Category Archives: Film

‘I did the first nude in Vogue’: Marisa Berenson on being a blazing star of the 70s and beyond

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She was photographed by Warhol, and Dalí wanted to paint her; the first films she made were Death in Venice and Cabaret. So why did she walk away?

Most people, says Marisa Berenson, “tend to live in my past. Which is fine.” She smiles, well aware of the fascination. “But I tend to live in the present and in the future.” A 2001 profile of the model/actor in the New York Times described her as a “Zelig of the zeitgeist … popping up in the right place at the right time”. And there is certainly something magical about her life and the people who have passed through it. As a child (she is now 72) she was taught to dance by Gene Kelly. Greta Garbo came to her parents’ parties; Salvador Dalí – a friend of her grandmother, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli – wanted to paint her. The legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland pushed her to become a model – Yves Saint Laurent would describe her as “the face of the 70s” – and she was photographed by giants such as David Bailey, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. Andy Warhol photographed her wedding.

She discovered meditation in India alongside George Harrison and Ringo Starr, was at Bianca Jagger’s Studio 54 birthday party – the fabled night of the white horse – and attended Truman Capote’s famed Black and White ball. Although she continues to work in film, she hasn’t made a huge number of movies – but the biggest, early in her career, were Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

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Tim Robbins: ‘With the exception of America’s native tribes, we’re all new here’

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The actor, director and activist talks about his return to the Stephen King universe and his frustrations with the state of the US

There’s an unmissable sense of the now in the second season of Castle Rock, Hulu’s anthology series recombining the best-known works of Stephen King. The Maine hamlet of Jerusalem’s Lot, first dreamed up by the master of the macabre as a feral vampire stronghold, contends with a more earthbound set of problems in its newest iteration. The opioid epidemic sweeping New England has seeped into town, driving area pharmacists to install locked glass cases for select products. More pressing still is the mounting tension in town between the Somalian immigrant community and the largely Caucasian local populace, each distrustful and fearful of the other. The impending turf war reflects a widening cultural divide in American life, as xenophobic sentiments gain traction with an increasingly vocal faction of reactionaries.

Related: The best Stephen King movies … ranked!

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‘Freddy Krueger in the room’: women confront Harvey Weinstein at New York event

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Several women heckled after raising questions about producer’s attendance at talent show

Several women were booed, heckled and asked to leave after confronting Harvey Weinstein at a New York showcase for emerging talent.

Comedian Kelly Bachman told the Guardian she “felt like the air was sucked out of the room” when she called out Weinstein during a set she performed at the event.

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Auteurs assemble! What caused the superhero backlash?

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They’ve conquered the box office. Now it’s payback time. As they are attacked by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, are TV and movie superheroes fighting a losing battle against reality?

Alan Moore’s celebrated 1986 series Watchmen revolved around a conspiracy to kill off masked vigilantes, and in effect that’s what it did in real life. Compared with the complex, mature, literary nature of Watchmen, most other comic-book titles looked juvenile and two-dimensional. This was at a time when “comic-book movies” meant Christopher Reeve’s wholesome Superman series, and when the only inhabitant of the Marvel movie universe was Howard the Duck. The entire industry had to up its game, and a new era of mature “graphic novels” was born.

Now we appear to have come full circle – which is fitting for a story so heavy with clock symbolism. With uncanny timing, HBO’s lavish new Watchmen series arrives at a moment when comic-book movies are again in what you might call a decadent phase of the cycle. They have decisively conquered our screens and our box offices, with ever grander and more improbable forms of spectacle, to the extent that we’re now beginning to question how much more of them we need. Could Watchmen kill off the superheroes once again?

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Quentin Tarantino won’t censor Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for China – report

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Sources tell Hollywood reporter Bruce Lee’s daughter raised concerns over the film’s portrayal of the martial arts star

Quentin Tarantino will not edit Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to placate Chinese censors, the Hollywood Reporter said.

Related: Bruce Lee's daughter hits out at father's portrayal in Tarantino film

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Panama Papers law firm Mossack Fonseca sues Netflix over The Laundromat

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Partners Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca want US court to stop the film being released on Friday

The partners of the offshore law firm whose confidential files were exposed in the Panama Papers leak, Mossack Fonseca, have launched defamation action against Netflix over a movie about the scandal that is due to be released on Friday.

In a US lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca say The Laundromat, in which they are respectively played by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas, portrays them as “ruthless uncaring lawyers who are involved in money laundering, tax evasion, bribery and/or other criminal conduct” and ask the court to stop it from being screened.

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Ronan Farrow reveals extreme measures Weinstein took to bury alleged crimes

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Farrow’s book Catch and Kill describes Harvey Weinstein’s efforts to silence alleged victims and put Farrow himself off the story

The combination of rage, threats, professional promises and vulnerability that Harvey Weinstein used to secure the silence of women he allegedly sexually attacked is described in a newly disclosed interview between one of his accusers and Ronan Farrow, the journalist who exposed the Hollywood mogul.

In his new book Catch and Kill chronicling his investigation into Weinstein, Farrow relates for the first time details of his conversation with a longtime former employee of the movie producer, Alexandra Canosa.

