RIP to Two Titans of European Cinema

By Glenn Dunks

What a shock it was to hear over the last 24 hours of the deaths of both Robby Müller and Claude Lanzmann. These two icons of European cinema were 78 and 92 respectively and both gave so much to the universe and there are not enough hats to tip to their memories and their legacies.

Robby Müller was the Dutch-born cinematographer whose regular collaborations with the likes of Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Lars Von Trier were the stuff of legend. Who can forget those stunning tableaus of Breaking the Waves or his regular plays on black and white with Jarmusch as well as Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson. I'm not as well versed on Jarmusch's films as others, but I gather Dead Man with Johnny Depp is the one worth gawking over the most.

And I know it’s become a little bit fashionable to roll one’s eyes at people going on about the virtues of celluloid over digital, but I guarantee you have never seen colours projected onto a screen quite like those twilight blues of Wenders’ Paris, Texas...

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Doc Corner: The Dandy Glam of 'Love, Cecil'

by Glenn Dunks

Cecil Beaton was a dandy. He was an elegant fop, an aesthete, a bright young thing, a (mostly) homosexual. These are all words used to describe him in Love, Cecil, a charming bio-doc from director Lisa Immordino Vreeland. They are words not used in malice, but in reverence to a man whose singular attitudes flew in the face of what men were ‘supposed’ to be. Cecil Beaton had about him an air of posh aristocracy that belied his place in society, but which would ultimately allow him to become ingratiated into the inner-sanctum of Britain’s upper-class (including right up the Queen herself), the world of celebrity, and even the Academy as the Oscar-winning designer behind Gigi and My Fair Lady. He also just happens to be one of the great photographers of the 21st century

Love, Cecil is Vreeland’s most accomplished film to date...

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Halfway Mark - Box Office Hits of 2018 (Thus Far) in Multiple Categories

by Nathaniel R

It's time for the annual "halfway mark" festivities. With the first six months of the year done, we are triggered to look back at one came before. To make this far more interesting than just "biggest blockbusters" we're listing the biggest hits of multiple categories. If we've written about them extensively, talked about them, or reviewed them, that's where the links take you.

Key: The totals are domestic as of estimates this weekend.Titles that still have life in them (i.e. are still in active release and not done or just about to leave) have up arrows next to them. OKAY THE LISTS. Ready? Let's go!

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Doc Corner: 'Three Identical Strangers'

by Glenn Dunks

“Truth is stranger than fiction”, nudge, wink, geddit? It’s fairly common that that old chestnut of a phrase makes its way into writings about documentaries as more and more filmakers uncover strange but true stories that then make their way into cinemas and onto streaming services. Crazy! Amazing! Insane! Shook! Whatever. Sometimes it's justified (Hi Tickled!) and then there’s Three Identical Strangers. A film that would almost certainly be a farce if invented in the mind of a screenwriter. There’s no way such a story could play as straight drama. It’s just too nutty. It is crazy and amazing and insane and I was shook.

Three Identical Strangers starts the way somebody telling this story might. Have you heard of the one of three brothers, identical triplets, who were separated at birth? That's where we begin...

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Doc Corner: In the Shadow of Kubrick with 'Filmworker'

by Glenn Dunks

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. Or in this case, a movie by its poster. The artwork for Tony Zierra’s Filmworker shows a photograph of Stanley Kubrick on set with his long-time yet little-known collaborator Leon Vitali hovering behind him. Kubrick, normally the focus of these sort of non-fiction works, is unusually blurred. Our eye naturally focuses on Vitali despite Kubrick’s appearance that can’t be entirely obscured no matter how hard they try.

It’s fitting for Filmworker, a documentary about Vitaly not Kubrick. Although, as was probably always inevitable about a film about the people around one of cinema’s most commanding and famous names, Kubrick remains a constant presence who is too hard to ignore...

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