Michael Winterbottom

Cherry Tree Lane and The Killer Inside Me follow recent trend for arthouse violence

Is extreme violence an easy option for directors with nothing to say?

22 Aug 2010

Paul Andrew Williams’s Cherry Tree Lane is a real-time enactment of the break-in and torture of a middle class suburban couple by vengeful teenagers. At a mere 77 minutes, it’s still a brutal, unpleasant endurance test, and much of its power comes from…

The Shock Doctrine

Second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s capitalism analysis

23 Jul 2010

(E) 79min (Dogwoof) Not to be confused with Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s 2007 short, this second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s chilling book about the evils of modern capitalism is the full-length 2009 documentary co-directed by Michael…

Michael Winterbottom on The Killer Inside Me

28 May 2010

Born 29 March 1961 Background Born in Blackburn the director has become known for his ability to churn out films and work across genres. He made his first feature film Butterfly Kiss in 1995. What’s he up to now? Winterbottom has adapted…

The Killer Inside Me

28 May 2010

(18) 109min Utilising Jim Thompson’s controversial pulp novel, workaholic filmmaker Michael Winterbottom explodes the myth that the 1950s was a time of innocence. The jaunty music on the credit sequence is more suggestive of family television than a…

Genova - Crosstown traffic

19 Mar 2009

Let’s talk about cities. Those Rousseau-ian abysses, those human zoos, those deserts of loneliness. The modern city and cinema have always had a special relationship, one that after years of abuse has been reduced to hand gestures and cliché. The…

Genova

19 Mar 2009

MYSTERY/DRAMA With his latest work, filmmaker Michael Winterbottom doffs his cap to the literature of mystery, coincidence and suggestion exemplified in the short stories of WW Jacobs (The Monkey’s Paw), Saki and Daphne Du Maurier. Following the…

Afghan film festival

14 Feb 2008

FESTIVAL For exasperated introductions to the complexities of Afghanistan’s political situation it is difficult to beat Atiq Rahini’s (A)fghanistan: An Impossible State. Rahini simply allows the attending members of a loya jirga (political gathering…

A Mighty Heart

16 Aug 2007

Prolific, versatile British director Michael Winterbottom’s film about the kidnapping of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl by Pakistani militants in Karachi in 2002 is at once a riveting political thriller and an enormously affecting human drama.

Angelina Jolie

Film Special

17 Jul 2007

Playing the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was no ordinary job for Angelina Jolie, finds Paul Dale. Angelina Jolie, one of Hollywood’s favourite tabloid cover girls, can soon be seen in the one film that may ensure her…