Author: Chris Barsanti Page 2
Ugetsu
Kenji Mizoguchi's mist-shrouded masterpiece Ugetsu is a morality tale that is ever mindful of the frail humanity of its characters. Set in Japan during the tumultuous sixteenth century - when the country was torn apart...
Movie Review posted on 10th November 2005
The Wages of Fear
"The best thriller ever made" is perhaps too much praise for the movie, while "best examination of the human condition" is too faint to be heard. Nevertheless, one can safely say that Henri-Georges Clouzot's The...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Infernal Affairs
A twisted pretzel of secrecy and betrayal that always seems on the verge of exploding into an inferno of gunfire, Infernal Affairs strives to be the end-all, be-all of undercover cop movies and comes so...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Forty Guns
A Western that's thoroughly urban in its outlook, Sam Fuller's Forty Guns was made at the height of his most fertile filmmaking period in the 1950s - he released China Gate and Run of the...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
The Great Raid
Sometimes you can have the best story a filmmaker could ask for, a giant pile of money and all the best intentions, only to end up with what is ultimately a sub-par piece of work....
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
The Squid and the Whale
One feels pretty easy predicting at the start of Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale - after a scene in which a family of four plays tennis and the father keeps hitting the ball...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
A Home At The End Of The World
An initially touching story that wilts under its own insignificance, A Home at the End of the World is the second film to be adapted from a Michael Cunningham novel, following the footsteps of The...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
All That Jazz
Now that both Chicago and Cabaret have been dusted off and remounted as seemingly eternal fixtures on Broadway, and the film version of Chicago was such a rousing critical and commercial success, it's a good...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
S.W.A.T.
Is it that Samuel L. Jackson's character is nicknamed "Hondo"? Could it be the sequence where Colin Farrell goes running on the beach, appears to flirt with a dog and later explosively vomits, all of...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Schizopolis
Hovering somewhere among a botched experiment, a sneaky assault on modern-day life and cinema, and the greatest home movie ever made is Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis. Made at the tail end of the indie-film part of...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
The premise at first seems quite a nice one. Henry Van Cleeve (Don Ameche, looking prematurely aged but still dapper in evening wear) comes down a staircase into a cavernous, Art Deco-inspired office where he...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Rize
For all the quite considerable energy on display in the dance documentary Rize, one can't quite escape the sneaking suspicion that it all would have benefited quite enormously from having an actual filmmaker behind the...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
The Outsiders
When Francis Ford Coppola made The Outsiders in 1983, he was in the midst of yet another career paradigm shift. Having broke the bank on the gargantuan semi-failures Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart,...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
Doomed to live forever in the shadows of the greatness that is Dogtown and Z-Boys, and to always come up just a bit short in comparison, the documentary Stoked is nevertheless a well-turned-out piece of...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Angels In America
There are times when Mike Nichols' long-awaited HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's award-riddled Reagan-era AIDS epic play, Angels in America, just about achieves that grand moment of completion that it's been striving for, and the...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Punk: Attitude
At the start of Don Letts' excellent new documentary Punk: Attitude, ex-Black Flag-er and perennial curmudgeon Henry Rollins explains punk as being in essence one guy looking at the world he's living in and saying...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Teknolust
A sci-fi film for those who enjoy the concept and theory of the genre, if not actually its practice, Teknolust would probably be better enjoyed if it had been made into a multimedia display for...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Mayor of the Sunset Strip
Like most viewers of his documentary Mayor of the Sunset Strip, director George Hickenlooper (The Man From Elysian Fields), doesn't seem initially all that impressed with little Rodney Bingenheimer. A small, black-clad moppet with a...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Anatomy Of Hell
It's almost never fair to reduce a film, even a very bad film, to one single image or scene - out of context, almost anything can unfairly seem offensive, moronic, or just plain clueless. However,...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
The Statement
No matter how much leeway you want to give certain films - whether they star an actress you like or are about a worthy subject - it just isn't enough, and you will end up...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
In Good Company
It's one of those nightmare scenarios of which feel-good stories are made: Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), middle-aged family man and top sales guy at a big, Sports Illustrated-like magazine, gets thrown for a loop when...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Eurotrip
Who would've thought, in this dreary month of studio-dumped product, that true joy could come in the form of Vinnie Jones and a busload of football hooligans barreling down a French highway in the wrong...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Anything Else
You can judge the current state of Woody Allen in the cinematic world by the fact that the advertising for his newest film, Anything Else, doesn't even mention his name. For all intents and purposes,...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Anastasia (1956)
This is the earlier, and definitely not animated, version of the story of the hunt for Anastasia Romanov, daughter of the Tsar who, according to legend, was the only member of the royal family to...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Man on Fire (2004)
An overstuffed, pricey, and smashingly gorgeous bag for a variety pack of clichés, Man on Fire represents director Tony Scott taking somewhat of a step backwards after fun, spry thrillers Spy Game and Enemy of...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Thirteen
You can't argue that the film Thirteen doesn't know its teenagers. It gets all the obsessions and silly little dramas just right - the autobiographical script was written by one of the film's stars when...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
2046
Picking up where In the Mood for Love dropped off, but also mixing in elements of (or at least nods to) just about all of his other films, Wong Kar Wai's 2046 has most of...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Monster
Thank God that Monster, the fictionalized story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, wasn't made back in the 1990s, when filmmakers just couldn't fetishize mass murder enough. Wuornos's story would have been "loosely adapted" so that...
Movie Review posted on 1st November 2005
Suggested
Leisure Festival - Dreamland in Margate
On the same day that Glastonbury welcomed back Margate's adopted sons, The Libertines, Margate itself put on it's very own Leisure Festival as it...
Pretty Fierce talk to us about collaborating with Doja Cat, emetophobia, arena tours and staying "true to yourself" [EXCLUSIVE]
Sheffield's very own all girl group Pretty Fierce are still on a high after the recent release of their debut single - 'Ready For Me'.
Will Varley & Jack Valero - The Astor Theatre Deal Live Review
Three nights before the end of his current tour Will Varley returned to his home town of Deal to delight a sold out crowd in The Astor Theatre.
WYSE talks to us about her "form of synaesthesia", collaborating with Radiohead's Thom York and the prospect of touring with a band [EXCLUSIVE]
With only a few days to go before Portsmouth based songstress and producer WYSE releases her new single, 'Belladonna', we caught up with her to find...
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Bay Bryan talks to us about being a "wee queer ginger", singing with Laura Marling and being inspired by Matilda [EXCLUSIVE]
Colorado raised, Glasgow educated and Manchester based Bay Bryan is nothing if not a multi-talented, multi-faceted artist performing as both...
Keelan X talks to us about staying true to "your creative vision", collaborating with Giorgio Moroder and being "a yoga nut" [EXCLUSIVE]
Former Marigolds band member Keelan Cunningham has rediscovered his love of music with his new solo project Keelan X.
![Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]](https://images.contactmusic.com/images/home/homepage/luke-de-sciscio-abof-a.jpg "Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]")
Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]
Wiltshire singer-songwriter Luke De Sciscio, formally known as Folk Boy, is set to release is latest album - 'The Banquet' via AntiFragile Music on...
Annie Elise talks to us about the challenges a female producer has to face and "going through a year of grief and sickness" [EXCLUSIVE]
Electronic music pioneer and producer Annie Elise says that the release of her first EP - 'Breathe In, Breathe Out' feels "both vulnerable and...
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