For decades, Fritz Lang’s expressionist sci-fi Metropolis has been considered an indisputable classic. This fact has not changed. The film, however, has. With its running time having been cut by a quarter shortly after its German premiere in 1927, the full version of Lang’s epic was long presumed lost, until it miraculously turned up in Argentina two years ago. Having been recut and restored, the version we see now is the closest audiences have been to Lang’s vision in over 80 years – and it’s just as astonishing as you might expect.
The Runaways were the goddesses of the Riot Grrrl movement, and charting their extraordinary journey from suburban insignificance to global stardom was always going to be a challenge. Happily, this sensitively crafted and superbly cast film more than does justice to their extraordinary legacy.
Wonderfully acted and beautifully shot, Winter’s Bone has been causing a sensation on the festival circuit. Yet although the film may deliver as a piece of cinema, its story leaves little impact. A bit like looking at a lovely painting of nothing in particular.
At the invitation of the Swedenborg Society, Best For Film is publishing a special series of reviews to follow its ‘Images of the Afterlife in Cinema’ film season, which will be exploring life, death and everything in between. This week we’re looking at the Japanese classic; Afterlife.
What do you mean you’ve never heard of the Essex Boys and the Rettendon murders? Are you trying to wind me up? Bonded By Blood is a true-blue British gangster film about the 1995 range rover killings. It’s “The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing but the F**king Truth”, so round up the few lads you still trust and get yourself down the picture house. Now. You don’t get second chances round here. This is Essex…
We’re happy to see that Chris Morris’s fantastic Four Lions has reached its well deserved place in the DVD top ten. Simultaneously hilarious, heartbreaking and terrifyingly intelligent, this attack on stupidity itself is vital viewing for every one of us.
At the invitation of the Swedenborg Society, Best For Film is publishing a special series of reviews to follow its ‘Images of the Afterlife in Cinema’ film season, which will be exploring life, death and everything in between. This week it’s the turn of Adrian Lyne’s harrowing supernatural classic Jacob’s Ladder. Hold onto your sanity…
You might not be tempted by Buried – after all, it’s by a director you’ve never heard of and it stars an actor best known for playing vapid romantic interests or unnecessarily violent supervillains. We’d more or less written Ryan Reynolds off too, but in this extraordinary film he demonstrates a range and talent which left us gasping for breath. A bit like him, because he’s been buried alive.
A Paris outsider seeks to hurl himself off a bridge, buckling under the weight of a debt as huge as the chip on his shoulder. His plan is foiled by a mysterious Amazonian beauty who walks around changing his life and being tall. Is the allegory behind Angel-A as heavy-handed as its title suggests?
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