Tag: UK

Leonora
in the Morning Light
(Leonora
im Morgenlicht)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 29 2026
No Comments on Leonora
in the Morning Light
(Leonora
im Morgenlicht)

©Mirjam Kluka, Dragonfly films, Alamode Film

Leonora in the Morning Light (Leonora im Morgenlicht)

Directors – Thor Klein, Lena Vurma – 2025 – Germany, Romania, Mexico, UK – Cert. 15 – 103m

In Mexico, France, Spain and the England of her childhood, Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington must confront her personal demons – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 29th

Deserted hillsides, a sliver of a road, eventually a tiny red car moving along it, to the accompaniment of a pulsating electronic score suggesting the present day. Another stretch of road: the car drops off the woman, in stylish trousers and blouse, who smokes observing the landscape. The driver gets out to photograph her, much to her displeasure, but he’s run out of film.

An illustrated title card: Death. Xilitla, Mexico, 1951. The man takes her to the rooming house of Edward (Ryan Gage), leaving her as he promises to look after their son. Outside the window, she can hear the two men discuss all that has happened to her. Her madness.

She and Edward are riding with others in the back of a lorry on a road. In Spanish, she asks a woman on the lorry (Yasmira Escárrega) about her amulet – “a sacred stone that illuminated the path through the underworld”.… Read the rest

Tags 1938, 1939, 1940, 1951, adaptation, Alexander Scheer, amulet, André Breton, animal spirit, arrested, art, art history, artist, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Cat Jugravu, Chiki Weisz, consulting room, Dali, death. Xilitla, delirium, Denis Eyrley, doctor, drawing, drawing room, electric shock therapy, Elena Poniatowska, England. childhood, family, fathers and daughters, field, France, Garden of Eden on Earth, gates of hell, gendarme, German alien, German invasion of France, Germany, Heaven, holocaust survivor, horse, hospital, hunt, hyena, Irish, journey, jungle, key, lake, Las Pozas Gardens, Lena Vurma, Leonora Carrington, Leonora in the Morning Light, locked door, lorry, lover, Luis Gerardo Méndez, madness, marketplace, Max Ernst, memory, Mercedes Bahleda, Mexico, mural painter, nanny, novel, Olivia Vinall), painter, painting, paradise, Paris, path through the underworld, Peggy Guggenheim, photography her, Remedios Varo, Romania, Ryan Gage, sacred stone, San Martin D’ardeche, Santander, shoot, South Of France, spider’s web, sprite, staircase, Surrealism, Surrealist, Surrealist gathering, Thor Klein, title cards, UK, viewing platform, Vivienne Soan, Wren Stembridge, writing, Yasmira Escárrega

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Balloonists

Director – John Dower – 2025 – UK, Austria, US – Cert. PG – 86m

****

The Balloonists

The story of balloonist Bertrand Piccard’s three attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

Bertrand Piccard’s house, as his astonished interviewer notes, is a museum, a personal collection of memorabilia from the history of aviation. It grew in a mere 66 years from the Wright Brothers’ pioneering efforts to the Apollo 11 moon landing. His family was in Florida at the time of the Apollo 7-12 launches which he witnessed. Five days before the moon landing, he vowed to become an explorer himself, but then when Armstrong walked on the moon Piccard felt everything had been done. He got depressed.

And then he saw a balloon and discovered that no-one had ever flown round the world in one.

In 1997, His first attempt, the Breitling Orbiter, ditched in the Mediterranean after six hours. Many others tried, including Richard Branson, who knew how to do publicity: in Morocco, Branson’s balloon blew away before it could be launched.

Enter British engineer Andy Elson. But the film switches back to Piccard, whose grandfather was a pioneering balloonist and whose father designed submarines and made a record-breaking dive to the Mariana Trench.… Read the rest

Tags 1997, 1999, air hostess, airspace, Allen key, Andy Elson, Apollo 11, Austria, balloon, balloonist, Bertrand Piccard, blew away, Breitling Orbiter, Brian Jones, British, capsule, Carbon Dioxide, Christmas, circumnavigate the globe, co-pilot, comms blackout, competitive, Concorde, dive, downdraft, engineer, expert, explorer himself, failing filters failing, flight, flight engineer, Florida, foul weather, Geneva, Hawaii, history of aviation, hot air balloon, jet stream, Jo Jones, John Dower, landing, launch pad, Luc Trullemans, Mariana Trench, Mediterranean, memorabilia, moon landing, moonwalk, Morocco, museum, Neil Armstrong, operating centre, oxygen supply, Pacific Ocean, parting, perfect weather, permission, pioneer, record-breaking, Richard Branson, rival, rocket launches, saying goodbye to his wife, Sea of Japan, shoot down aircraft, six-hour window, storm, submarine designer, Switzerland, Terra Firma, The Balloonists, Tony Brown, UK, updraft, US, weather, Wright Brothers, Yemen

Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Frida Kahlo
Special Edition
with new material from
the making of an icon

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 19 2026
No Comments on Exhibition on Screen
Frida Kahlo
Special Edition
with new material from
the making of an icon

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939 © EXHIBITION ON SCREEN

Exhibition on Screen: Frida Kahlo – Special Edition
with new material from the making of an icon

Director – Ali Ray – 2020, 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 93m, 101m

*****

The tragic yet resonant life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, and her transformation into a modern, cultural icon – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, May 19th

As dour piano chords play, a title announces that Frida Kahlo held only three solo exhibitions in her lifetime. This is contrasted with an auction where “one of her most complex self portraits” The Dream (The Bed) / El Sueño (La Cama) (1940) auctions for a starting price of $22m and selling for $47m. As of November 2025, this was the highest ever value for a work by a female artist achieved at an auction.

Now, in 2026, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Tate Modern, London collaborate on a major exhibition entitled Frida: the making of an icon, opening on Friday, June 19th at the Tate. Exhibition on Screen’s Special Edition of their 2020 film concludes with ten minutes of newly shot footage of that exhibition.

Frida works at a writing desk as she (voice: Diana Bermudez) reads the latter she is composing.… Read the rest

Tags 1910 Mexican Revolution, a German immigrant, abortion, activist, advertising, affair, Alfredo Vichis Roque, Ali Ray, Amelia Mesa-Bains, androgynous, animals, Anna Chancellor, anti-birth, anti-colonial, architect, art, art exhibition, artist, Astrid Hadad, athletics, attention-seeking, auction, bedridden, biographer, biographies, bisexual, bleeding, bleeding womb, blood, blood vessel, bone treatment, boyfriend, braid of flowers, brand, Brandels University, brown-skinned heroine, buried, bus accident, Carlos Phillips Olmedo, Carmen Lomas Garza, Casa Azul, Catherine Wood, Catholic, celeb, censorship, Chicano, Christian, Christian symbolism, civil rights, civil war, clothes, colonialism, colour photographer, Communist Party, communities, confined, consumer culture, corpse, counterculture, cracked landscape, Cristina Kahlo, curator, day and night, defiant, defiant gaze, desolation, Detroit, Diana Bermudez, dictatorship, Diego Rivera, Diego Riviera, disability, divorce, divorce proceedings, doctor, doctor’s orders, dog, dog deity, Dolores Olmedo Museum, earring of a hand, earrings, exhibition, Exhibition On Screen, faith journey, fathers and daughters, female body, fingerprint, folk culture, fractured spine, Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo Museum, Frida: the making of an icon, Gabriel Porras, gallery, Gannit Ankori, gay identity, gender fluidity, global brand, global food supply, green, group show, Hayden Herrara, Hilda Trujillo, Hindu, Hindu symbolism, historian, hope, hospital visits, housebound, Houston, husbands and wives, hybridisation of plants, iconicity, identity, injury, Interim Director, Juan O’Gorman, Las Cachuchas, Latin American Art, Le Corbusier, left-wing, letter, library, London exhibition, love affairs, Luther Burbank, Madonna and child, male and female, man plant, manifesto, Mari Carmen Ramirez, marriage, Mary McCartney, matriarchy, medical bills, medical training, menagerie, Mexican art, Mexican Woman, Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico City’s National Preparatory School, miscarriage, mixed race, mothers and daughters, mouth, Munchausen syndrome, mural, Muralism, museum, Museum of Fine Arts, myth, nails, naive painting, necklace of thorns, new government, new social movement, New York, newspaper article, Nickolas Muray, nun, opening night, opposites, ornate rings, orthopaedic brace, pain, painting, Paris, philosopher, Polio, politics, portrait, posing for photographs, pre-Hispanic art, pregnancy, Professor of Art History, prostitute, public buildings, religious paintings, Renaissance, retablos, retablos artist, revolution, revolutionary, roots, rules, Rupert Garcia, San Francisco, sartorial identity, schooling, scientist, self-portrait, sexual violence against women, sisters, skull, solo exhibition, Spain, Spanish / Indian descent, Spanish colonialism, spider-monkey, stabbed to death, still life, student movement, studio, sun and moon, surgery, surgical scissors, Surrealism, Tate External Curator, Tate Modern, Texas, the Blue House, The Human Condition, three quarter portraits, Tijuana, Tobias Ostrander, torso, tourist boats, Tracey Emin, trauma, UK, umbilical chord, underworld, US, vaginal blood, Warhol, Warholesque silkscreen print, wealth, women artists, work from photographs, workers' rights, writer, writing desk, Xolotl, Yasumasa Morimura, yin and yang

Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

The Testament
of Ann Lee

The Testament of Ann Lee

Director – Mona Fastvold – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 130m

****

In the mid-eighteenth century, wishing to preach her unique take on the Christian Gospel, Ann Lee crosses the Atlantic with a small party from from Manchester, England, to establish a Shaker community in America – unlikely religious musical is on Disney+ from Wednesday, March 13th

This review is written after seeing this film for a second time. On my first viewing, I went in cold, knowing a great deal about both Christian history and the Quakers, but nothing about the Shakers (‘the Shaking Quakers’) around whom the historical side of this film is based. As far as I can tell, the historical portrayals of the Shakers here, and their leader Mother Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried in a career-defining role), are pretty accurate.

This is to leave aside the fact that this is also a musical, the genre in which people suddenly burst into song, and we somehow accept it. In real life, people generally don’t burst into song in the ordinary run of things. And yet, it’s a genre convention we accept, and as a genre the musical has a perfectly respectable history.… Read the rest

Tags all sex is abuse, all welcome, Amanda Seyfried, America, and Shelley Hirsch, Ann Lee, authorities, believe, Biblical tableaux, building, building burned down, C of E, celibacy, charismatic house church, childbirth, Christian church tradition, Christian Gospel, Christian history, Christian tradition, Christopher Abbot, church tradition, community, community building, confess sin, conscription, corporal punishment, cross the Atlantic, dance and music, dancer, Daniel Blumberg, David Cale, England, English protestant tradition, factory, female preachers, financial backing, followers, free religious expression, furniture-making, genre, Godliness, hard work and chastity, history, hospital, house churches, house meetings of James and Jane Wardley, Hudson River, imprisonment, Industrial Revolution, infant mortality, jazz voice improviser, Jesus’ second coming, land to settle, Maggie Nichols, Manchester, marriage, marriage is sinful, Methodist, mid-eighteenth century, miscarriage, Mona Fastvold, mortification of the flesh, Mother Ann Lee, music, musical, musician, New York State, Niskayuna, performance, Phil Minton, preach, prison cell, Quakers, raids, religious worship, S&M, Scott Handey, sea voyage, second coming, sex is sinful, sexual sin, Shakers, singer, singing hymns, song, song and dance, soundscape, spiritual longing, Stacy Martin, storm at sea, the Shaking Quakers, The Testament of Ann Lee, Thomasin McKenzie, UK, US, visions, war, witchcraft, worship songs

Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Billie Eilish
Hit Me
Hard and Soft
The Tour
Live in 3D

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 8 2026
No Comments on Billie Eilish
Hit Me
Hard and Soft
The Tour
Live in 3D

Billie Eilish in Paramount Pictures Presents A Lightstorm Earth Production / The Darkroom / Interscope Films Production of “BILLIE EILISH HIT ME HARD AND SOFT: THE TOUR (LIVE IN 3D)”

Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard and Soft The Tour Live in 3D

Directors – James Cameron, Billie Eilish – 2026 – US, UK – Cert. 12a – 114m

*****

One night of the singer’s latest world tour is captured up close and personal using specially developed, 3D camera technology – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 8th

Disclaimer. Yes, I listen to a great deal of music. No, I don’t know the first thing about Billie Eilish. However, I have a huge admiration for James Cameron, who might reasonably be described as the R&D wing of the movie business.

I have also, in my time, seen a good few concert movies, but never anything quite like this. That’s in part because the contemporary music concert has come a long way, and Billie Eilish typifies a performer who is the act, performing on custom built stages in large stadium-sized venues, even though she has working with her a band and two backup singers, not to mention a vast array of lighting, stage and sound technicians.

And, in her case, James Cameron.

