Larry Oliver Film Reviews

Pictured : Students at the Talent Campus practice 'conscious eating' in a scene from Jessica Hausner 's 2023 film, ' Club Zero '. (Still: Coop 99 ) Over the period 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024, I watched and reflected upon a further fifty-two fiction films directed by women. 28 of these films had American finance. Six could be classed as British films. Three were French, a surprisingly low number given the number of French auteurs currently working. Two had Indian subjects, if not finance. Two were Belgian, another two Canadian (one in French, the other English). The remaining nine films were from Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, Morocco, Netherlands and Spain. Of the fifty-two, three movies officially grossed more than $100 million (either superhero sequels or spin-offs, namely Venom: The Last Dance , The Marvels and Madame Web ). One ( Yolo ) unofficially grossed this sum; Box Office Mojo does not offer reliable figures on Chinese movie...

Photo: Dean Rogers. Still courtesy of Studio Canal (UK) There isn’t a word called ‘bioxploitation’ but maybe there should be to refer to films like Back to Black . These are movies that get punters through the door by virtue of their subject, famous pop stars what died too young, that get greenlit to reignite interest in their subject’s back catalogue, maybe make the surviving family a few quid and that. The subject in question is London-born and bred (oy, oy) singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, who had two hit albums, won five Grammys, and died in her pink-walled, half-decorated home in 2011, aged 27. We should be moved – I packed extra tissues – but there wasn’t a wet eye in the house. Like many people of a certain age, I lived through Winehouse’s decline and fall in real time. She was the subject of numerous newspaper headlines, tottering incoherently towards the gutter. Her unhappiness was evident, but what was the cause? The film, written by Matt Greenhalgh and directed by Sam Tayl...