Film

Kennedy in Dallas 60 years on

Listing all the books, documentaries etc. about the Kennedy assassination would be impossible, as the pile continues to mount. Expect more to come: 22 November is the sixtieth anniversary of the events in Dallas. One film absolutely stands out, whatever its faults: Oliver Stone’s JFK , released in 1991, with Kevin Costner as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and Gary Oldman as the “not-so-lone” gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. Criticism of the film has ranged far and wide but, I suspect, for many people JFK is the version of events which still carries most resonance. The film focuses on the...

Black soldiers in the Civil War

It is something like160 years since the citizens of Boston watched the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment march through the town on their way to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. There was something very special about the event: the six hundred strong 54th was one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union army. Glory (directed by Edwar Zwick, 1989) follows the 54th through its training period, its first combat experience at the battle of Antietam to the bloody assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold at the mouth of Charleston harbour. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw...

Kino Eye: Fat Man and Little Boy

There is much talk at the moment about Oppenheimer . Let’s rewind some 30 years to a previous film about the Manhattan Project (the development of the atomic bomb): Fat Man and Little Boy (Roland Joffe, 1989). In the 1980s Ronald Reagan was increasing the US nuclear stockpile and the Cold War was at a new height. The film pits a gung-ho military establishment, personified by the Project supremo, the loudmouthed barrel-of-lard “Fat Man”, General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman minus the girth) against the skinny, “head-in-the-clouds” intellectual, “Little Boy”, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz)...

A film about the 1973 Chile coup

The article by Barrie Hardy on Chile 1970-73 in Solidarity 682 brought to mind Missing , directed by Costas Gavras, released in 1982, and based on real events. Charles Harman (John Shea) is a US journalist based in Chile in the days of Salvador Allende’s left reformist government. He and his wife Beth (Sissy Spacek) are enthusiastic supporters of Allende. When the Pinochet military coup occurs, Charles is taken by troops and not seen again. His father Ed (Jack Lemon) flies down from the USA to assist in the search for his son. Attempting to enlist the services of the US Embassy he is fobbed...

If the Barbies aren't scissoring, is it even Barbieland?

• Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023) — BEWARE: SPOILERS! I went to see Barbie wearing pink. My friends were wearing pink. When we arrived at Peckhamplex in South London, almost everyone else was wearing pink. People walking past the cinema to do something else were wearing pink. Not since 'The Queue' has London given itself over to such an all-consuming cultural event. Variety reports that the marketing budget allocated to Barbie was a staggering $150 million — $5 millionmore than the film's production costs. Indeed, much of the film’s success can be put down to the fact that before it hit...

The liberating power of monstrosity

While the horror film genre exploits the female body as a site of terror, women artists can weaponise the same theme as a powerful creative source. Here, Liliana Pavier examines fine art objects through the lens of the horror film genre. WANGECHI MUTU: MYTHMAKING Wangechi Mutu is a self-proclaimed “irresponsible anthropologist and irrational scientist” and uses the canonically exploited black, female body as her point of departure. She fragments and distorts with collage and mixed media, splicing cuttings from magazines with medical diagrams. Mutu’s collages merge monstrous mythology with the...

Kino Eye: Milan Kundera (1929-2023) and a “joke” about Trotsky

The famous Czech writer, Milan Kundera, died on 11 July. Best-known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), he also wrote The Joke in 1967. Adapted for the screen by Czech film director Jaromil Jireš in 1969, the “joke” in question refers to a comment by the main protagonist Ludvik Jahn, a Young Communist, who sends a postcard to his lover, Markéta, while attending a Party Summer School. Ludvik thinks Markéta is far too serious and although the postcard is obviously meant as a (not very funny) joke, the repercussions are serious. It reads: “Optimism is the opium of the people. A ‘healthy...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.