Category: Uncategorized
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The Marching Band (En Fanfare) is a 2024 French drama directed by Emmanuel Courcol, who also co-wrote the screenplay. It premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and was released in the UK yesterday, so I went down to the Pictureville cinema at the National Media Museum in Bradford to take a look. When internationally renowned orchestra conductor, Thibaut (Benjamin…
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So what do I mean by comfort viewing? Well, let’s start by defining comfort food: food that provides a nostalgic or sentimental value, usually associated with childhood or home cooking. And let’s add to that food that is really moreish and easy to eat, such as sour cream and chive Pringles, or Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice…
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Paulo Sorrentino’s latest film, Parthenope (pronounced parth-en-o-pay), got its UK release yesterday. So with much excitement – I am a big fan of Sorrentino’s work – I set off to the Harrogate Everyman. There were only three of us in the cinema, although I guess that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise at…
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Here is my fourth list: my ‘Top 3 and a bit’ films about Poetry. As with drink and alcoholism, I decided to divide this list into two parts, otherwise there would have been just too many films to watch and, in any case, there are two different classes of film: films about real poets, and…
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I am not entirely certain of this, but I suspect this may be the first documentary film I have ever seen in a cinema. It is certainly the first I have reviewed. And what a terrific documentary to choose. Directed by Sinéad O’Shea, it tells the story of Edna O’Brien, one of Ireland’s most controversial…
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This is the debut feature film of French film-maker Louise Courvoisier. It received its World Premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at last year’s Cannes Festival and had its UK release last week. It is a drama about cheese-making – specifically Comté cheese from eastern France. Except, of course, that is not what it is really…
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The Return is a 2024 film adaptation of the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, directed by Uberto Pasolini, from a script by Edward Bond and John Collee. Gone is all the fantasy: no sea monsters; no Gods. This film is Odysseus’s return. It begins with his broken body washed up on the shores of Ithica,…
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My name is Richard, and I am a Filmaholic. I think that will be the only joke in this post – somehow humour does not feel appropriate. Following last week’s list of films about drink and drinking, I am now looking at films which focus on the darker side of the alcohol experience: alcoholism. I…
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Mr Burton is a new British drama film directed by Marc Evans about the early years of Richard Burton’s career, beginning in his mid-teens, in the early days of the Second World War, and continuing up to the Festival of Britain year, 1951, when Burton played Prince Hal in Henry IV parts 1 and 2…
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A couple of years ago in a charity shop in Harrogate I came across a DVD of an Italian film called Mid-August Lunch, the first film directed by actor/screenwriter Gianni Di Gregorio. I bought it and I loved it. It is about Gianni, an unambitious bachelor who ambles through life, racking up debts and looking…