Film and Anna Rogers

Why artist and writer Miranda July is the most extraordinary filmmaker of our time

Director of The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know

19 Oct 2011

The work of American artist and filmmaker Miranda July is divisive; indeed, whether you find her latest film The Future twee and wilfully obscure or challenging and moving will almost certainly depend on how willing you are to empathise wholly with a…

Profile: Miranda July

Director's much-anticipated second film The Future

17 Oct 2011

July is an artist, writer and filmmaker from Berkeley, California. She is best-known for her critically acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won the Sundance Film Festival award for ‘originality of vision’ and the Camera d’Or prize at…

The Future

Miranda July's feature charts couple's existential crisis

17 Oct 2011

(12A) 90min ‘Quirky’ is the word most frequently bandied about when describing the work of Miranda July. The Future is a far more disturbing and sombre film than this adjective would suggest. OK, so it’s narrated by a cat, but a cat who alludes to…

Meek's Cutoff a keenly observed addition to the 'mythic Western' genre

Director Kelly Reichardt crafts a tense fable with no clear morality

24 Mar 2011

(tbc) 104min Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy) is one of the most interesting American filmmakers working today and her latest feature film delivers on all fronts. Meek’s Cutoff belongs to the slender sub strata of the Western genre…

Howl

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman examine Allen Ginsberg's controversial poem, with James Franco

2 Mar 2011

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (who both worked on 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk) were originally commissioned by the Allen Ginsberg estate to make a documentary to mark the 50th anniversary of Ginsberg’s most celebrated (and notorious…

Blue Valentine

Derek Cianfrance’s extraordinary feature debut is an exceptional and brutal piece of filmmaking

23 Dec 2010

(15) 111min Ten years in the making, Derek Cianfrance’s extraordinary feature film debut, which can be best described as a marital cautionary tale, draws from the very best of the American independent inheritance (the uncompromising work of John…

Somewhere

Sofia Coppola's quiet and meditative film returns to familiar thematic territory

30 Nov 2010

(15) 97min Sofia Coppola returns to familiar thematic territory in her latest take on the dull realities that lie beneath the hedonistic lifestyle of the pampered and the privileged. Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), a permanent resident of LA’s…

Bluebeard

2 Jul 2010

Charles Perrault’s dark and misogynistic tale about a nobleman with a penchant for uxoricide (murder of a wife) seems like perfect literary fodder for a director as intrigued by the dynamics of sexuality and gender as Catherine Breillat. Related through…

White Material

24 Jun 2010

(15) 105min Claire Denis’s latest film marks a return to origin both thematically and personally for the filmmaker (her debut 1988 feature Chocolat was similarly set in colonial Africa). Filmed in Cameroon (although time and place remain…

La Danse (Le Ballet de Opera de Paris)

28 Apr 2010

(PG) 158min Veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman specialises in capturing bodies caught up in a process of metamorphosis. In Titicut Follies he gave us the contortions of psychiatric patients and in Highschool, the awkward gestures of the…

Lourdes

10 Mar 2010

(U) 99min Austrian writer/director Jessica Hausner’s debut feature takes a thoroughly anti-mystical approach to the phenomenon of miracles. The action centres on a pilgrimage made by a group of invalids to the eponymous French city during which a…

Behind the scenes of The Fantastic Mr Fox

20 Oct 2009

Andy Gent, chief animator on Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr Fox, reveals the cinematic inspiration behind the project and the difficulties inherent in making a stop-animation film. ‘As well as being a huge fan of Roald Dahl, Wes loves old films like…

Interview: Wes Anderson

The director talks about adapting Fantastic Mr. Fox for the big screen

15 Oct 2009

Texan born director Wes Anderson is renowned for making highly detailed and idiosyncratic films populated with slightly neurotic, child-like characters (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited). Seeing him in person, you realise that he wouldn’t…

Katalin Varga

2 Oct 2009

Filmed in two weeks on a micro budget, Katalin Varga is proof of just how good independent filmmaking can be in the hands of a committed and intelligent filmmaker, in this case, first time director, Peter Strickland. While a tale of revenge set in…

Agnès Varda

The considerable career of the ‘grandmother’ of Le Nouvelle Vague

17 Sep 2009

There are rumours that Agnès Varda’s 2008 cinematic autobiography The Beaches of Agnès is her last film. For any octogenarian filmmaker, this might seem like the logical conclusion to a prolific career, but Varda is no ordinary artist. When she…

The Crimson Wing

The life cycle of the Lesser Flamingo

17 Sep 2009

This is the first cinematic venture to come out of the newly formed DisneyNature corporation and it certainly boasts all the right credentials: syrupy narrative read by Mariella Frostrup and a trendy soundtrack by The Cinematic Orchestra. What you…

The September Issue

3 Sep 2009

(12A) 89min RJ Cutler, political documentary filmmaker and self confessed fashion-ignoramus, is an unlikely candidate to be granted access to the hallowed halls of Vogue magazine; yet in 2007, he received an invitation from the ‘high priestess’ of…

Shirin

23 Jul 2009

Revered Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami’s latest work stages a dramatic re-telling of the 12th century legend of Shirin and Khosrow. It’s a tragic and brutal tale of female self-sacrifice, but here’s the rub: the central attraction is missing.

35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums)

9 Jul 2009

Claire Denis’ latest venture is a far more intimate affair than 2004’s sprawling and elliptical The Intruder and a fine addition to the director’s challenging and protean body of work. Centring on the delicate but loving bond between a father and his…

Chéri

30 Apr 2009

ROMANCE Adapted from Colette’s controversial 1920s novels Cheri and The Last of Cheri, which centre on a six-year love affair between a young man, Cheri, and ageing courtesan Lea de Lonval, and its aftermath, Stephen Frears’ film is a complex and…