Who insisted that she be given equal director / producer credit on the film. At least, that’s how he puts it in one of many of the more intimate backstage / offstage / on tour sequences inserted into the footage of the one concert which forms the backbone of the film. … Read the rest

Tags 3D, 3D cameras, 3D cinematography, audience rapport, auditorium, backstage, backup singers, band, Billie Eilish, Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D, cage, cinematography, Co-op Live arena, concert movies, cube structure, custom built stage, documentary, Finneas O’Connell, Hit Me Hard and Soft, hotel window, in the round, James Cameron, lighting, lighting technicians, Manchester, mobile phone, music concert, offstage, on tour, outstretched fans’ hands, performer, R&D, rap artists, rap music, rapper, relationship with fans, religious experience, safety harness, smartphone, sound, sound technicians, stadium, stage, stage technicians, stagehands, storyteller, technicians, technology, torch light, UK, US, venue, visionary

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Our Land

Our Land

Director – Orban Wallace – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

***

An exploration as to why the English people only have the ‘right to roam’ over some eight per cent of their countryside – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 8th, with previews Tuesday, May 5th, Wednesday May 6th

This sets out its stall with a bold move: an arresting animated sequence by May Kindred Boothby in the style of woodcut prints accompanies a brief, verbal historical overview by Robert MacFarlane (the nature and geography writer whose book of the same name was recently turned into the documentary Underland, Rob Petit, 2025) of English land ownership. It goes back to the 1066 Norman invasion by William the Conqueror who declared land the property of the Crown (!) and then doled that land out to the barons that had helped him become King of England. Prior to this, any English person had the right to go anywhere within the countryside.

What follows after that visually inventive and historically informative introduction admirably manages to avoid one of the common pitfalls that far too often beset documentaries whose subject is one specific issue. Namely, presenting one point of view as the irrefutable final word on the matter.… Read the rest

Tags ’John Grant, 1066, access, acres of land, activist, aristocracy, baron, behave responsibly, behaviour, birthright, Cairngorns, campers, car park attendant, Charborough Estate, commodification, conservationist, constitution, countryside, Countryside Code, Crown property, Devon, Dorset, earl, England, England and Scotland, England and Wales, English culture, English land ownership, English landowner, exclude people of colour, field, Flete Estate, folie, garden, good and bad monarchs, government, Great Fulford Estate, Guy Shrubsole, historical precedent, history, Hugh Inge-Innes-Liliingston, Imposter Syndrome, inheritance, Isle of Bute, joggers, John Mildmay-White, King of England, Lady Isabel Tree, Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2003, landowner, landowning class, London Transport, managed access, mass trespass event, mass trespass of 1932, Maxwell Ayamba, May Kindred Boothby, mental health, Merrie England, mixed race heritage, Mothecombe, Nadia Shaikh, nature, Nick Hayes, Norman invasion, obligation, open-source access, Orban Wallace, Our Land, peasants, people of colour, pheasant shoot, pheasants, police, private property, protocol, public access, re-enactment, rewilding, Richard Drax, right to roam, rights, Robert MacFarlane, Rothiemurchus Estate, Scotland, Scottish landowner, Scottish Outdoor Access Code, security cameras, shutting gates, slave trade. Francis Fulford, South Downs, Staffordshire, stewardship, The Book of Trespass, The Lie of the Land, Thorpe Estate, trespass, trespasser, UK, under a spell, Wainwright Prize, walkers, Who Owns England?, William the Conqueror, woodcut prints

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

London’s Last Wilderness

London’s Last Wilderness

Director – Pablo Behrens – 2026 – UK – Cert. 12a – 61m

*****

London’s Thames Estuary filmed and edited from the point of view of an alien – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 24th

A genre bender of a documentary, this owes a great deal to Petropolis (Peter Mettler, 2009) which comprises aerial cinematography of the environmental wreck of Canada’s Alberta Tar sands. The subject of London’s Last Wilderness, however, is not an ecological catastrophe, however much its narration by intertitle might (mis)interpret it as the aftermath of a war zone. It is rather the estuary of the Thames, the river that further inland flows through London, which city puts in a brief appearance towards the end. Indeed, insofar as this has a narrative spine, it is of a journey from the largely uninhabited estuary inland to the metropolis itself.

Where Petropolis was shot largely from a helicopter by a cameraman, the results recalling nothing so much as the aerial footage that opens The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) and closes (because they bought the rights to it) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), aerial photography has moved on considerably in the last fifteen of so years with the evolution of drones, today a major part of the filmmaker / cinematographer’s arsenal.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Rose of Nevada

Rose of Nevada

Director – Mark Jenkin – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 114m

****1/2

A fisherman joins the crew of a mysteriously reappeared fishing vessel and finds himself inexplicably trapped 30 years in the past when it originally disappeared – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 24th

30 years ago, the Rose of Nevada, a small fishing vessel, set sail from a small, Cornish coastal village and never returned. Now, suddenly, it reappears in the harbour with its captain looking for crew. Nick (George Mackay) and Liam (Callum Turner), but on their return after their first fishing trip, they arrive back not in the present but 30 years ago.

