Tag: landscape

Exhibition on Screen
Turner & Constable

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 March 2026
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Turner & Constable
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Director – David Bickerstaff – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

A journey through the current Tate Britain show and art history about the two rival landscape painters – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, March 10th

This latest Exhibition on Screen entry kicks off in uncharacteristic fashion with photographic shots of landscape (typical of views that used by painters Turner and Constable) accompanied by an excerpt from the poem Richmond by James Thomson (1834-1882), a favourite of both painters whose work will be similarly deployed (voiced by Robert Lindsay) at appropriate intervals throughout this documentary.

However, the film soon moves into more familiar territory with shots of present day London and of the Tate Britain’s current Turner & Constable exhibition, with visitors admiring some of the paintings on display. Amy Concannon, Manton Senior Curator, Historic British Art, Tate Britain, notes that this show represents the first time the two painters have been displays side by side on such a vast scale. Turner & Constable were born within a year of one another, which became a catalyst for the current show’s displaying them together.

Artist, writer and broadcaster Lachlan Goudie talks about the “dazzling” influence of both artists on the likes of Delacroix.… Read the rest

Tags 1768, 1802, 1806, 1815, 1819, 1820s, 1832, Alps, Amy Concannon, art, art exhibition, art historian, artist, artists’ sketchbook, bought and sold, British artist, British national consciousness, broadcaster, brushstroke, business, canal, castle, child prodigy, Claude Lorrain, commerce, Constable, Constable clouds, country, country boy, countryside, Covent Garden, critical attention, Curator of British Art 1790-1850, David Bickerstaff, declaration of peace, Delacroix. Nicola Moorby, drawing, East Anglia, Exhibition On Screen, fields and skies, France and England, French Revolution, grain exportation, grand scenery, hairdressing, hanging committee, Historic British Art, Impressionism, Industrial Revolution, inflections of light, Italy, James Thomson, Lachlan Goudie, landscape, landscape painting, light and shade, llandscape, lock gate, London, make money, Manton Senior Curator, milling, mountains, Napoleonic Wars, national consciousness, National Gallery, notes would enable him to construct artist’s studio, observer, oil painting, open fields, paint, painter, painting, painting in the studio, painting outdoors, plein air, political system, print shop, pub, RA, RA member, radical, railway engine, red light district, representation of light, Richard Johns, rival landscape painters, rivalry, River Stour, Robert Lindsay, Royal Academy, rural, science and technology, shop window, shop window display, sketchbook, social injustice, Somerset House, Suffolk, Tate Britain, the Lake District, the Louvre, theatre, tourist locations, travel, travel restriction, treaty, Turner, Turner & Constable, Turner’s sunsets, UK, University of York, upheaval, upward mobility, urban, urban type, viaduct, visual, visual research, Wales, war and peace, watercolour, well-heeled, wig-making, writer, yellow, yellow paint

Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

Sirāt
(Sirāt)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 24 February 2026
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(Sirāt)
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Director – Óliver Laxe – 2025 – Spain, France – Cert. 15 – 115m

*****

Young son in tow, a man goes in search of his daughter who has gone missing at raves in the North African desert – 2025 Cannes Jury Prize Winner is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 27th

Luis (Sergi López from Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006; Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears, 2002; Harry, He’s Here to Help, Dominik Moll, 2000) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) are searching for his son’s elder sister who vanished five months ago. Believing she is headed to a rave in the Moroccan desert, they turn up there to hand out Missing fliers and ask people there if they have seen her.

No-one has seen her.

They start off asking among dancing revellers, but soon move on to try people resting or on the fringes of the event. One group of three people halfway up a hillside, seem more sympathetic than most, but they’ve not seen the daughter so there isn’t a lot they can do to help.

