Category: Art

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Art Features Live Action Movies

Nobody Likes Me
(Nikdo Mne Nemá Rád)

Directors – Petr Kazda, Tomáš Weinreb – 2024 – Czechia, Slovakia, France – 105m
*****

The female gaze. An introvert woman finds love in an unlikely place where, it turns out, there are catches – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A figure stands in interior darkness. Watching. She moves forward. She lies down on the bed. She sits up. She makes and eats a simple breakfast. She stands on a moving tram; the brown autumn leaves behind her. At her desk, wearing her military uniform, Sarah (Rebeka Poláková) details to the Commander his itinerary for the day, and fields requests from others for his attention. She seems content in her work.

One evening, Sarah sees a woman across the street in physical difficulty. Perhaps she should help but, frozen on the spot, she stares. The woman starts to throw up – presumably she’s had too much to drink. A man appears from nowhere and comes to the woman’s aid. Sarah can’t take her eyes off him. The female gaze. He looks back at her. She looks back at him.

She gets on well with her dad, a doctor, who she regularly visits at his surgery for health check-ups.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Van Gogh
Poets & Lovers

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

*****

Fascinating journey through Van Gogh’s two plus years in Arles and Saint-Rémy in the South of France through his paintings of 1888-90 (collected in the current National Gallery exhibition) and readings from his letters – out in UK cinemas from Wednesday, November 6th

This is the latest offering in Exhibition on Screen’s excellent series of films about art, which usually tie in with some current, recent or upcoming art exhibition. In this case, the tie-in is with the National Gallery’s current offering Van Gogh – Poets & Lovers, and on one level the film follows EoS’ tried and tested template of shooting footage of the exhibition and paintings along with interviews with exhibition curators (in this instance, Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle) and assorted artists, critics or other biographers.

It also incorporates footage of actor Jamie de Courcey playing Vincent van Gogh – more as shots from moving visual tableaux than anything else (a form of filmic illustration, if you will) – the actor isn’t required to speak dialogue – to break up the whole and make it more manageable by the viewer.

Vincent van Gogh who, as Homburg notes early on, had within 25 years of his death become the best known artist in the world, is something of a gift to anyone making a film about him.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Exhibitions Movies

LAIKA
FRAME x FRAME

Pic: Toby Lewis Thomas, courtesy LAIKA and BFI

*****

Exhibition shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by the Stop Motion animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

In the best part of two decades, US-based Laika Studios – named after the first dog in space – has carved itself a niche as arguably the foremost producer of stop-motion animation puppet films. That’s distinctly different from the other leading company in the stop-motion field, UK-based Aardman Animations, who specialise in plasticine animation. The difference is that plasticine is a malleable substance that can be reworked and remodelled one frame at a time, whereas although puppets can be moved a frame at a time, they can’t be remodelled.

Laika have consistently (and deservedly, in this writer’s opinion) picked up Oscar nominations for each of their five features, a remarkable achievement that speaks of the high quality of their work. Their five features (with a sixth forthcoming) are:

  • Coraline (2009): A young girl is lured into a darker, parallel world.
  • Paranorman (2012): A boy who can speak with the dead, ostracised by his local community, must save his town from dark forces by righting centuries-old wrongs.
… Read the rest
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Animation Art Features Movies

Kubo
and the Two Strings

Director – Travis Knight – 2016 – US – Cert. PG – 101m

*****

The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK; republished to coincide with the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

A Hollywood film inspired by the Far East.

Western cinema in general and animation in particular has long held an interest in all things Oriental. Every so often, a film made in the West pays homage to one aspect or another of Eastern culture. The animated fantasy Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest entry in this curious Western sub-genre. It’s a dark fairytale about the quest of a boy named Kubo for his late father’s long-lost suit of armour to protect himself from the evil spirits of his grandfather and two aunts.

The company behind the production are US stop-frame outfit Laika who previously made Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls. All three like Kubo are dark visions far removed from the upbeat fare that constitutes much contemporary Hollywood animation.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eno

Director – Gary Hustwit – 2023 – UK – 83m

**** (on this occasion)

Musician, artist and activist Brian Eno has been at the cutting edge of creativity for 50 years, and this generative, AI-programmed film plays in a different version every time it is shown – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

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Disclaimer: This film is being touted as a film that’s different every time it screens: thus, I need to declare that I saw the version shown to press in London on 03.07.2024 (which was prepared as a file for viewing on 26.04.2024). Things included in that version might or might not be in the one you see. So, in a sense, you have to take this review with a pinch of salt. The version I saw ran 83 minutes. Officially, it’s supposed to be 90, so that exact running length may vary too. Or not. I really don’t know.