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The Irishman review: Martin Scorsese’s finest film for 30 years

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Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and – especially – Joe Pesci turn in performances of wintry brilliance in Scorsese’s epically daring late stage mob masterpiece

Martin Scorsese returns with his best picture since GoodFellas and one of his best films ever. It’s a superbly acted, thrillingly shot epic mob procedural about violence, betrayal, dishonesty and emotional bankruptcy starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, set in a time before “toxic masculinity” had been formally diagnosed but when everyone lived with the symptoms. The film has been talked about for the hi-tech “youthification” technology which allows De Niro to appear as a younger man: it’s no more artificial than the traditional wigs, latex etc and it’s amazing how quickly you get used to it. De Niro’s eyes achieve an eerie, gluey gleam in this manifestation as a digital ghost from his past.

These are men conducting their business with sorrowful hints and shrugs and mutterings about who has gone too far, who has not shown respect, who will need to be persuaded to attend a sit-down to straighten this whole thing out. These solemnly or cordially euphemistic encounters in a subdued steakhouse light periodically explode into violence or dreamlike scenes of choreographed catastrophe, punctuated by gunshots or visceral jukebox slams on the soundtrack. And all given a queasy new resonance of political conspiracy and bad faith.

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The day I confronted Harvey Weinstein: ‘He said, “You think you can save everyone”’

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Long conference calls and bad-tempered threats: an exclusive extract from Ronan Farrow’s book Catch And Kill

By fall 2017, I had taken my story to the New Yorker. As the investigation moved closer to publication, I called the Weinstein Company for comment. Sounding nervous, an assistant said he’d check if the boss was available. And then there was Weinstein’s husky baritone. “Wow!” he said with mock excitement. “What do I owe this occasion to?” The writing about the man has seldom lingered on this quality: he was pretty funny. But he veered swiftly toward fury. Weinstein hung up on me several times that fall, including on that first day. I told him I wanted to be fair, to include anything he had to say, then asked if he was comfortable with me recording. He seemed to panic, and was gone with a click. The pattern repeated that afternoon. But when I got him to talk for a sustained time, he abandoned his initial caution and got sharply combative.

“How did you identify yourself to all these women?” he demanded. I was caught off balance. I had started reporting the story for NBC, before turning to the New Yorker.

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Jackie Brown star Robert Forster dies aged 78

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Forster was a versatile character actor whose career was unexpectedly rescued by his Oscar-nominated role in Quentin Tarantino’s cult thriller

•Peter Bradshaw on Robert Forster: a coolly charismatic character actor with an intensely sympathetic air

Robert Forster, the handsome and omnipresent character actor who got a career resurgence and Oscar nomination for playing bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown, died on Friday. He was 78.

Publicist Kathie Berlin said Forster died of brain cancer following a brief illness. He was at home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, including his four children and partner Denise Grayson.

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The Climbers review – stirring tribute to China’s mountaineering hero

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Bombastic and unsubtle this paean to Fang Wuzhou may be, but its vertiginous set-pieces put many US blockbusters to shame

Produced by celebrated spectacle-peddler Tsui Hark for co-writer/director Daniel Lee, this is the latest in a run of preposterously patriotic yet enjoyable Chinese event movies. It pays stirring tribute to Fang Wuzhou, a humble, Mallory-worshipping mountaineer who led a successful ascent of Everest in May 1960, declaring “the whole world will remember this day”.

Nobody really does, unfortunately. No doubt this is down to the loss of the expedition’s camera equipment during an avalanche, with the consequent shortfall in photographic evidence prompting some in the climbing community to have their doubts. The film compounds his nightmare by having Fang (Wu Jing) return to base camp to learn his beloved Ying (Zhang Ziyi) is departing to study meteorology in the Soviet Union.

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Joker review – the most disappointing film of the year

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Why so serious? Todd Phillips’ solemn but shallow supervillain origins movie has a strong performance by Joaquin Phoenix but is weighed down by realist detail and tedious material

The year’s biggest disappointment has arrived. It emerges with weirdly grownup self-importance from the tulip fever of festival awards season as an upscale spin on an established pop culture brand. Last year we had Luca Guadagnino’s solemn version of Suspiria, and now it’s Joker, from director and co-writer Todd Phillips: a new origin myth for Batman’s most famous supervillain opponent.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a pathetic loser and loner in Gotham City, some time in the early 1980s. Arthur is a former inpatient at a psychiatric facility but is now allowed to live with his elderly mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), in her scuzzy apartment. Poor Arthur has a neurological condition that means he is liable to break into screeching laughter at inopportune moments. He has a crush on his single-mom neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and pines to be a comedian, hero-worshipping cheesy TV host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). But he can only get a job as a clown in grinning makeup and floppy-toed shoes twirling an advertising banner outside a store, where he is bullied and beaten up by young thugs passing by. One day, after the humiliation and despair become too much to bear, Arthur gets hold of a gun and discovers that his talent is not for comedy but violence.

