Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Inventor

Directors – Jim Capobianco, Pierre-Luc Granjon – 2023 – US, France, Ireland – Cert. PG – 100m

****

Towards the end of his life, inventor Leonardo da Vinci goes to live in France under the patronage of the King – stop frame / drawn animation composite is out in the UK’s Vue cinemas on Friday, March 8th

Rome, Italy, 1516. Leonardo da Vinci (voice: Stephen Fry) happily shows off a giant optical system of magnifying glasses for observing the heavens to his assistant Francesco Melzi (voice: Angelino Sandri). Francesco retorts that Leonardo ought to be worried about the Pope who has spies everywhere (and sure enough, there are eyes watching from nearby peepholes). Leonardo’s other assistant, the hulking, mute Zoroastro sources corpses for him, on which the curious Leonardo performs dissections and studies what he finds through making drawings in his quest for find the animated spirit of man, a search which, in dreams and visions, often leads him into confrontation with a mysterious, gargantuan, dark-hooded figure.

The inventor is summoned to Pope Leo X (voice: Matt Berry) who wants to know, why can’t Leonardo just make pretty things? The arrival of a messenger whose helmet is half crushed by a cannonball leads Leo to suggest Leonardo fashion him machines of war.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Peasants
(Chłopi)

Directors – DK Welchman, Hugo Welchman – 2023 – Poland, Serbia, Lithuania – Cert. 15 – 114m

****1/2

A rural drama of romance, adultery and inheritance is expressed through the remarkable, foot-in-two-camps medium of live action filmmaking turned into animated painting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

A small rural village in the early 20th Century. Young woman Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska) is in love with Antek Boryna (Robert Gulaczyk). Unfortunately, not only is Antek already married to Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), who is fed up with his philandering, but also the latter’s father Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who is the richest person in the village, is widowed and wants Jagda to marry him – against her will but in line with that of her parents, who know a good thing when they see it. Alas, after the marriage, she carries on with Antek and things slowly go from bad to worse.

It’s gripping if harrowing stuff and would probably work well enough in live action, although it might not look that dissimilar to many other period costume dramas. It can occasionally be hard to keep track of who’s who, which I suspect is down to the script, an adaptation of a 1906 novel originally written as four volumes covering one year through the seasons Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, a trajectory also followed by the screenplay.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Anselm
(Anselm
– Das Rauschen
Der Zeit)

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany – Cert. PG – 93m

****

An exploration of the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer and the influences which lie behind it – 3D documentary plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

Wim Wenders seems to step effortlessly between narrative and documentary feature films, and you never feel that he considers one or the other more important. To him, they are all movies. As with his earlier Pina (2011), similarly about an artist – the choreographer Pina Bausch – this is another portrait of an artist shot in 3D. Wenders’ subject here, again eponymously designated by Christian name, is Anselm Kiefer, a practitioner of the plastic rather than the performing arts.

From the outset, it’s clear that the film needs to be seen in 3D. Wenders’ camera moves deliberately and formally around maquettes that resemble life-sized women wearing dresses, but without the women in them so that they stand as empty objects, often with strange constructions in the space where you would expect their neck and heads to be. The forest setting in which Wenders films them seems almost as significant as the maquettes themselves as we slowly pass by an upright tree trunk between the sculpture and us.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Daaaaaali! (Daaaaaali!)

Director – Quentin Dupieux – 2023 – France – Cert. none – 77m

*****

Dali, played by five actors, repeatedly stalls a journalist’s attempts to film an interview with him, and a priest describes a dream over a meal – plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

There are movies about art and artists. There are documentaries. And then there is Daaaaaali!

Whatever expectations one has of a Quentin Dupieux movie (Deerskin, 2019; Smoking Causes Coughing, 2022), this fulfils them. France’s comic auteur makes movies unlike anyone else, completely bonkers and very funny.

It doesn’t start off with celebrated Surrealist artist Salvador Dali but with Judith (Anaïs Demoustier from Smoking Causes Coughing and The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), 33, a former pharmacist who decided one day to become a journalist.

Actually, it doesn’t start off with Judith but with a scenario that stages a Dali painting (Necrophilic Fountain Flowing from a Grand Piano, 1932). A piano in barren Spanish countryside with a tree-shaped, potted plant sitting on top and a continuous arc of water flowing from a hole in the side of the piano.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Exhibition on Screen:
Klimt & the Kiss

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

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Typist Artist Pirate King

Director – Carol Morley – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 106m

****1/2

Road movie in which her psychiatric nurse drives an artist with mental health issues from London to an open entry exhibition in the North – in cinemas from Friday, October 27th following premieres in the 2023 Raindance Film Festival (UK premiere) and 2022 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (world premiere)

In these days of US-style promotion, branding and media, it’s easy to think of artists as high profile, rich and successful. While some are, that’s not what an artist is: an artist is, quite simply, someone who makes art. (If they’re a good artist, they make good art. Whatever that is.) The subject of Morley’s new road movie is the artist Audrey Amiss (1933-2013) who, although she exhibited her work a number of times during her lifetime, received scarcely any recognition in that period. She suffered from mental health issues and was in and out of mental hospitals throughout her life.