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Brian Eno hasn’t made the film himself, yet clearly he’s the perfect subject for it. He talks about “accidentally” getting involved with Roxy Music after being asked by band member Andy Mackay to help them record (as in, do the work required to record them at a recording studio) some pieces and realising that recording and performing with the band would help him pursue his interest in exploring emerging new technologies and their creative possibilities.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
My National Gallery

Director – Phil Grabsky, Ali Ray – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 98m

*****

Employees, punters and celebrities choose their favourite painting in London’s National Gallery – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, June 4th

There have been documentary films about the UK’s National Gallery before, notably the wonderful, three-hour-long National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014), so, in a way, it’s a brave subject for the Exhibition on Screen people to take on. And yet, as a British production company making movies about art in art galleries, it was inevitable that they would tackle the subject sooner or later. Their version commences with a likeable enough establishing montage of what one might call ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘footfall’ – shots of various National Gallery employees at work opening the door, looking after various aspects of the art housed in the gallery and even putting out tasty-looking croissants in the cafeteria.

There are satisfying little touches throughout. A shot of The Feast Day of Saint Roch, Canaletto, with out of focus people passing in front of it, makes it feel like you’re really there in the scene depicted.

Alan Allison, security officer and gallery assistant (pictured on the front of the trailer, below) wears black clothing with a striking, patterned blue tie.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

Late nineteenth century society portrait painter John Singer Sargent was fascinated more by their clothing and the possibilities of paint than he was by the women he painted – documentary is out in UK cinemas for selected screenings from Tuesday, April 16th

Based on the exhibition first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and now at Tate Britain, this opens with incidental music that conjures a contemporary dance floor, a soundtrack which provokes a strange tension with paintings hanging on walls and costumes displayed in glass cases as the camera moves through the physical spaces in which they are displayed. But then, the title suggests this might be a little different from Exhibition on Screen’s usual fare.

John Singer Sargent’s A Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (A Lady In White), 1889-90, shows the energy and intensity of his portraiture. The brushstrokes are arresting and like nothing else being done at the time. The paintings might be perfect, but the people within them most definitely are not: Sargent captures their imperfections in a most compelling way. He looked deeply at people, and some of his sitters were afraid to sit for him because of what he might see.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Painting
the Modern Garden
– Monet to Matisse

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2016 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

***1/2

The relationship of Claude Monet’s late water lily paintings to the history of horticulture, along with a few other artists and their gardens – out in UK cinemas for one day only on Tuesday, February 27th

Originally made to coincide with the Royal Academy’s 2016 exhibition of the same name, this basically does what it says on the tin. With Exhibition on Screen’s excellent series of documentaries about art and artists receiving brief cinema outings in recent years, this entry from the back catalogue is given a big screen outing. While the exhibition has long since been and gone, French Impressionist painter Claude Monet is one of those figures from the history of art who is incredibly popular, especially the late garden or water lily paintings, so a documentary about those late paintings ought to be a fairly easy sell.

Those Monet works and the garden he built at his house in Giverny – rented from 1893, owned from 1900 thanks to a loan from his dealer – are very much the spiritual centre of the film, along with Monet’s skill as a horticulturalist, which is explored at quite some length.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

SCALA!!!
Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits

Directors – Ali Catterall, Jane Giles – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 96m

*****

From 1978 to 1993, London’s Scala Cinema programmed everything from art house to sexploitation, ushering in the upcoming generation of anti-establishment musicians, filmmakers, and others – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 5th

Whatever the strengths of this film – and they are legion – it may be impossible for me to write an objective review of it. From my first visit to Tottenham Street to watch an afternoon programme of back-to-back Tex Avery animation shorts on Saturday, 25th October 1980, I could often be found at London’s Scala cinema in the 1980s, broadening my mind as I lapped up welcome servings of movies long or short, old or new, highbrow or trashy. So there are a few additional titbits in what follows which come from my own personal, mental Scala archive of memory rather than from the documentary itself.

As for the date, my memory’s not actually that good. Such information can, however, be discerned from the wondrous if unfeasibly large-sized book SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, which amongst other things contains all the monthly Scala programmes. It was written by co-director and former Scala employee / programmer Jane Giles’ and edited by fellow co-director Ali Catterall.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Exhibition on Screen:
Klimt & the Kiss

Gustav Klimt

Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

*****

A look at one of the world’s favourite paintings, housed in Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, and the wider body of work of the artist who created it – out in UK cinemas on Monday, October 30th for one day only

All lovers of art have their blind spots. That’s partly why we go to exhibitions, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is one of those images everyone knows, since it’s been widely reproduced as prints, while movie buffs know it from the opening museum sequence of Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) and as a major influence on the visuals of The Thief And The Cobbler (Richard Williams, 1993). Beyond that, however, my knowledge of both Klimt and the painting itself are sparse. This latest entry in producer Phil Grabsky’s excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art is therefore most welcome since it proves highly informative about both.

Accompanied by a perfectly judged piano score of sequences of notes rising and falling, it opens on out of focus images of gold surfaces before showing us a detail of the two heads in the painting viewed not, as you might expect, straight on, but from a side angle.… Read the rest