Tag: art

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Features Live Action Movies

Fountain of Youth
(2025)

Director – Guy Ritchie – 2025 – US – Cert. 12a – 126m

*

Two estranged, treasure-hunting siblings, with the help of a rich backer, pursue the trail towards the life-giving water source of legend, pursued by forces that want to prevent them from doing so – premieres globally on Apple TV+ from Friday, May 23rd

Films get made in a variety of different ways. According to the press handouts, this one came about initially through producer Tripp Vinson’s research into the legendary Fountain of Youth and the desire to have a globe-trotting hero searching for it. This idea was developed by screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Scream VI, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, 2022; The Amazing Spider-man, Marc Webb, 2012; Zodiac, David Fincher, 2007) into where the hero was not one but two people, an estranged brother and sister. When director Ritchie later came on board, he brought to it the idea of the journey being more important than the destination. This is not, therefore, a director-led project. In the process of making movies, however, it is ultimately the director, once they are on board, who is responsible for the myriad decisions that are taken in putting the film on the screen.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Riefenstahl

Director – Andres Veiel – 2024 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 115m

*****

An unsettling, deep dive into the indisputable artistic talent, evasive personality and self-reconstructed memory of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl through her personal archive of some 700 boxes – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 9th

Sepia / yellow images. A woman walking by the sea. Incidental music suggesting a reaching, a striving. Out of focus images of crowds lining the streets, coming into focus to proclaim, “Heil, mein Fuhrer.” The lighting of the Olympic flame, the firing of a gun at a track event. Leni Riefenstahl, as a young woman, examining hanging strips of 35mm film at the editor’s bench. And then an extract from a talk show: would she do it differently if she could live her life again? What were her mistakes? Her close association with Hitler? She hesitates – you can almost feel her squirming, trying to find a way round the question. She starts talking about her first film as director, The Blue Light (1932), a mountaineering picture in which she did all the rock climbing stunts herself. She didn’t know of Hitler at this point, she says. “If the Fascists saw you”, she was told, “you would become their hero.”… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Dawn of Impressionism
Paris 1874

Director – Ali Ray – 2025 – UK – Cert. U – 91m

*****

The origins of Impressionism are revealed via the 1874, anti-art-establishment exhibition which birthed what is today the world’s favourite art movement – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, March 18th

At the present time, the best known school of painting in the history of art must surely be Impressionism. To both open this latest Exhibition on Screen outing and promote the film on its posters, the filmmakers head to arguably the most iconic Impressionist painting of them all, Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise (1872), pictured above. To reinforce the point, a brief art auction sequence shows one of his paintings fetching astronomical prices.

Exhibition on Screen’s excellent, history of art documentary series entries are often built around one or more specific art exhibitions, and this one uses two as its foundation. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris held Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism from March 26th until July 14th 2024, after which the exhibition travelled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC to appear under the slightly different moniker Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment from September 8th 2024 until January 19th 2025. Alas, this is not one of those cases where your appetite will be whetted to go and see a current or upcoming exhibition, because both shows have already been and gone.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eno

Director – Gary Hustwit – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 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 – 24-hour online screening event 5pm GMT on Friday, January 24th 2025, ticket info below review

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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

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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 Documentary Features Live Action Movies

A Sudden Glimpse
to Deeper Things

Director – Mark Cousins – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 88m

*****

A look at Scots artist and painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who had synaesthesia – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 18th

I am someone who frequents art galleries, yet I have to confess that before seeing this film, I had never heard of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Cousins starts his film off assuming we know nothing about her.

He starts with images. Who is this old woman on a verandah with palm trees in the background? Or peering down at rocky ground wearing an all-weather coat?

In later years, she frequently wore a necklace she had made resembling, in Cousins’ words, Concorde with droplets.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a woman to whom all men were attracted (“she’d have flirted with you”, a woman who knew her tells Marc) was fascinated by order and disorder. Her arresting 1967 abstract painting Pilgrimage consists of Vermillion squares on brown, jostling as if in a procession across the picture surface.

Her father (and here Cousins cuts in the moving image of Joseph Cotten giving his “if you rip the sides off houses you’ll find swine” speech from Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) never wanted her to be an artist.… Read the rest

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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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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Made in England:
The Films of
Powell and Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger on the set of The Red Shoes

Director – David Hinton – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 129m

*****

Martin Scorsese talks about the seminal British filmmaking duo, and how they inspired his own movies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

As a child, Martin Scorsese suffered from asthma and would constantly find himself at home while other kids were outside playing. He often found himself sitting front of the black and white TV watching a show called Million Dollar Movie. This would show a movie a week, playing it several times, and it was at a time when US producers wouldn’t sell their movie rights to TV but British producers would. Consequently, he grew up watching black and white versions of old British movies.

The ones he particularly liked opened with an arrow hitting a target: “a production of the Archers. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.” When this logo and these names appeared, Scorsese always knew he was in good hands. He watched these movies over and over again whenever they were shown, and learned much of his filmmaking craft from them. The first of these films to which he thrilled didn’t have this logo: it was the Alexander Korda production of The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) and parts of the film have the unmistakeable Powell visual stamp.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

La Chimera
(La Chimera)

Director – Alice Rohrwacher – 2023 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 133m

***

In an attempt to come to terms with his past, an ex-con returns to his home town, where he previously used to rob ancient artefacts from burial sites and graves – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to get in La Chimera, and after watching it, I was none the wiser. Arthur (Josh O’Connor) comes out of prison and gets the train back to Tuscany. He meets some girls on a train, and the profile of one of them reminds him of decorative Etruscan art. He has a run in with a sock salesman, who tells him he smells.

Getting off the train, he tries hard not to be picked up by an old mate, who wants to take him to see a bunch of friends. He’s been in prison for grave-robbing and doesn’t want to get back into that game. Instead, he returns to the house of his deceased (or at least presumed deceased|) girlfriend Beniamina, where her mother Flora (an unrecognisable Isabella Rossellini) refuses to believe that Beniamina has gone. While Flora welcomes him with open arms, and introduces him to her maid and singing pupil Italia (Carole Duarte), she’s happy to be there.… Read the rest

Categories
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