THE DAVID PARKINSON FILM BLOG

(Reviews of Ask E. Jean; and On the Sea) ASK E. JEAN. Documentarist Ivy Meeropol is best known for two films about her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. She examined the impact on the family of their capital conviction of spying for the Soviet Union in Heir to an Execution (2004), while Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019) focussed on the man who had prosecuted them. The latter also examined Cohn's influence on Donald Trump and his name crops up frequen

(Reviews of Life Support; Synthetic Sincerity; and A Year in London) LIFE SUPPORT. Since debuting with The Olympic Side of London (2012), Italian-born, London-based documentarist Daniele Rugo has explored violence and social change in Lebanon in About a War (co-directed Abi Weaver, 2019) and the grim reality of 100 mass graves left behind by the civil war in The Soil and the Sea (2023). Now, he turns his attention to Gaza in Life Support, a collection of testimonies from 11 v

(Review of The Last One For the Road; and Misan Harriman: Shoot the People) THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD. Italian road comedies are something of a rarity. Among the best set on the peninsula are Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (1962), Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), Alberto Sordi's In viaggio con papà (1982), Enrico Oldoini's Una botta di vita (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's On Tour (1990), Rocco Papaleo's Basilicata Coast to Coast (2010), while Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be

(Reviews of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie; Birds of War; and Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script) NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE. Some will know Canadian director Matt Johnson for such admired features as The Dirties (2013), Operation Avalanche (2016), and BlackBerry (2023). A few others might know him from the DIY web series, Nirvana the Band (2007-09), which he worked up into a short-lived Viceland TV show entitled Nirvanna the Band the Show (2017-18)

(Reviews of A Private Life; Blue Heron; Virginia Woolf's Night & Day; and The Last Viking) A PRIVATE LIFE. In her 15-year directing career to date, Rebecca Zlotowski has explored the pressures placed on young women in Belle Épine (2010) and An Easy Girl (2019) and mothers in Other People's Children (2022). She has also twinned passion and radiation in Grand Central (2013) and séances and cinema in Planetarium (2016). Now, she touches on psychiatry and secrets in A Private Lif

(Reviews of Effi o Blaenau; Familiar Touch; Girlfriends; Lesbian Space Princess; and Killing Anna) EFFI O BLAENAU.\ Since debuting with House of America (1997), Marc Evans has been a leading champion of Welsh cinema. Although he has not focussed exclusively on the Principality, features like Patagonia (2010), Hunky Dory (2012), and Mr Burton (2024), as well as the football documentary, Jack to a King: The Swansea Story (2014), have captured the pride, personality, and passion

(Reviews of Kapodistrias; Merrily We Roll Along; and Time and Water) KAPODISTRIAS. History is impossible to replicate on screen. The best a viewer can hope for is an honest presentation of the facts. But this rarely happens, as the re-creators of the past always have a point to make or an angle to exploit. Even the best historical biopics reflect the preconceptions and preoccupations of their writer, director, and/or producer. There will always be omissions, distortions, and

(Reviews of Enzo; Köln 75; Bonnie & Clive;; and Acting) ENZO. Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo go back a long way. Having edited Cantet's Les Sanguinaires (1997) and Human Resources (1999), Campillo served as his co-writer/editor on Time Out (2001), Heading South (2005), The Class (2006), and Foxfire (2012) before he edited Return to Ithaca (2014) and co-wrote The Workshop (2017). So, when the cancer that killed him prevented Cantet from starting work on Nino, it was natural

(Reviews of Illusione; Leonora in the Morning Light; and No Place For Football) ILLUSIONE. At the outset of her directorial career, Francesca Archibugi had a love affair with the Donatello Awards. She won Best New Director with her feature bow, Mignon Has Come to Stay (1988), and Best Film with both Towards Evening (1990) and The Great Pumpkin (1993). The major awards might have dried up, but Archibugi has remained one of Italy's most respected film-makers, with dramas like W

(Reviews of Hen; Eagles of the Republic; The Christophers; The Balloonists; and Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass) HEN. Following in the hoofprints of Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (2022), György Pálfi's Hen presents the world from an animal's perspective. British audiences haven't seen much of the Hungarian director after he started out so impressively with Hukkle (2002) and Taxidermia (2006). In the intervening 20 years, Pálfi has produced five features: I Am Not Your Friend (2009)

