Tag: friend

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Robot Dreams

Director – Pablo Berger – 2023 – Spain – Cert. PG – 102m

*****

In need of a companion, Dog builds Robot – but then, disaster strikes – charming, dialogue-free 2D animation is out in UK cinemas Friday, 22nd March following its screenings in the 2023 London Film Festival

The 1980s. Brooklyn. The East Village. Bored with endless, cook from frozen macaroni cheese meals from the fridge and channel hopping or playing both parts of computerised table tennis against himself, Dog longs for a companion. To this end, he buys a DIY self-assembly kit from which he builds Robot. For a short period, the pair are inseparable, walking and eating hot dogs together in Central Park, but then disaster strikes after Robot swims in the sea when the pair visit the beach. When it’s time to go home, his battery power is depleted, and he can’t move.

So Dog has to leave incapacitated Robot there. He buys books on robots from the local bookstore to work out how to repair his friend. Alas, on arrival at the beach, he discovers it’s closed since yesterday was the last day of the Summer season. A less than sympathetic cop won’t listen to his entreaties and sends him packing; Dog later returns with bolt cutters and removed the chain and padlock preventing entry, but is apprehended by the unsympathetic policeman before he can rescue Robot.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

In The Court
Of The
Crimson King:
King Crimson
At 50

Director – Toby Amies – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 86m

****1/2

Life behind the scenes members of the latest iteration of the band King Crimson, the revolving door institution helmed for half a century by musician Robert Fripp, as they rehearse and perform a tour – out in UK cinemas from Friday 7th April

Rather like the band King Crimson, what you see here is at once what you get and something entirely different.

The phrase “Toby’s camera” (which I’ll use later) seems apt. One doesn’t usually speak so personally of a director, and it’s not the case that I personally know Toby Amies or anything like that. Yet there’s a beguiling intimacy about this documentary. From the evidence here, King Crimson founder, guitarist and keyboard player Robert Fripp is a perfectionist liable to be thrown if something isn’t quite right: he describes all previous iterations of the band, something of a revolving door in which he’s been the sole constant member over the years, as painful and tells us that the current version of the band (together since 2013) is the one with which his experience has been happiest.

At one point, Toby mentions that he feels like he’s interviewing for the job of making the film as he’s shooting it.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Pickpocket

Director – Robert Bresson – 1959 – France – Cert. PG – 76m

*****

Why is a man compelled to pursue acts of petty thievery – acclaimed, arresting, existential drama is out in cinemas on Friday, June 3rd

I have just rewatched Bresson’s classic and am still not entirely sure I have its measure. Perhaps that’s the thing about great works of art. Oh, to have seen it on its original release, had I been old enough, and watch it without the baggage of it being proclaimed a cinematic masterwork.

Words on the screen proclaim at the outset that this is not the thriller its title might suggest; it’s rather a study of a man who repeatedly commits crimes which is trying to understand why he would do that.

The characters, of whom the main protagonist Michel (Martin LaSalle) is the one who gets most screen time and indeed, is scarcely if ever off the scree, are played deadpan, with Bresson doing his utmost to ensure that his cast perform the roles without acting. He doesn’t want the actors’ craft to come between us and his images of people doing, being, talking. He seeks to avoid the artificiality of acting thereby allowing his performers to realise his images without any acting technique mediating them.… Read the rest