Audrey (Monica Dolan) is regularly visited in her London flat by psychiatric nurse Sandra (Kelly Macdonald). One day, she asks Sandra to drive her to an exhibition which has an open call for artists, as she’s never exhibited and feels the time has come.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Features Live Action Movies

Twin Peaks
Fire
Walk With Me

Director – David Lynch – 1992 – US – Cert. 18 – 135 mins

****

Movie prequel to Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series.

David Lynch appears early on in his Twin Peaks prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as FBI chief Gordon Cole. The TV series’ ubiquitous Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is soon wandering up and down a nearby corridor before rushing to check himself in the security video monitor, when a crazed David Bowie (as a long disappeared Bureau operative) turns up from what appears to be another dimension.

If you’re one of those who didn’t make it to the end of the TV series, you might just enjoy the apparent wackiness in itself; however, if you stayed with the series, you’ll know all about The White Lodge and The Black Lodge and a lot of other stuff without which this movie doesn’t make half as much sense.

For example, the mutilated body which briefly materialises in Laura’s bed is Cooper’s true love Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham). Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me isn’t so much a straightforward movie as a movie springing from a successful TV series, which makes it a rather different animal altogether.

As demented as – but more structured than – Wild At Heart (1990), the opening three-quarter hour segment investigates a pre-Laura Palmer murder through an FBI Agent who subsequently vanishes and is punctuated by a riot of typically quirky Lynchian detail.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Vermeer
the Greatest Exhibition

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 90m

****

A tour around the Rijksmuseum’s current, sold out Closer to Johannes Vermeer exhibition, with comments from museum staff members and an art critic – out in cinemas both in the UK and around the world from Tuesday, April 18th

The latest instalment in producer Phil Grabsky’s excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art might be seen as something of a blockbuster: its subject is at once a famous artist and the current unprecedented, likely never to be repeated, comprehensive exhibition of that artist’s work. This allows the film to navigate the painter’s entire career in a chronological journey both through his images and, in a secondary, incidental journey, through the gallery itself. The latter journey is just there, visible but never described. Visitors tends to go to an art gallery to see its contents, or as in this case, a particular exhibition, not the gallery itself.

The blockbuster is the current exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, entitled Closer To Johannes Vermeer, which runs from Friday, February 10th to Sunday, June 4th 2023 and is completely sold out. Vermeer (1632-1675) lived in the Dutch town of Delft, and in his active years as an artist painted only two or three pictures a year.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Mary Cassatt:
Painting
the Modern Woman

Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

*****

A look at an often overlooked member of the Impressionists, a US-born, female painter and printmaker who moved from Philadelphia to live in France – out in UK cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, March 8th (International Women’s Day)

I had never heard of Mary Cassatt when I came to this documentary. I’m not really sure why not (apart from the obvious reason, the widespread exclusion of numerous women artists from the annals of art history until recently) and feel indebted to this remarkable study for introducing me to her work. It comes as no surprise that the film was produced by Phil Grabsky for his excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art, although what IS a surprise here is that all the interviewees in this instance are women. Nothing at all wrong with that if they have something of value to say, which they clearly do.

One could argue that the piece has a very strong feminist leaning with its emphasis on women being free to live their lives as they choose. It’s tempting to say that one could forget the gender bias here and simply say that all the interviewees have important insights to share and do a good job.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Features Live Action Movies

Hilma

Director – Lasse Hallström – 2022 – Sweden – Cert. 12a – 119m

****

Late in her life, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, today considered the world’s first abstract painter, remembers her life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 28th

As Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (Lena Olin) takes a tram journey, she remembers key events and moments within it: she is haunted by the memory of her little sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernström), who tragically died when Hilma (Tora Hallström) was 18 and with whom she often played hide and seek.

Interested in drawing and painting from nature as a form of scientific inquiry – at her art school interview panel she lists mathematics, geometry, biology and astronomy as interests other than flowers – she meets up with other women studying technical painting and drawing in Stockholm, among them the wealthy Anna Cassel (Catherine Chalk) who becomes her lover and finances her as an artist – and becomes part of their group of five women artists interested in spiritism. She also studies the Theosophical writings of Madame Blavatsky and makes a particular connection to the Anthroposophist ideas of Rudolf Steiner.

Acknowledging these interests, the film infuriatingly refuses to explore them at any great depth, perhaps because it fears such ideas might prove controversial and perhaps because they might prove boring to a contemporary audience, it’s impossible to tell.… Read the rest