The rave is an illicit event not sanctioned in any way by the authorities, so it’s perhaps not surprising that on maybe the second day… time can be hard to keep track of at these events… soldiers turn up to close the event down. … Read the rest

Tags alternative route, archetype, authorities, beat, bereavement, bridge, Bruno Núñez Arjona), chocolate, cliff, convoy, cross-country, dance, desert, desert rave, drama, drug use, drugs, emotional, escape, false leg, fathers and children, fathers and daughters, fathers and sons, flier, France, freedom, French, gridlock, headlight, hell, Jade Oukid, Joshua Liam Henderson, journey, landscape, loss, loudspeakers, LSD, missing, Morocco, mountain road, muppet, music, myth, mythic, mythology, North Africa, Óliver Laxe, paradise, quest, queue, rainstorm, rave, reveller, rhythm, Richard ‘Bigui ‘ Bellamy, road movie, route, search for family, Sergi López, sick, Sirāt, soldiers, Spain, Spanish, speakers, spiritual, Stefania Gadda, techno, Tonin Janvier, vehicle, windscreen

Features Live Action Movies

Hamnet

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 5 January 2026
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Director – Chloé Zhao – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 125m

*****

An imagining of the story of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose name gave rise to the play Hamlet – Maggie O’Farrell’s adaptation of her own novel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 9th

According to the opening title card, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were regarded as interchangeable in Elizabethan England. This is curious, since the piece’s female lead (Jessie Buckley from Women Talking, Sarah Polley, 2022; Men, Alex Garland, 2022; Misbehaviour, Philippa Lowthorpe, 2020) appears to be variously addressed as Alice, Agnes or Anyes while the male lead (Paul Mescal from Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023; Aftersun, Charlotte Wells, 2022) is not referred to by name as William Shakespeare until well towards the end. Since this is being promoted as the story of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose name gave rise to the play Hamlet – as you can see from the trailer below – audiences will enter the film knowing who the Paul Mescal character is as soon as he appears unnamed.

The outdoors, looking up through the trees of a forest.… Read the rest

Tags actor, adaptation, Agnes Hathaway, barn, bereavement, birth, black void, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, catharsis, Chloé Zhao, city and countryside, cross-dressing, David Wilmot, death, disease, disowned, Elizabethan England, Emily Watson, falconry, fathers and children, forest, Globe Theatre, grief, hamlet, Hamnet, hawk, inseparable, Jacobi Jupe, Jessie Buckley, Joe Alwyn, landscape, Latin, London, Macbeth, Maggie O’Farrell, mothers and children, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, Noah Jupe, Olivia Lynes, Orpheus and Euridice, outdoors, parents and children, Paul Mescal, plague, play, prank, pregnant, premonition, siblings, stage, stillborn, story, struggle with writing, swordplay, the undiscovered country, theatre, theatre community, tragedy, travesty, tutor, twins, two children, UK, unnamed, William Shakespeare, witches, woods

Features Live Action Movies

Hamnet

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 January 2026
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Directed by Chloé Zhao
Certificate 12A
125 minutes
Released 9 January

Shakespeare’s romantic relationship, family life and the tragedy of bereavement resulted in his writing one of his bestknown plays, Hamlet. In Elizabethan England, we are told at the start of Hamnet, the two names were interchangeable. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, this film is well-served by the landscape-friendly sensibilities of the director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland). [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review on this site…]

Hamnet is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, January 9th.

Trailer:

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Tale of Silyan
(Приказната за Силјан)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 December 2025
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(Приказната за Силјан)
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Director – Tamara Kotseva – 2025 – North Macedonia – Cert. 12a – 81m

*****

A farmer, whose livelihood has collapsed thanks to economics and government policy, cares for a stork with a broken wing – in cinemas from Friday, December 12th

This begins with a simple voiceover story. Silyan, ostracised from the other storks because he was different, is noticed by a similarly lonely father who takes pity on the stork and invites it to live with him.

Then it swiftly switches to two parallel narratives within the same geographical area.

In one, a man’s extended family builds a new storey onto their house for the son and daughter in law. The act of building is very much a family affair, with even the man’s small granddaughter mucking in.

In the other, a flock of storks build their nests on the roof of an old farmhouse building nearby.

The man is a farmer (Nikola Conev); his extended family help him pick this year’s harvest of vegetables, then accompany him to a string of local farmer’s markets to sell his produce. At this point, the man hits a problem; the going rate has dropped. And he can’t get a decent price for his produce.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Islands
(2025)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 11 September 2025
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(2025)
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Director – Jan-Ole Gerster – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 123m

****1/2

A British ex-pat tennis coach working for a hotel on a sun-drenched island in the Canaries gets more than he bargained for when he befriends the couple whose young son he is coaching – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 12th, and on BFI Player from Monday, October 27th

Tom (Sam Riley) wakes up in the desert and walks back to his car. He often nods off – at one point he is woken by a tap on his car window by the local police chief Jorge (Pep Ambròs) in a scene reminiscent of the one in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), one of the differences being that he’s a local and he and the cop not only know each other, but are friends. (Another is that in Psycho, the motorist is a woman and the cop a man, which brings a whole other dynamic into play.) Jorge fines him for a traffic violation, but apologises for the fact, and the two men’s friendship is able to accommodate that.

