I was always going to like Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. I was predisposed to like it. Anyone who devoured Bourdain’s work, and who still hasn’t quite gotten over his 2018 death, was predisposed to like it.
At the beginning of For for Fake, Orson Welles’ 1973 essay film about forgery, deception and lies, the filmmaker addresses the audience directly and sets out a thesis for what is to follow. “Tell it by the fireside or in
In 1969, Jimi Hendrix visited Essaouira, Morocco, a blue-and-white-washed village on the country’s Atlantic coast. Tales have been told of his visit ever since: that he ate here and stayed there, that he nearly bought the nearby town of Diabat,
Mouly Surya’s Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts opens on a wide shot of a windswept hillscape. A lone motorcyclist rides towards the camera as an equally lonesome trumpet sounds its lament on the soundtrack. Only the traditional drum keeping
The international release of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin was attended by two fitting ironies. The first was that Vladimir Putin’s Russia—after this month’s election result, it remains undoubtedly his—banned it outright on the grounds of its “extremism”. (Yelena
The strange tale of Vivian Maier has been well rehearsed by now. It has been the subject of countless articles, innumerable gallery programs, two documentaries and at least one court case. For those who haven’t heard it before, it goes
Back in my film student days, I set myself an immodest goal: I would write and direct my first feature film by the age of twenty-six. The number wasn’t chosen at random: Orson Welles was twenty-six when he made Citizen
The Melbourne International Film Festival (@MIFFofficial) released its full program this morning, and an embarrassment of riches it is, too. But the festival’s most exciting piece of programming was in fact announced some time ago: Out 1: Noli me tangere,