Roald Dahl’s marvelous horror thriller for children (the ones ready for it) knows exactly what it is and doesn’t soft-pedal the scary stuff. Horrible (but sexy) witches plot the wholesale destruction of Hansels and Gretels everywhere, and the only kid that can stop them has been changed into a mouse. Nicolas Roeg runs wild with Dahl’s imaginative, refreshingly un-pc book; the usual softening touches are skipped in favor of unadulterated scarifying Fun. It couldn’t be better directed; we wish that Roeg had been able to create a dozen such outrageous fantasies. Star Anjelica Huston is an amazing Grand High Witch, with Mai Zetterling, Anne Lambton and Jane Horrocks providing able witchy support. Recommended!
The Witches
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date August 20, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Paterson, Brenda Blethyn, Charlie Potter, Jim Carter,...
The Witches
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date August 20, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Paterson, Brenda Blethyn, Charlie Potter, Jim Carter,...
- 8/24/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In the spirit of October, this list will look at scary scenes, but not from the horror classics directed by Craven or Carpenter or even Hitchcock (I’m excluding him, though I argue most of his work isn’t exactly horror). These are from the films that aren’t really meant to scare you. At least, not at the visceral level that horror films do. These are the fifty definitive moments from non-horror films that still made an impact on the “frightening front.” From shocking to creepy to unsettlingly hair raising, these are moments that will stick in your mind long after watching the films, even if they are part of a very different narrative.
50. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Scene: Monkey Security
Video: http://youtu.be/x6QkcJjx-Vo
The third installment of the one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time is also one of the darkest children’s films ever made.
50. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Scene: Monkey Security
Video: http://youtu.be/x6QkcJjx-Vo
The third installment of the one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time is also one of the darkest children’s films ever made.
- 10/3/2014
- by Joshua Gaul
- SoundOnSight
On its release in 1998, the Guardian hailed John Maybury's biopic of Francis Bacon as a 'brilliantly sustained imagining'. Read Richard Williams' full review below
I came out of John Maybury's Love Is the Devil, which is rather coyly subtitled "Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon", feeling I'd never seen a film that makes such direct and illuminating connection with the eye of an artist. On the other hand, I didn't know Francis Bacon, so I can't tell whether the story Maybury tells us is true, in the literal sense. That bothers me. But if you want a brilliantly sustained imagining of how, according to some of the best available evidence, Bacon saw his world, and how he rendered that vision on to canvas, then Love Is the Devil is a very remarkable film indeed.
Their first encounter is handled with deft humour. When Dyer falls through the skylight,...
I came out of John Maybury's Love Is the Devil, which is rather coyly subtitled "Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon", feeling I'd never seen a film that makes such direct and illuminating connection with the eye of an artist. On the other hand, I didn't know Francis Bacon, so I can't tell whether the story Maybury tells us is true, in the literal sense. That bothers me. But if you want a brilliantly sustained imagining of how, according to some of the best available evidence, Bacon saw his world, and how he rendered that vision on to canvas, then Love Is the Devil is a very remarkable film indeed.
Their first encounter is handled with deft humour. When Dyer falls through the skylight,...
- 11/9/2012
- by Richard Williams
- The Guardian - Film News
Apart from the Oscars, where else would you find a room full of so many beautiful, glamorous, and talented women? Well, the answer is: at the biennial lunch for African Solutions to African Problems (Asap) hosted by the charity’s founder, Priscilla Higham, in London. Where do we start? Among this year’s table hostesses were Sharleen Spiteri, Jasmine Guinness, Lady Ashcombe, Lady Anne Lambton, Annabel Elliot, Jane Ormsby Gore, Melanie Metcalfe, Rosie Bartlett, Tiggy Kennedy, Maia Norman, Camilla Lowther, and Beatrix Silvano, to name just a few. Such a strong female presence among the 400 guests was no coincidence; they’d been invited to meet “Scilla” Higham and the South African women who inspired the program’s conception. The charity aims to provide support, training, and resources to women who care for orphans and vulnerable children in their home communities, alleviating the affects of H.I.V./AIDS. The lunch...
- 6/25/2010
- Vanity Fair
Phillips pockets 'Jacket' role for helmer Maybury
Mackenzie Phillips, best known for her work on One Day at a Time and more recently on the Disney Channel series So Weird, has signed on for a supporting role in the Mandalay Pictures/Section Eight feature The Jacket. Warner Independent Pictures is distributing, with John Maybury at the helm. The film is lensing in Glasgow, Scotland, with Peter Guber, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney producing. Written by Massy Tadjedin, Jacket centers on a soldier convicted of murder who, during his treatment in a psychiatric hospital, begins to believe that he is traveling through time. Through his time travel, he searches for a woman he met as a child and is fated to love. Phillips plays a nurse at the psychiatric hospital. She replaces Anne Lambton, who dropped out because of illness. Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley topline Jacket, with Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch and Brad Renfro rounding out the cast. Phillips is repped by SDB Partners' Ro Diamond and manager Laina Cohn at Acronym Entertainment.