The desert, or beach, is a very specific location: Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. And Tom has manoeuvred his life into a very nice routine, thank you very much, as he sees it.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Road to Patagonia

Director – Matty Hannon – 2022 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 90m

****

A keen surfer and former ecology student from Australia sets out on a motorbike journey from Alaska down the West coast of the Americas to Patagonia – out on digital on Monday, July 28th

The family of Australian moving picture diarist Matty Hannon moved around a lot during his childhood. He left home as soon as he could, and studied ecology at university, where he became fascinated by the book Shamans of Mentawai about tribes living in Indonesia’s Sumatran Islands. A keen surfer, he went out to one of the islands, rode the incredible waves, embraced a simple lifestyle and felt he’d arrived in a utopia where people lived in harmony with nature, assigning spirit gods to rivers and mountains. He began to wonder if by concentrating on data in his studies, he’d been missing something. He stayed five years, from age 21-26.

On his return to Melbourne, he was hit by culture shock. Everything was commodified. He sat at a computer for work. He was now in a culture that referred to its people as consumers, where national success was measured in terms of how much they bought.… Read the rest

Tags 14 months, abattoir, age 21-26, Alaska, alternative lifestyle, Amazon rainforest, animism, Australia, Baja California, Baja Peninsula, bike, bike theft, biker, book, breathtaking vistas, butcher, California, Canada, ceremony, Chile, civilisation collapse, clearing the jungle, commodification, commodified, community, computer, consumer culture, consumers, corporations, culture shock, data, depression, desert, destroying the ecosystem, Developed World, ecology, environmental impact, farming, fertilise the land, First Nation Peoples, fuel, harmony with nature, Heather Hillier, home-built rig, horses as fellow spirits, Inca pyramids, Indonesia, inspiring, interconnectedness of living things, journey, landscape, leave home, letter-writing, lifestyle, living in the wild, local customers, local resistance, malaise, Matty Hannon, Melbourne, Mexico, missing something, motorbike, mountain god, mountains, Patagonia, plant medicines, population density, possessions, pre-packaged jobs, profit before environment, pulp mill, raise a family, reliance on motor fuel, respect, ride the waves, river god, rivers, robbed by cops, Shamans of Mentawai, simple lifestyle, small farm, Southbound, spirit gods, spirits in balance, student, studies, success measurement, Sumatran Islands, Suna Beach, surfboard, surfer, sustainable farm, sustainable future, symptomatic, tent, The Road to Patagonia, toxic pollution, trade bikes for horses, travel, tribe, university, unspoiled beaches, US, utopia, Vancouver, voice-over, waves, well-being, West coast of the Americas, work, work on computer

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Road to Patagonia

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 June 2025
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Directed by Matty Hannon
Certificate 15
90 minutes
Released 27 June

In his mid-20s, former ecology student and keen surfer Matty Hannon returns to Melbourne, Australia. For five years, from age 21 to 26, he has lived alongside one of Indonesia’s Sumatran Island tribes, a utopia where people live in harmony with nature, assigning spirit gods to rivers and mountains. And then there are the waves.

Melbourne hits him with culture shock; a culture that refers to its people as consumers, where national success is measured in terms of how much they buy. Depression is common. Hannon records his response in this documentary as he gets out, takes a tent to Alaska, then… on his motorbike… travels down the West Coast of the Americas to Patagonia… [read the rest in the Issue 4 – 2025 edition of Reform]

[Read my longer review for this site here.]

