Category: Film

At Five in the Afternoon (2003)

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At Five in the Afternoon

★★★★

A year after the Taliban fell in Afghanistan, the young Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf arrived in search of a story. She knew she wanted to make a film about the country, as a way to give a voice to its people. Afghanistan was visible to the wider world only through news broadcasts and politicians’ speeches: it was defined by outsiders who frequently represented themselves as ‘saviours’ who’d gone in to ‘liberate’ its people. Makhmalbaf wanted to tell the story of the people left on the ground: to show, frankly and compassionately, the ruined lives and hopes of the people of Kabul. It’s a very slow film, but beautifully made with an entirely amateur cast, and it gets under the skin of a society on the brink of recovery from horrific trauma, in a way that earnest western journalists never could.

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Westworld: Season 1 (2016)

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Westworld

★★★★½

Sometimes you just have to binge-watch a series and I’ve been completely captivated by Westworld, which I discovered on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. For those who haven’t yet come across this phenomenon, it’s a TV series developed from a 1973 film written by Michael Crichton, who seems to have a bit of a thing about immersive theme parks that go wrong (remember his modest little film about dinosaurs?). Westworld presents us with a vast, sprawling park in which visitors can play out their Wild West fantasies of murder, adventure and sexual domination, interacting with an astonishingly advanced group of ‘hosts’, or robots programmed with particular characters and storylines. It’s epic, ambitious and astonishingly well-made, with a fantastic cast. A real must-see.

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Inside Out (2015)

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Inside Out

★★★★

(Pixar, directed by Pete Docter, 2015)

In many ways I’m just an overgrown child (this’ll become evident if we ever have cause to discuss trebuchets or jousting). Although I do watch and read a lot of serious things, I also have a soft spot for well-made films aimed at kids, and a new film has just been added to my personal Hall of Fame: the magical Inside Out. Prepare for a lot of pictures.

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Farewell My Concubine (1993)

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Concubine6

★★★★

I watched Farewell my Concubine on the same day that I finished reading The Chevalier and found it interesting to compare these two very different stories about the mimesis of femininity. Directed by Chen Kaige in 1993, the film resonates much more strongly, which is unsurprising considering its status as a modern classic. It takes a deep and moving look at the psychological toll of assuming another sex and, using one enduring friendship, tells the story of China’s tumultuous relationship with its own cultural history during the course of the 20th century. Moreover it was my introduction to traditional Chinese opera, which fascinated me of course, even though I feel that the singing is something of an acquired taste for Western ears.

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Henry VI: Parts 1, 2 and 3 (1591): William Shakespeare

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The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses

Shakespeare fans rejoice! As part of the Bard’s 400th birthday celebrations, the BBC have embarked on the second cycle of their dramatisations of the history plays. Back in 2012 we had Henry IV and Henry V with Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston at the helm and now we embark on the most tumultuous and bloody period of British history: the Wars of the Roses. With three parts of the lesser-known Henry VI condensed into two episodes, the present cycle will round off in style with Richard III. As I did last time with Henry IV, I’ll write about both parts of Henry VI here and Richard will get his own post. And so, to steal shamelessly from another play, once more unto the breach…

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Macbeth (c1606): William Shakespeare

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Macbeth

★★★★ ½

(directed by Justin Kurzel, 2015)

When enthusing about Dorothy Dunnett’s superlative novel King Hereafter, or Kurosawa’s gripping Throne of Blood, I’d always felt a secret shame that I hadn’t actually ever seen the source material: the Scottish play itself. But now I can hold my head high thanks to Justin Kurzel’s new film, which sounded so promising that it persuaded me to go to the cinema for the first time since March 2014; and, with a couple of friends, I descended on Covent Garden Odeon for opening night.

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Pompeii (2014)

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Pompeii (the film)

★

(directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, 2014)

And now for something completely different. I do like taking a break now and then to indulge myself with a spot of cheerful ranting. I wasn’t even sure whether to write a post on Pompeii or not. I don’t like being overly critical and that’s doubly the case when a film doesn’t even have the courage to be as wildly barking mad as Anonymous was; but is simply duff. In the end, however, I decided it was my duty to prevent anyone else wasting one-and-three-quarter hours of their life on this. (That’s the equivalent of half a Baroque opera, two episodes of Game of Thrones or almost four episodes of Blackadder. Judge wisely.)

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Anno 1790: Season 1 (2011)

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Anno 1790

★★★★

(Sveriges Television, 2011)

I’ve been meaning to write about this for ages and, if I don’t do so now, I will completely forget to mention it; and that would be a shame, because this really is rather good. You’ll be aware by now that I don’t really do crime fiction. It’s not that I have a problem with it per se, but I prefer historical fiction and fantasy, and there are plenty of those books to keep me amused for now. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, of course, but the Millennium Trilogy is about as far as I ever got into the Scandi-crime field. However, I recently stumbled across Anno 1790, an excellent 2011 TV series from SVT (the Swedish national broadcaster). It combines crime investigation, historical drama and just a hint of illicit romance. It’s full of gorgeously bleak, brooding views of 18th-century Stockholm and features a sensitive, educated and equally brooding hero.

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Vikings: Season 2 (2014)

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Vikings

★★★★

You’ve got to give it to the team behind The Vikings. I thought Season 1 was good; but they kicked off the first episode of Season 2 with an intense battle scene, complete with shield walls, impalement and Rollo surging around without his shirt on; and things simply haven’t let up since. If the first season was about dreams, exploration and quiet calculation, this second season plunges us into the difficulties of keeping hold of power: the negotiation, the double-bluffing and the hard choices about who to trust and who to destroy. Sometimes, as both Ragnar Lothbrok and his enemies will discover in different ways, the most dangerous of men are not those who drink and argue and go fiercely into battle, but those who wait on the sidelines, and watch, and weigh, and measure.

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