La Regle Du Jeu (Jean Renoir) 1939 – BFI Blu Ray 2023. Review by Alan Price. Since 1952 Renoir’s La Regle Du Jeu has stood high in Sight and Sound’s poll of the greatest films of all time.
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Enys Men. Review by Alan Price. I doubt if 2023 will see a more visually beautiful British film than Enys Men. It’s a remarkable advance on Bait and confirms Jenkins to be a powerful poetic filmmaker.
Hands Up / Identification Marks: None. Review by Alan Price. Here’s an artist constantly on the move: hitting out with anger, wit and veiled compassion. I savour David Thomson’s summing up of this Polish maverick. “Skolimowski is a director who stalks us like a fighter with stunning blows in either hand.”
EO. Directed by Jerzy Skolomowski. Review by Alan Price. EO is the story of the tribulations of a Sardinian donkey: very attractively grey with white spots round its melancholic eyes.
Carrie by William Wyler. Review by Alan Price. Carrie, William Wyler’s 1950 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel Sister Carrie, has been out of full circulation for some years now: hard to see on TV and only available as a cut DVD until Imprint’s restored Blu-Ray release.
The Cassandra Cat. Review by Alan Price. There have been many quirky films about cats but I can’t recall a film quite like The Cassandra Cat. The Cassandra Cat is a very different film to Vojtech Jasny’s later masterpiece All My Good Countrymen (1969) but nonetheless an endearing gem.
The Films of Ingmar Bergman Vol 4. Review by Alan Price. And so we arrive at the 4th BFI Box set of Bergman films. This covers his final films for the cinema and some TV work from 1972 until 1984.
Empire of Light. Review by Graham Buchan. A very reliable rule in most film-making is that an excellent script can still be turned into a bad film, but a poor script will never be turned into a good film.
The War Trilogy. Review by Alan Price. The two most famous war trilogies in cinema are still Roberto Rossellini’s (Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero) and Andrzej Wajda’s (A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds).
Tár. Review by Graham Buchan. Tár is a mesmerizing and complex tale of a jet-setting star orchestral conductor, Lydia Tár, and her past transgressions, her failings and her fall from grace.
Nil by Mouth. Review by Alan Price. Nil by Mouth makes up for so many old British films that patronised working class characters. It might be dark, raw and depressing but not without humour.
Twilight. Reviewed by Alan Price. Images of uncompromising nature, in the form of the forests, mountains and plains, surrounding the ex-mining village Ronabanya in northern Hungary, begin and end the extraordinary Twilight.
By Alan Price • film, year 2023 • Tags: Alan Price, film