Movie Reviews

Criterion Discovery: Sid and Nancy

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Background: After a long hiatus of being out of print, Alex Cox’s punk-rock cult hit Sid & Nancy (Spine #20) returns to the Criterion Collection. The film was Cox’s first to be included in the main collection, preceding Walker (Spine #423) and Repo Man (Spine #654).Story: After a fateful meeting, Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and American junkie Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) begin a star-crossed, mutually destructive romance [ . . . ]

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DVD/Blu-ray: Life Is Sweet review – exudes positivity

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Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet
Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet

 

Sweet isn’t the right word; in Mike Leigh’s 1990 film, life is unfair, frustrating and confusing by turns. Though, despite the darkness, Life Is Sweet exudes positivity and remains one of Leigh’s funniest, most quotable features.Many of the best lines are mumbled by Timothy Spall’s grotesque would-be restauranteur Aubrey, especially when he’s talking us through the menu for his Edith Piaf-themed restaurant. Anyone for prune quiche? Saveloy on a bed of lychees? Or liver in lager? Spall here is a brilliant physical comedian, whether he’s capsizing a caravan or tumbling off an expensive orthopaedic bed. And our final glimpse of him, semi-conscious on the restaurant floor clad in stripey-fronts, is difficult to forget [ . . . ]

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Withnail and I by Bruce Robinson | The Z Review

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Withnail & I
Withnail & I

 

As Thatcher’s 80s ground to their inexorable conclusion, a little independent film came out called Withnail and I. As for all independent films, it was nearly not made at all. George Harrison’s Handmade Films picked it up after he read the script on a plane to America, and the rest is history. It launched the career of Richard E. Grant and finally proved that its writer and director, Bruce Robinson, was better behind the camera than in front. (McGann’s career had already found its feet, the McGann brothers being a small acting legend in the UK.) [ . . . ]

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The Trip to Spain feasts upon its stars’ fear of obsolescence

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Once more, into the brie — or, in this case, the manchego. For the third time, now, for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, it’s the feast as improv proving ground, the sumptuous meal as arena of competitive discernment: Who can better parse and parody the particularities of some beloved British film actor? And, most crucially, Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip to Spain is a breezy study of aging men afraid they’ve lost their potency, their command of life, their once-certain enshrinement in the culture. It is at once a desperate echo of long-gone glories and a glory itself.

Source: The Trip to Spain feasts upon its stars’ fear of obsolescence | L.A. Weekly