Films of the Year Archive
After a disappointing year in 2010, this year was considerably better at the movies. There were a number of big disappointments (I’m thinking mainly of Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay, Gus Van Sant, Steve McQueen and the Coen brothers) and some recently flourishing national cinemas (Taiwan and Germany in particular) were absent [...]

Here’s something which Eamonn Crudden passed on to me today to mark the anniversary of the death 10 years ago of Carlo Giuliani, a young anarchist who was shot dead by Italian Police in Genoa during the Anti-Globalisation protests against the G8 meeting in the city.
Below is his 2002 documentary Berlusconi’s Mousetrap, and a 12,000 [...]

Why everyone from your mother to your local fascist will love it.
Eagerly marketed as a ‘feel-good film’, Made in Dagenham has ditched the dour kitchen sink realism you might expect, for a triumphant, heart-on-sleeve dramatisation of a strike that changed British history and the lives of British workingwomen. In 1968, 187 sewing machinists for the [...]

When Jean-Marie Le Clézio gave a press conference in Paris last week upon his being named the 2008 Nobel Literature laureate, he answered one question – that was submitted by both French and British journalists: does this award disprove the idea of a decline in French culture? His reply, though good-natured, was dismissive, saying that [...]

I’ve always found dubious the notion that certain times in the past were ‘a more innocent age’; it is bandied about a lot when referring to the more demure sexual mores of times gone, the 1950s being the prime example. Of course the ‘innocence’ of comely young ladies (and it is nearly always ladies who [...]