic that deconstructs the expectations and assumptions viewers often bring to a certain kind of prestige film. Writer/director Lucrecia Martel’s first feature since The Headless Woman in 2008, follows the tragicomic efforts of a loyal colonial magistrate to maintain dignity as his superiors and those he rules treat him with contempt or indifference.
Read MoreScreenwords Meets The Makers Of Mansfield 66/67
Interviewed by Linda Marric We speak to P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes, the married couple behind the intriguing new documentary about Hollywood camp legend Jayne Mansfield. One of the most talked about stars of the classical Hollywood era, Mansfield was at one time as famous and as sought after as Marilyn Monroe. Regarded by many as one of the most recognisable sex symbols of the studio era, Mansfield had…
Read MoreFilm Review: Filmworker
Reviewed by Lee Hill When Stanley Kubrick was alive, little was known about his working methods due to his unwillingness to participate in publicity beyond the release date. As the gaps between films grew, Kubrick’s reclusiveness added to the mystique that his canon was created in near perfect, seemingly infinite and almost magic conditions of freedom and possibility. Since Kubrick died in 1999, the mythic aura around Kubrick remains, but…
Read MoreFilm Review: A Cambodian Spring
Reviewed by Lee Hill On paper, a two hour plus account of a land dispute in Cambodia sounds like a worthy documentary subject, but also like being forced to eat all your vegetables. The reality is that A Cambodian Spring works on the senses like a sly thriller with close to the bone reminders of how many developers flaunt the law and human rights in collaboration with governments ducking responsibility…
Read MoreFilm Review: Revenge
Reviewed by Luke Channell The rape-revenge genre is a challenging place to start for any new director, yet Coralie Fargeat knocks it out of the park with her super-stylish, blood-splattered debut feature Revenge. It’s scarcely believable that this is Fargeat’s first film, such is the assurance and distinctiveness of her direction. Fargeat’s confidently approaches the often-maligned rape-revenge genre, making subtle but invigorating changes to its tropes. The result is a…
Read MoreRedoubtable: Screenwords Meets Director Michel Hazanavicius
Nadia Bee talks to director Michel Hazanavicius about his latest film Redoubtable. A cheerfully iconoclastic film, Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable has provoked both ire and delight. Jean-Luc Godard is considered such a key figure in both European culture and political history that to treat him with levity is outrageous to some, and just deserts to others. Hazanavicius has said that critical responses have, at times, been as if he’d peed on the…
Read MoreFilm Review: Mansfield 66/67
Reviewed by Lee Hill After Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield is the other mythic blonde bombshell that haunts Hollywood’s past and present. Her fame mainly rests on her comedic roles in two Frank Tashlin films, The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), arguably the first truly visionary rock n’ roll movie, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957). Typecast as a well-endowed bimbo, Mansfield tried to do more serious work, but earned…
Read MoreFilm Review: Entebbe
Reviewed by Lee Hill A glance at the Wikipedia entry for Operation Entebbe, the 4 July 1976 raid by Israeli commandos into Uganda to rescue 106 passengers of a hijacked Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, reveals a depressing number of near forgotten films, made-for-TV movies, documentaries and other fictions inspired-by. The historical record somehow remains unsullied by these attempts at a greater truth (read: mega-box office success…
Read MoreFilm Review: New Town Utopia
Reviewed by Lee Hill Christopher Ian Smith’s lyrical documentary looks at Basildon, one of 10 new towns approved and developed to provide innovative as well as affordable housing solutions after the Second World War. In September 1948 MP Lewis Silkin. Minister of Town and Country Planning in Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government said: “Basildon will become a City which people from all over the world will want to visit. It…
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