|
| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | Visit, or Memories and Confessions review – Manoel de Oliveira's remarkable testament | | by Peter Bradshaw Aug 30, 2021 | | The Portuguese director’s stately cine-memoir about his singular life was shot nearly four decades ago but withheld at his request until his death, aged 106 The remarkable Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who died in 2015 at the age of 106 and made movies right until the very end, often seems to me a film-maker from a statelier, almost pre-cinematic era: an epistolary director or manuscript-culture director. Here is what could be called his testamentary film, a personal cine-memoir or cine-meditation. It was shot in 1982, but withheld from release at the director’s request until after his death, which would be much further off than anyone imagined. It has only now found a release in the UK. Continue reading... | | | | | Override review – TV robot goes rogue in Stepford Wives meets Truman Show sci-fi | | by Leslie Felperin Aug 30, 2021 | | Jess Impiazzi stars as a TV show android who has a different husband each day but gets hacked in this scattershot drama This is an inane hodgepodge of sci-fi, political thriller and perhaps some kind of ill-considered satire – of reality TV, venal politicians? It’s hard to divine the target when the attack is so scattershot. It is supposed to take place in the US in 2040 where everyone is obsessed with watching a daily TV show about a buxom android housewife with an English accent named Ria (Jess Impiazzi); she spends every day nearly the same way with her husband Jack, from waking up and breakfasting to winding down with an evening soap opera and then sex if Jack so wishes. In other words, it’s The Truman Show meets The Stepford Wives, except there’s just the one wife – and the twist is that “Jack” is played by a different person in each episode. The first we meet is Luke Goss, who seems to be merely passing though before being replaced the next night while a recharged Ria gets rebooted with Jack number 2 (Amar Adatia), a coarser, crueller mate for a day, who is in turn replaced by many more Jacks – some of them women. Continue reading... | | | | | Second Spring review – bracing optimism in the face of dementia diagnosis | | by Phil Hoad Aug 30, 2021 | | Andy Kelleher’s accomplished drama debut is packed with deft performances as its characters make the best of a grim situation Andy Kelleher has directed documentaries about the film-makers Carol Reed, Alan Clarke and Chris Petit, but now makes an accomplished fiction debut with a film hovering in the edgelands of London, the south-east and on the protracted plains of middle age, receding out towards uncertainty. It concerns a medical diagnosis that should be devastating, but – aided by a deftly off-key performance from lead actor Cathy Naden – actually functions as an awakening. Naden plays fortysomething history lecturer Kathy, whose impulsive behaviour has begun to unsettle her friends. Stuck in a zombie marriage, she takes up with gangly, long-haired landscape gardener Nick (Jerry Killick) after throwing him a line next to his vintage BMW: “You can take me for a spin some time.” Alarmingly forthright has become her social modus operandi. She wakes up one morning on a disused railway platform after a night of alfresco boozing with a stranger. When her friends press her to get a brain scan, the news is not reassuring: she has fronto-temporal dementia, which can be lived with, but not cured. “It’s not Alzheimer’s,” husband Tim (Matthew Jure) feebly comforts her. Continue reading... | | | | | |
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment