“All the cinemas went extinct,” observes a street vendor who used to sell movie posters and lobby cards behind the film distribution centre in downtown Recife, Brazil, before the bottom dropped out of the market. The kicker: this interview was recorded 30 years ago.

  By Tom Charity Let’s start with this: the transitions in Fred Wiseman’s new film (and there are many) have a simple and specific beauty. They double as establishing shots, each comprising a brief cluster of New York street views, usually including an intersection sign to pin us to one of the 88 branches in…

By Tom Charity Published in Cinema Scope 72 (Fall 2017) Let’s start with this: the transitions in Fred Wiseman’s new film (and there are many) have a simple and specific beauty. They double as establishing shots, each comprising a brief cluster of New York street views, usually including an intersection sign to pin us to…

By Tom Charity “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” That, friends, is an opening sentence: J.G. Ballard at his best. And damn if Ben Wheatley doesn’t find just the…

By Tom Charity Providing a welcome counterpoint to the pregnant pre-teen boys in Evolution, Mark Sawers’ documentary traces the rise of the Virgin Birth in the latter half of the 20th century, the redundancy of the male sex, and anticipates man’s imminent extinction as womankind inherits the planet. This is all in jest, of course—a mockumentary,…

By Tom Charity Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek adopts an (initially) opaque, almost Apichatpongian tri-partite structure in this boldly visualized response to the alienated nature of the War on Terror. French-born lieutenant Ivan Delphine (Claire Denis fixture Grégoire Colin) “pilots” drones, calling down missile strikes on unsuspecting al-Qaeda targets in the Middle East from the security…

By Tom Charity About three-quarters through Elisabeth Scharang’s film about the Austrian murderer turned literary sensation Jack Unterweger, the reformed and released killer is excited to meet with a leading European filmmaker (identified as “Neumann”). Neumann receives him politely, but not with the enthusiasm Jack has become accustomed to. “Don’t try to be an artist,”…

By Tom Charity We all know it takes two to tango, and that’s a problem for this mildly engaging but lop-sided strut down memory lane with Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, the Ginger and Fred of Argentine tango. Maria, at 80, is eager to revisit the past, reminiscing about dancing with the broom…

By Tom Charity Apocalyptic fantasies are in heavy rotation these days at both the multiplex and the art-house. In this climate-change documentary, anti-capitalist crusader Naomi Klein pronounces herself a late convert to saving the world, and gets things rolling with the disconcerting admission that she doesn’t much care for climate-change documentaries. Heck, next thing you…

By Tom Charity Originally published in Cinema Scope 64 (Fall 2015). “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” That, friends, is an opening sentence: J.G. Ballard at his best. And…

By Tom Charity Abderrahmane Sissako’s first feature since 2007’s Bamako is a fleet, forceful response to the brief but traumatic few months in 2013 when foreign jihadists seized control of the northern Malian city and imposed Sharia law (an incursion that was eventually repelled by the former colonial power, France, which is where Sissako now…

By Tom Charity For those “in the know,” the Grand Jury Prize accorded to Alice Rohrwacher’s second film was the one surprise on a night where Jane Campion’s jury otherwise played things safe and sure, dispensing awards with dutiful nods to all sides. (Libération described it as the one prize with the flavour of a…

By Tom Charity In 1977, Robyn Davidson set off to walk 1700 miles from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean with her dog and four camels. This quixotic endeavour clearly must have meant something—not only to the 25-year-old but to the many thousands of readers who made her memoir a bestseller at the time and…

By Tom Charity “Open up and let the devil in!” With four movies in four years, Ben Wheatley seems set on giving Michael Winterbottom a run for his money as the most prolific filmmaker in Britain, and the devil take the hindmost. Unlike the versatile and self-effacing Winterbottom, however, Wheatley immediately stamped a distinctive authorial signature…

By Tom Charity Hand it to Cannes: where else do art films get booed? On the rest of the planet, your typically well-adjusted art-house aficionado understands to appreciate whatever challenges the filmmaker has set…or the viewer walks out. To be sure, there are walkouts here too, but a good many hardier souls take it upon…