It was inevitable that Oliver Stone's trip to Havana to shoot 30 hours of interview with Fidel Castro would unleash a storm of controversy. Hawkish US commentators couldn't miss a chance to condemn Stone, and HBO, having bought the film, then decided not to show it. There's no doubt the director, who shares centre stage with Fidel himself, looks a little too pleased with himself for landing this coup, and as he develops a chummy camaraderie with his host, issues like Castro's human rights record and his laughable claim that Cuba is in some way democratic go without scrutiny.
When her daughter's kidnapped by murderous types in this odd, grisly gothic western, frontierswoman Cate Blanchett saddles up and gives chase, accompanied by estranged father Tommy Lee Jones. A tiresomely grim offering from Ron Howard, whose fussy, pointlessly tricksy direction is a consistently irritating distraction. Very poor.
In October 1992, Brazil's notorious São Paulo Detention Centre—aka Carandiru—erupted in a full-scale riot which left 111 inmates brutally slaughtered by trigger-happy military police. Director Hector Babenco's movie charts the events that led to the uprising, using the arrival, some 12 years earlier, of Drauzio Varella, a doctor employed by the authorities to quell the rapidly rising AIDS epidemic in the facility, as our entry point into the story of this hellish, overcrowded facility.
In present-day China, two drifters run a murderous scam, luring unsuspecting marks into working alongside them down the coal mines. There they kill their prey, fake a cave-in, then collect hush-money from mine-owners terrified about being shut down. Shot guerrilla-style in China's bleakest provinces—and promptly banned by the country's authorities—former documentarist Li Yang's feature debut is a spare, stunning slice of naturalist noir.
Bizarre documentary atmospherically recreating strange events that took place in a small Wisconsin town in the 1890s. Economic depression and an epidemic spark off a succession of murders and suicides, and insanity is rife—most memorably in the form of the cocaine-fuelled Mary Sweeney, who travelled the whole state killing windows. Compelling.
The idea of Ralph Fiennes' sibling shooting a doc about God and guns in South Central LA is inherently tiresome. But, in fact, Sophie F manages to get inside the soul of this torn community. Grace Jones' pastor brother Noel is as fake as any pulpit rhetorician, but his Hoover Street church is a revival of hope.
In Arthur Penn's 1958 film The Left-Handed Gun, Billy The Kid (Paul Newman) was portrayed as a neurotic, self-destructive teen rebel who behaved like James Dean with a six-gun. Penn threw in the framing device of having a journalist follow Billy through his career of crime. Little Big Man (1970) also features a journalist looking to embroider the facts, but this time the writer meets his match in the shape of the wizened, 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman hidden behind several layers of make-up).
Filmed in 1943, with memories of Pearl Harbor still raw, this WWII submarine movie sees Commander Cary Grant steering his boat into Japanese waters. Directed by no-nonsense action man Delmer Daves, the sub warfare is tightly handled, but the film is just as interested in the close interaction of the itchy crew, among them the great John Garfield.
Kurosawa's bold take on King Lear, with the action relocated to 16th-century feudal Japan, still packs a punch 19 years after its original release. DVD transfer showcases the master's lush visual palette to great effect and, while the pace flags over 160 minutes, the two major pre-CGI battle sequences have to be seen to be believed. Glorious stuff.
This unintentionally funny French heist movie is mired by its late-'70s aesthetic. Francis Huster is the swaggering hero, all but popping out of super-tight beige slacks and ruefully mouthing lines that mention "the poetry of the cash balance". The earnest political radicalism seems dated and risible now, but the direction is competent and the bank heist itself is good fun.