Apart from this peculiar slippage of time, everyone behaves as if nothing unusual is going on. Nick misses his partner and child. Liam finds himself with a new partner and child, and plays along, taking advantage of what circumstances have offered to him, which doesn’t seem so bad.

Nick, however, feels increasingly isolated and uneasy in this situation.

Jenkin’s film plays out as a strange, enigmatic mystery.

Working as is his wont as director, cameraman and editor, not to mention sound designer and musician, Jenkin takes real pleasure in building up his story from a series of tiny details, necessitated to some extent by his use of a clockwork Bolex camera which can’t shoot a take longer than 27 seconds.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kinaesthesia

Kinaesthesia

Director – Gerald Fox – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

**1/2

A journey through the dream imagery of silent cinema and its cinematographic effects, augmented by present day stagings before the camera – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

Long fascinated by dream imagery in cinema, director Fox attended the Harvard course run by its Professor of Film Studies Vlada Petrić (1928-2019) to which this documentary essay is dedicated, being based on and quoting intensely from the latter’s theories.

Additionally, it just about works as a useful primer in silent cinema for the uninitiated provided you’re aware of its inherent biases and limitations. These may well be linked to the films (or film libraries) for which producer-director Fox secured rights, because there’s a far greater amount of French movies than you might expect. Or, these may may simply reflect Petrić’s theories and tastes.

Either way, the selection of movies here also leans towards the avant-garde in not only France but also the US. Then it throws in specific films from Griffifth (Edgar Allan Poe, 1909; The Avenging Conscience / Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1915) and Hitchcock (The Ring, 1927), China’s Romance of the Western Chamber (Hou Yau, 1927) and Japan’s A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926).… Read the rest

Tags aesthesis, art practice, China, cinema, cinema experience, cinematograph, cinematographic effects, double exposure, dream imagery, fantasy, farce, film theory, France, Gerald Fox, German expressionism, German expressionist cinema, Germany, Harvard, Harvard course, impression of movement, Japan, Kinaesthesia, kine, lamppost, montage, movement, nightmare, optical tricks, painted backgrounds, Parisian art movement, photographic backgrounds, photographic naturalism, Professor of Film Studies, Russia, Scandinavia, sensation, sensation of movement, sensors in the viewer’s mind, silent cinema, silent cinema influence on sound cinema, silent era techniques, stage director, stagings before the camera, top-hat-and-tails, UK, US, Vlada Petrić. documentary essay

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

D is for Distance

D is for Distance

Director – Chris Petit, Emma Mathews – 2025 – Finland – Cert. 12A – 88m

****

A diary film about a boy with epilepsy, his interior world, and parenting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 3rd

Opening and closing, more or less, with one of the quieter themes from Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, composer: Ennio Morricone, 1968), and images first of a boy / young man clambering over coastal rocks and finally of the same young man and his father looking out from atop rock formations near “the top of the world”, this fits into the personal diary school of documentary filmmaking.

The two co-directors are life partners Chris Petit (Radio On, 1979) and Emma Matthews; the subject their son Louis, who started having epileptic fits around age 12. Following various NHS misdiagnoses, the family moved to the Netherlands where they could legally get hold of medical cannabis which, it turned out, cured Louis as long as he kept taking it.

In former times, notes the unseen narrator (Jodhi May from Dune: Prophecy, TV series, 2024; The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann, 1992, A World Apart, Chris Menges, 1988), people with this condition would be taken as demon-possessed and burned at the stake, or (under the Nazis) forcibly exterminated.… Read the rest

Tags are you there?, art, burned at the stake, Chris Petit, coastal rocks, Cure, cure for epilepsy, D is for Distance, demon possession, diary film, documentary Louis Petit, drawings, Emma Mathews, epilepsy, epileptic fit, family car, going on a trip, health, healthcare, hobbies, interior journey, interior world, Jodhi May, journey through the mind, journey to an unknown world, Jussi Eerola, life journey, life movie, medical cannabis, medical condition, mobile phone camera footage, narrator, Nazis) forcible extermination, Netherlands, NHS, NHS misdiagnosIs, paintings, parenting, parents and children, parents and sons, playing tennis, playing the guitar, railway movie, road movie, top of the world, train, UK, unknown world