(Reviews of Northern Soul: Still Burning; and Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People)) NORTHERN SOUL: STILL BURNING. Few local phenomena have been fawned over as much as Northern Soul. Since ace musicologist Tony Palmer rocked up in town best known for Rugby League to film ` The Wigan Casino' for Granada's This England programme in 1977, there has been a glut of nostalgic remembrances. Following John D. Moore's The Way of the Crowd (2004), Wayne Allen and Alan Byron made such

(Reviews of Romería; and Our Land) ROMERÍA. Having impressed with on debut with Summer 1993 (2017) and won the Golden Bear at Berlin for Alcarràs (2022), Catalan director Carla Simón returns with Romería. Taking its title from the Spanish word for `pilgrimage', this is another obviously autobiographical work and could be seen as a spiritual sequel to Simón's neophyte recollection of her childhood. Once again displaying an intuitively evocative sense of place, this is a deeply

(Reviews of Wild Foxes; Olivia; Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC; Ada: My Mother the Architect - ALSO; Departures; Surviving Earth; and Ultras) WILD FOXES. As a recent BFI Southbank season demonstrated, film-makers have found boxing an irresistible subject. Indeed, cinema owes the sport a good deal, as the Latham brothers invented a loop that prevented celluloid strips from tearing in the camera/projector (and, thus, enabled longer films), in order to shoot The Corbett

(Reviews of Rose of Nevada; Exit 8; Gioia mia; The North; and London's Last Wilderness) ROSE OF NEVADA. Even for its most ardent admirers, Enys Men (2022) felt anticlimactic after the brilliance of Mark Jenkin's debut feature, Bait (2019). The Cornish auteur continues to put his distinctive artisanal avant-garde stamp on genre cinema with Rose of Nevada, on which he serves as his own writer, 16mm cinematographer, editor, composer, and post-production sound designer. Working w

(Reviews of Miroirs No.3; Diamanti; The Wizard of the Kremlin; Kinaestheria; and Time Hoppers: The Silk ROad) MIROIRS No.3. Taking its title from a piano piece by Maurice Ravel, Christian Petzold's Miroirs No.3 is the latest of the Berlin School director's films to be set against the backdrop of a stifling summer. Unlike The State I Am In (2000), Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012), and Afire (2023), however, the twist in the tale is not so closely guarded, with the result t

(Reviews of Dracula; The Stranger; Undertone; and Being Ola) DRACULA. Radu Jude is by far the most interesting film-maker currently working anywhere in the world. Since making his feature debut with The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), he has attempted a psychological thriller ( Everybody in Our Family , 2012), a Western ( Aferim! , 2015), a period drama ( Scarred Hearts , 2016), a bleak comedy ( I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History As Barbarians , 2018), a political bio

(Reviews of Kim Novak's Vertigo; McCartney: The Hunt For the Lost Bass; D Is For Distance; Two Women; and Empire of Lies) KIM NOVAK'S VERTIGO. It's not often that a ghost is thanked in a film's credits. But the closing crawl of Alexandre O. Philippe's Kim Novak's Vertigo makes it clear that the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock was `undeniably present during the making of this movie'. This is the latest of the Swiss American documentarist's screen studies, following the likes of Ea

(Reviews of Two Prosecutors; Orwell: 2+2=5; Underland; Redoubt; and No Ordinary Heist) TWO PROSECUTORS. Such has been the provocative excellence of such documentaries as Maidan (2012), The Event (2015), Austerlitz (2016), The Trial (2018), State Funeral (2019), Baba Yar, Context (2021), and The Kiev Trial (2022) that it's easy to forget that Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa has also made such impactful fictional films as My Joy (2010), In the Fog (2012), A Gentle C

(Reviews of Trains; Dead Man's Wire; Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't; Dead Lover; Abode; Apnas; The Land of Sometimes; and The Last Supper) TRAINS. Among the first images ever projected on to a cinema screen was the arrival of a steam locomotive at a station on the Mediterranean coast. Auguste and Louis Lumière's L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895) falls outside the purview of Maciej J. Drygas's Trains , an archival documentary about 20th-century steam trav

(Reviews of La Grazia; The Tasters; Broken English; and One Last Deal) LA GRAZIA. Director Paolo Sorrentino and actor Toni Servillo have formed one of the great partnerships in modern cinema history. Each made his debut with L'uomo in più/One Man Up (2001), with Servillo playing an ageing crooner. He was a lonely businessman with Mafia connections in Le conseguenze dell'amore/The Consequences of Love (2004) and a grasping money lender in L'amico di famigli/The Family Friend