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Spring in the airs
Another underground venue in London's West End, not exactly for films but very film-related is the fabulous Art Deco cabaret bar called The Crazy Coqs in the bowels of what used to be the largest...
View ArticleSunny start in Athens of the North
The sun shines down on the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival with large and enthusiastic audiences in new venues in an annual event (it has the longest unbroken record of any large scale film...
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Odd Man In
During the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, in a milder English heatwave, the marvellous Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image, in the heart of London's Bloomsbury, celebrated one of the greatest English...
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Pierfull Pleasure in the Best British Comedy in years
Unquestionably the funniest film I saw at the 2018 Edinburgh International Film Festival, Eaten by Lions (99 minutes) had sold-out world premiere screenings, selected in the British Cinema strand....
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Midsummer Nights' Dreams in Spain
No rain in SpainA land of movies and famed for its film festivals (encouraged by Franco in the past to entertain and perhaps district his citizens) Spain seemed recently to have come off the boil...
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3 Tage in Regent Strasse
Today would have been the 80th birthday of Austrian screen legend Romy Schneider so the semi-factual fictive feature reconstructon of her famous interview for Germany's Stern magazine, 3 Tage in...
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Canada can, and does still- with style!
For its seventh annual Quebec Lecture in London, the Francophone Delegation filled the superb surrounds of the Royal Geographical Society, which has nestled for well over a century in one of the...
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Mannheim - Heidelberg: Meetings with Remarkable Films
With its 67th edition the International Film Festival, now running in both Mannheim and Heidelberg, adjacent antique and bustling cities south of Frankfurt on Germany's celebrated Weinstrasse,...
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Talking Turkey in London
Opening lunch in SOFRA off Oxford Street film director Mustafa Karadeniz on right Jean-Marc BarrTurkish Coffee Phillip Bergson with director of Yunus Emre Institute London Dr Mehmet Karakus, film...
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Viva Italia! at Ciné Lumiere in London
With a sold-out curtain-raising preview of LORO, Paolo Sorrentino's latest Felliniesque politico-social vaudeville the latest Cinema Made in Italy launched its sunniest showcase of new Italian features...
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Postcards from Blighty
Not only the not-so-very United Kingdom is facing crises of identity and culture-clashes currently, in the months apres-BREXIT and avant the various elections looming across Europe, but the cinema...
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Curtain up on Iron Curtain films!
Almost in defiance of the impending gloom of Brexit, London continues to host a plethora of European film events, national film-weeks and a variety of cultural cinematic gatherings, screenings and...
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On the Kindness of Strangers
There is another White House, an iconic apartment-house opened in 1936,and now a listed building, in bustling Marylebone, close to Regent's Park in the centre of London, and opposite the site of the...
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Fasten your Seat-belts - Raindance is taking off tonight!
In characteristic contrast to the ever-earlier Launch of the BFI London Film Festival, held (on 31st August 2017) in the terror-attack capital's largest cinema, which was awash with sponsor's mineral...
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"The Jungle" film launches tonight with Red Cross Charity Premiere in the...
One of the most remarkable British directing debuts of this or any year, In Another Life is a swiftly-paced,convincingly acted and utterly involving recreation of the struggles of a handful of refugees...
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Frying tonight!
Though based in High Wycombe ,the Third Edition of the highly independent Fisheye Film Festival ventures to nearby Beaconsfield tonight with a special screening inside the cinema of the famed National...
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Russian about Town
It could hardly be a more topical time, given the international brouhahas in the media about Soviet cyberhacking and the alleged,well-funded if unsubtle interference of Putinistas in elections around...
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Polishing up Polish Cinema
Easter comes early to the not-so-United Kingdom this year, and so has KINOTEKA which has brought for its 16th annual Edition a cornucopia of features, shorts and documentaries of Polish provenance or...
View ArticleCherchez les Femmes!
In such grim times, and with such over-budgeted but under-scripted movies hurtling into cinemas around the globe, what a delight Picturehouses brought across the troubled British Isles last night with...
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SERET:Sabras a go go
While much of the international film world was cavorting across the Croisette, confused and often rain-swept, and desperately seeking empowerment for female cineastes on and off the screens of the...
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Figures in a LANDSCAPE Exhibition
As part of the celebrations marking its 250th anniversary as a teaching venue, the Royal Academy on London's Piccadilly has undergone some extensive, if not eccentric , renovations and refurbishing of...
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A rage on the stage
"It's the pictures that got small" snarled Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. But that small screen in the corner of rooms around the world screening Game of Thrones ensures a...
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Marlene sings the Blue
No, they certainly do not make them like this anymore, nor like Her.A very willkommen benefit of the two--month season of cinema marking the centenary of the Weimar Republic at the BFI Southbank in...
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"Raindance means Raindance"
If it's Tuesday, it must be Raindance, or at least if the 22nd August then a double helping of events to launch and promote the 2019 edition of the most independent, idiosyncratic and...
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Film Career of Korea
The 14th London Korean Film Festival opens tonight as a celebration marking the centenary of film-making in Korea in the aptly-chosen historic Regent Street Cinema, wthere the freres Lumiere first...
View ArticleBerlinale Blues
Life is change, but as the Dalai Lama says, the Lightbub has to want to change. New dates, new directors, new directions, and what changing temperatures during this 70th edition of one of the most...
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Walt chez Wallace
It may seem an unusual collaboration, to house an exquisite exhibition illuminating some of the inspirations for Walt Disney's early animated shorts and more recent, internationally successful...
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Oxford Gin & Media Tonics
First held in London in 2016,The Media Production & Technology Show has clearly become the UK's largest annual event for broadcast and film-making companies to showcase their wares and latest...
View Article"The play's the thing"
There have been at least 50 film versions of what is probably William Shakespeare's most famous tragedy Hamlet. There were a goodly number of silent screen shorts, and many celebrated features, most...
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AMERICAN STAR A shore thing
AMERICAN STAR is an engaging contemporary thriller, well-directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, colourful, intriguing and enhanced by some unexpected star turns.Ian McShane- another 81-year-old!- excels as...
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