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Trailer:

Tags 14 months, abattoir, age 21-26, Alaska, alternative lifestyle, Amazon rainforest, animism, Australia, Baja California, Baja Peninsula, balance, bike, bike theft, biker, breathtaking vistas, butcher, California, Canada, ceremony, Chile, civilisation collapse, clearing the jungle, commodification, commodified, community, computer, consumer culture, consumers, culture shock, depression, desert, destroying the ecosystem, Developed World, ecology, environmental impact, farming, fertilise the land, fuel, harmony with nature, Heather Hillier, home-built rig, horses as fellow spirits, Inca pyramids, inspiring, interconnectedness of living things, journey, landscape, letter-writing, lifestyle, living in the wild, local customers, Matty Hannon, Melbourne, Mexico, missing something, motorbike, Patagonia, plant medicines, population density, possessions, pre-packaged jobs, raise a family, reliance on motor fuel, respect, ride the waves, robbed, simple lifestyle, small farm, Southbound, spirit gods, spirits in balance, sprits, student, success measurement, surfboard, surfer, sustainable farm, sustainable future, tent, The Road to Patagonia, trade bikes for horses, travel, unspoiled beaches, US, utopia, Vancouver, voice-over, West coast of the Americas, work, work on computer

Animation Movies Shorts

Little Shrew
(Snowflake)

Director – Kate Bush – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 4m

*****

As modern warfare decimates a landscape, a shrew crosses countryside and town as a small, spirit-like light falls towards it – short accompanies the UK cinema release of From Hilde, With Love on Friday, June 27th

Musician / songwriter Kate Bush originally recorded the song Snowflake, which appeared on her album 50 Words for Snow (2011), in part to record her young son Albert’s voice before it broke. The creative process is such that people don’t always know exactly why they do what they do, and that is clearly the case with this song, since Kate has returned to it after the event to direct an animated film around it. Animation being a painstakingly slow production process, the soundtrack for the short is an edit of the song, pulling it down from almost 10 minutes to 4 minutes. The 4-minute edit is surprisingly coherent and seems to distil the essence of the piece.

Most of the lyrics are sung by Albert, yet Kate sings the haunting refrain:

The world is so loud

Keep falling

I’ll find you

It’s impossible to listen to this without thinking she is the mother somehow waiting for her falling son, whatever that means.… Read the rest

Tags 2024, 50 Words for Snow, aircraft, Alan Henry, Albert McIntosh, animation, animation compositor, animator, atmospheric sfx, awareness, background artist, battlefield, beams of light, black and white, black pollutant, blast, block of flats, bomb blast, broken, cathedral, cloud formation, comet, creative process, dead soldier, decimate, decimated by a bomb, detritus, drone videographer, Earth’s atmosphere, edit, egg, emotion, environment, exploration, fall, falling, feelings, flying, Gayle Martin, guided missile, gun, hope and drone animation, illustrator, Inkubus, James Clifford, Jim Kay, Jon Carin, Kate Bush, killed by Russians, landscape, life force, light, Little Shrew, Lorenzo Cenci Di Bello, loud, loudness, Maksim Levin, miniature, missiles, modern warfare, mothers and sons, moving illustration, musician, nebula, need, Nicolas Loudot, Nicolette Van Gendt, nowhere to go, outer space, pair of spectacles, panning, panning shot, photographic naturalism, pocket, pollution, producer, production process, refrain, rendering, Reuters, running, safe haven, scamper, shark, short, short film, shrew, smoke, snarling mouth, Snowflake, son’s voice, song, songwriter, soundtrack, spasms, sperm, spirit, target, telegraph pole, terror, Tomato Twist, tree trunk, twisted metal, Ukraine, voice breaking, war, war-torn, weaponry, womb, wonder, world-building

Features Live Action Movies

Red Path
(Les Enfants Rouges,
الذراري الحمر)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 June 2025
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(Les Enfants Rouges,
الذراري الحمر)
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Director – Lotfi Achour – 2024 – Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When paradise is suddenly taken away from him, a young innocent must come to terms with stark and brutal forces of corruption and death – searing drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 20th

** SPOILER ALERT**

Two boys are herding a flock of sheep cross-country. The older one (Wided Dabebi), who tells the younger not to be scared, but to watch out for mines, knows his way around. The younger one Achraf (Ali Helali) hasn’t told his mother he’s doing this, because he knows she would have forbidden him from coming.

They are navigating the slopes of Tunisia’s Mighila Mountain, which is fabulously beautiful. They find a perfect place to give the sheep a rest, and the older one shows the younger a good spot – they climb to the top of a ridge, with a stunning, panoramic view of the local landscape, and bask on the rock in the sunshine. Life is good. In fact, it is paradise. After some time, they head back down to the watering hole they left earlier, plunge their heads in the cool water.… Read the rest