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Geena Davis: ‘damaging stereotypes’ on screen limit women’s aspirations

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Actor speaks out as film industry study on characters in leadership roles finds women four times more likely than men to be shown naked

The promises of positive change for women on screen that followed her role in the groundbreaking film Thelma and Louise have failed to materialise, leaving girls today with few role models, according to the actor Geena Davis.

The media continue to have a huge influence on how the world views women and girls, and how they view themselves, she said. But few current roles show women in powerful positions, and continue to reinforce damaging gender stereotypes.

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Joseph Wilson obituary

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Diplomat who disputed the US intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003

Joseph Wilson, who has died aged 69 of organ failure, was the American diplomat whose first-hand questioning of the rationale behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq earned him the enmity of the George W Bush administration, and saw his wife Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative exposed publicly in retaliation.

In 2002, with the administration building its case for war with Iraq, the CIA sent Wilson, usually known as “Joe”, to investigate whether the Iraqis had sought to buy yellowcake uranium ore, which might be enriched for use in nuclear weapons, from Niger.

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Safe space: the new cinema welcoming women in male-dominated Kabul

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Cinema once thrived in Afghanistan until Taliban censorship. Now, new ventures are slowly reviving it

The majority of Kabul’s cinemas cater largely to audiences of young men, and tend to show Bollywood films produced in Pakistan and India. For some young Afghan men, the cinema is a rare occasion for public expressions of joy: audience members cheer on the films’ heroes and sometimes dance along.

For most women, however, fears of harassment in a male-dominated space have made cinemas feel unwelcoming.

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US cinemas ban masks and costumes at Joker screenings

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Following concerns about the potential for violence, several chains will not allow face coverings or clothing that ‘would make other guests feel uncomfortable’

Major cinema chains in the US have announced that they will enforce bans of masks, costumes and toy weapons at screenings of Joker, the new film starring Joaquin Phoenix as Batman’s nemesis, as concerns about the potential for violence connected to the film’s release on 4 October circulate.

Landmark Theatres says on its website that “no masks, painted faces or costumes will be permitted into our theatres”. AMC Theatres, the US’s largest cinema chain with more than 600 venues, has said in a statement that they are “working with law enforcement” and that their standard policy allows audience members to wear costume but “we do not permit masks, face paint or any object that conceals the face … [or] weapons or items that would make other guests feel uncomfortable”.

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California Trip: how Dennis Stock caught the darkness beyond the hippy dream

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His iconic portraits of James Dean in a wintry New York won him fame. But it was his travels in the west coast that brought out his true genius, as he captured the cracks in the 60s counterculture

‘For many years California frightened me,” Dennis Stock wrote in the preface to California Trip, first published in 1970. “For a young man with traditional concerns for spiritual and aesthetic order, California seemed too unreal. I ran.”

Stock, a naturally sceptical New Yorker who had served in the US Navy before hustling his way into the ranks of the esteemed Magnum photo agency, had instinctively picked up on the edgy undercurrents of the late 1960s Californian hippy dream. As the idealism of that decade peaked and faded, California became what Stock called a “head lab” – fomenting various radically alternative lifestyles fuelled by eastern mysticism, experiments in communal living, and all kinds of post-LSD mind expansion.

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Leonardo DiCaprio urged to end support for Indian river project

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Charities warn actor that Cauvery tree-planting scheme could harm endangered waterway and its environs

Leonardo DiCaprio has been urged to withdraw support for a controversial tree-planting programme in India, which could result in catastrophic environmental damage.

An open letter, signed by more than 90 Indian environmental and rights groups, warned that the Hollywood actor and activist’s endorsement of the Cauvery Calling campaign was ill-advised. The signatories said the campaign could lead to the “drying up of streams and rivulets, and destruction of wildlife habitats”.

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To Tokyo review – thrilling, chilling horror in the wilderness

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Caspar Seale Jones’s drama about a young woman afraid of her past is a masterclass in engrossing, show-don’t-tell film-making

Here’s one of those rare lowish-budget, entirely off-radar British debuts that feels like a discovery. Adventurous writer-director Caspar Seale Jones has relocated a stock horror starting point – fraught young woman fleeing something abominable in her past – to Japan, which instantly gifts his frames more distinctive vistas than all those potboilers pursuing teenagers through the streets of Peterborough or Stroud. More intriguingly, To Tokyo is in that Japanese folk-horror tradition that yielded Onibaba and Kwaidan, making merry-macabre use of a still relatively unfamiliar set of demons and ghouls.

To Tokyo scores high on dreamy-bordering-on-nightmarish atmosphere. On learning her mother is gravely ill, Alice (Florence Kosky) passes into either a fugue state or an actual wilderness that encompasses forests, deserts and a mountainside hut where she slaps on warpaint and receives offerings of fruit and entrails from whatever dragged her there. For half its running time, To Tokyo is just Kosky, some spectacular landscapes (cinematographer Ralph Messer apparently taking notes from that visual whizz Tarsem Singh) and a properly creepy spectre. Seale Jones makes the bold, rewarding decision not to explain a damn thing. The result is a masterclass in show-don’t-tell cinema.

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