- 2/18/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'Love Is the Devil'
Subtitled "a study for a portrait of Francis Bacon," writer-director John Maybury's tedious composition about diabolical artists and the models and lovers they abuse premiered at Cannes, with stateside distributor Strand Releasing looking at a minor attraction on the art house circuit.
Starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon, "Love Is the Devil" is heavy on atmosphere, and its distorted visuals approximate the bleak imagery of Bacon (1909-92), one of the better-known British painters of the century. While it concentrates on just a few years in Bacon's life, Maybury's film is still overly ambitious and busy, essentially going through a laundry list of woes and mean little activities but not pursuing the often nasty subject matter to its most unnerving revelations.
Alas, one is more shocked by the conventional storytelling and hokey approach to what could potentially have been a searing experience. Chronicling Bacon's intense relationship with George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a thief who breaks into his residence and stays when the artist invites him to bed, "Love Is the Devil" has several striking sequences, but its grand and grim vision is disappointingly slim and unengaging.
While Bacon uses him as a model, Dyer slowly unwinds and goes bonkers, having abattoir dreams with bloody apparitions. Hanging with the exceedingly corrosive artist and his rotting pals, Dyer develops a taste for boozing and brooding and nearly commits suicide. Misanthropic and sociopathic, needy-in-his-own-way Bacon keeps Dyer around because the younger man is handy in the bedroom.
Typical of this sketchy film, one scene is set aside to show that Dyer is adept at inflicting pain with cigarettes and belts. Showing Bacon the sexual masochist is so easy, the cocky filmmakers overstate the opposite truth -- in social and personal relationships he's a sadistic SOB. In case we're having trouble getting the message, there's helpful narration and voice-overs, with Bacon's "optimistic about nothing" attitude carried to an irredeemable extreme in his ignoring Dyer's pleas for help.
Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton and Karl Johnson fairly ooze across the screen as horrid pub pals of Bacon. But this grotesque chorus of upper-crust ghouls becomes tiresome, and so do the predictable class conflicts between Bacon and Dyer.
Through it all, Jacobi and Craig give passionate performances that almost redeem the film.
LOVE IS THE DEVIL
Strand Releasing
BBC Films, Premiere Heure, Uplink
A BFI production
In association with Partners in Crime
Writer-director: John Maybury
Producer: Chiara Menage
Executive producers: Ben Gibson, Frances-Anne Solomon, Patrice Haddad, Asai Takashi
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Alan Macdonald
Editor: Daniel Goddard
Costume designer: Annie Symons
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Casting: Mary Selway
Color/stereo
Cast:
Francis Bacon: Derek Jacobi
George Dyer: Daniel Craig
Muriel Belcher: Tilda Swinton
Isabel: Anne Lambton
Daniel: Adrian Scarborough
Deakin: Karl Johnson
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon, "Love Is the Devil" is heavy on atmosphere, and its distorted visuals approximate the bleak imagery of Bacon (1909-92), one of the better-known British painters of the century. While it concentrates on just a few years in Bacon's life, Maybury's film is still overly ambitious and busy, essentially going through a laundry list of woes and mean little activities but not pursuing the often nasty subject matter to its most unnerving revelations.
Alas, one is more shocked by the conventional storytelling and hokey approach to what could potentially have been a searing experience. Chronicling Bacon's intense relationship with George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a thief who breaks into his residence and stays when the artist invites him to bed, "Love Is the Devil" has several striking sequences, but its grand and grim vision is disappointingly slim and unengaging.
While Bacon uses him as a model, Dyer slowly unwinds and goes bonkers, having abattoir dreams with bloody apparitions. Hanging with the exceedingly corrosive artist and his rotting pals, Dyer develops a taste for boozing and brooding and nearly commits suicide. Misanthropic and sociopathic, needy-in-his-own-way Bacon keeps Dyer around because the younger man is handy in the bedroom.
Typical of this sketchy film, one scene is set aside to show that Dyer is adept at inflicting pain with cigarettes and belts. Showing Bacon the sexual masochist is so easy, the cocky filmmakers overstate the opposite truth -- in social and personal relationships he's a sadistic SOB. In case we're having trouble getting the message, there's helpful narration and voice-overs, with Bacon's "optimistic about nothing" attitude carried to an irredeemable extreme in his ignoring Dyer's pleas for help.
Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton and Karl Johnson fairly ooze across the screen as horrid pub pals of Bacon. But this grotesque chorus of upper-crust ghouls becomes tiresome, and so do the predictable class conflicts between Bacon and Dyer.
Through it all, Jacobi and Craig give passionate performances that almost redeem the film.
LOVE IS THE DEVIL
Strand Releasing
BBC Films, Premiere Heure, Uplink
A BFI production
In association with Partners in Crime
Writer-director: John Maybury
Producer: Chiara Menage
Executive producers: Ben Gibson, Frances-Anne Solomon, Patrice Haddad, Asai Takashi
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Alan Macdonald
Editor: Daniel Goddard
Costume designer: Annie Symons
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Casting: Mary Selway
Color/stereo
Cast:
Francis Bacon: Derek Jacobi
George Dyer: Daniel Craig
Muriel Belcher: Tilda Swinton
Isabel: Anne Lambton
Daniel: Adrian Scarborough
Deakin: Karl Johnson
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/7/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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