Category Archives: Film criticism

Michel Ciment, veteran French film critic, dies aged 85

Posted on by

The longtime chief of Positif film magazine started working there in 1968, and was a passionate advocate of cinema until his death

Michel Ciment, the celebrated French film critic and longtime editor of Positif magazine, has died aged 85. The magazine reported the news on social media, describing him as Positif’s “master architect” after a 60-year career.

Born in Paris in 1938, Ciment fell in love with cinema as a student, and joined Positif in 1968, becoming editorial director in 1973; he said he admired Positif over Cahiers du Cinéma because the magazine was “left wing” and influenced by surrealism. Ciment published a string of books about prominent film directors, including Kazan by Kazan (1973), Conversations with Losey (1979) and Stanley Kubrick (1980).

Continue reading...

It’s not just racism and sexism. The Golden Globes have been sunk by sheer stupidity

Posted on by

The preposterous Hollywood Foreign Press Association gravy train might have chugged on for ever if its members had just swallowed their pride and done more for diversity

An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that notoriously rackety organisation which administers the Golden Globes, has shown an eminently corruptible body drenched in antediluvian attitudes; this has resulted in NBC cancelling its TV coverage of next year’s ceremony and Tom Cruise handing back the three Globes he has personally won over the years.

Related: Golden Globes backlash: Tom Cruise hands back awards and NBC drops broadcast

Continue reading...

80-year-old review wrecks Citizen Kane’s 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Posted on by

The critics’ aggregator site has recently added a demurring 1941 write-up that wishes the Orson Welles film ‘let a little sunshine in’

An 80-year-old pseudonymous review appears to have wrecked Citizen Kane’s 100% rating on reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

A Twitter user pointed out the change in Citizen Kane’s rating, due to the addition of a negative review from 1941. It is not clear exactly when the change happened, but website Boing Boing suggested it must have been between 25 February and 15 April, after comparing archived screenshots.

Continue reading...

‘It’s wild!’ Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell on making Oscars history

Posted on by

Promising Young Woman’s five nods include the first for a female British director. Its star and writer-director discuss telling women’s stories, tackling difficult subjects – and feeling shellshocked

Promising Young Woman is audacious from the off. A genre-bending revenge thriller, it ricochets between romcom and horror to radical and unsettling effect. Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, a medical school drop-out traumatised by the assault of her best friend. By day, she works in a coffee shop; by night, she fakes blackout drunkenness in bars. If “nice guys” take advantage, Cassie snaps open her sober eyes to teach them a lesson.

The film made history this week, landing five Oscars nominations: picture, editing and actress (Mulligan’s second run at the award), as well as original screenplay and director for Emerald Fennell. With her debut feature, Fennell has become the first British woman to be nominated for the director prize. This is the first year in which two women (Fennell and Nomadland’s Chloe Zhou) are in the running; they are only the sixth and seventh women to be shortlisted.

Continue reading...

‘I was appalled to be tarred as misogynist’: Variety critic hits back at Carey Mulligan’s sexism accusations

Posted on by

Exclusive: Dennis Harvey, the critic whose review of Promising Young Woman prompted outrage from its star and an apology from his editors, has spoken out

Dennis Harvey, the veteran film critic whose review of Promising Young Woman has sparked a furore across the industry, has hit back at accusations of misogyny amid calls for Variety to fire him.

Harvey’s review was published more than a year ago, following the film’s premiere at the Sundance film festival. Largely positive, it called Mulligan’s performance “skilful, entertaining and challenging” while also querying the central casting. While “a fine actress”, wrote Harvey, Mulligan “seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale”.

Continue reading...

‘They said I wasn’t hot enough’: Carey Mulligan hits out again at magazine review

Posted on by

Variety review of black comedy Promising Young Woman prompts actor to speak out on industry’s institutionalised sexism

Carey Mulligan has said she was alarmed after a major publication ran a review of her new film questioning whether she was attractive enough for the role.

Related: Variety's apology to Carey Mulligan shows that the critic's ivory tower is toppling | Peter Bradshaw

Continue reading...

Sleazy bosses, exploited barmaids: US cinema finally discovers the left behinds

Posted on by

From The Assistant to Support the Girls, American cinema is swapping feelgood escapism for gritty unsettling realism. We talk to the women spearheading this new wave

‘I wanted it to be relatable to any woman who’s ever worked in an office,” says Kitty Green of her new film The Assistant. “Everything in the film has been in the press already. But I wanted to take viewers on an emotional journey, so they could empathise with the character.”

The #MeToo saga has been examined to near exhaustion, but The Assistant manages to add something new. Rather than perpetrators or victims, it focuses on a relative bystander: a young office worker at a New York film production company. We follow this character, played by Julia Garner, through her demeaning routine: commuting in before daybreak, photocopying, printing, taking her male co-workers’ lunch orders, clearing up leftover pizza from the meeting room (as the men come in for the next meeting, she is humiliatingly caught with a crust in her mouth).

Continue reading...