Reviews

...but none so keenly, sharply taut as SINK THE BISMARK. KENNETH MORE heads an extraordinary ensemble cast in his most restrained, subtle, confined yet profoundly emotional performance in the entirety of his film canon. His clipped voice, tightly-wound and demanding high authority at The Admiralty is as abrupt, swift and laser-like as the incredible action which blazes in a jaw-dropping pageantry of North Sea Naval Battles of British calculated risk vs Nazi overweening confidence. Not one dull nanosecond.

...delivered in a splendor of exquisite B&W tension and a terrible suspension of moral choices that young males actively struggle to even grasp...let alone gain certain control. Peter Brook's cinematic Masterpiece is his absolute trust in William Golding's Novel which would most earnestly recommend reading before screening every boy's parents'...every boy's Guardian's worst nightmare. Shattering.

...than decent, but more freely adapted Roger Corman Color film which is far more oftenly screened. If not put off by B&W...and an unnerving deliberate, sometimes langorous pacing, this 1950 version has more sustained tension and allows Poe to leap at your senses in concert with his text. Decent performances and an almost sympathetic Roderick Usher.

...but for Noah Baumbach. XY's cannot do the Algebra of the XX Chromosome. Simple? No.

The hardest, most hurtful thing thing that ever happens to boys and it happens every second of every minute of every hour of every day... is knowing you are a misfit. Baumbach manages to snag those seconds of two brothers who find that just being themeselves doesn't work in this world.

...as it is Ken Russell's finest film. Period. So easily dismissed for its majesty without God, but that is its redemption as its blistering horrors are all true. Russell so very desperately wanted to put over the wild insanity of Mass Hysteria that viewers could nay accept that they lived in this world of such agonistic horror. Condemned. Lost. Forgetten.

Have you a copy...post it. NOW.

LE ROI DANSE demands an acute delight and elevated sensibility to the music of LULLY, MARAIS, CHARPENTIER, DE LELANDE et al Baroque Francais. In the event, this is your sweet spot...pour a large snifter of H'ors d'Age Cognac and prepare to be so transformed as to never want to leave Versailles de Louis XIV.

Am still there.

...as a stroll of snug tension, then a trot, a canter and full gallop. This "terrible beauty" of a film will not suit everyone. Many simply won't even be able to manage it at all. It accosts viewers and taunts all to be as fearless as it. LAMB shrieks the cries of angels. The chemistry...the alchemy of Liam Neeson and Hugh O'Conor together is magisterial in their double-punch of excruciatatingly shared passion, each for the other. Perfect beauty has the fastest fade. How? Oh, oh but how?

...in all ways imaginable...and unimaginable. Not since Jean-Pierre Leaud's ANTOINE DOINEL in FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT'S 1959 Masterpiece, LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS, has a Boy Actor given such an excruciatingly personal performance in any film. BRETTEN LORD'S is the most penetrating limning of a character in a film as ever you will see. Completely unselfaware, as he had never been before an audience, let alone a Cinecamera, he is so wholly natural as to be a Miracle. LAD: A YORKSHIRE STORY blithely lifts the Heart and Spirit with such Grace as to leap to Majesty With God.