John C. Reilly has surprised me for years. His range is astounding, and watching him effortlessly go from dramatic roles to silly comedies has been a treat. Yet his talent doesn’t stop with acting.
Because the Internet can take a person virtually anywhere in the world and provide potentially infinite vats of knowledge, raising children in a dictatorial environment nowadays seems more ridiculous than ever. The mechanics of detaining an adult with an existing awareness of the outside world is even more bewildering, because chances are they’ve read about the Josef Fritzl case and have at least some idea of how to escape. Alas, cinema, ever the portrayer of such cultural terrors, has provided startling means with which to explore such a phenomenon.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Money Monster, The Darkness, Love & Friendship, The Lobster, High-Rise, Last Days in the Desert, Search Party, Dheepan, Kill Zone 2, Sunset Song and What We Become.
Before Mads Mikkelsen became an international star as the blood-weeping villain in the James Bond film Casino Royale, he had established himself as one of the most prominent actors in his home country of Denmark, by working with some of the best talent the country has to offer. He got his start on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher series and has appeared in every film that award-winning Anders Thomas Jensen has directed. To this day, he continues to balance his international work with Danish films, and with Jensen’s return to the directing chair after a ten year absence, Mikkelsen returns as well to keep their long-standing collaboration alive.
The cinema is under attack. Streaming services threaten the long-held monopoly that the theater has always had on new releases. Studios spend more and more money on fewer and fewer films that are bigger and bigger yet take less and less risks.
Technology has made finding relationships easier than before, yet also far more difficult to sustain. Less than a day before writing this review, my boyfriend broke up with me. It took eight months to realise that we are completely different people with different interests, with the realisation of our incompatibility unwelcome but inevitable.
This year there are 238 films, from 57 different countries showing at the 59th BFI London Film Festival. A star-studded event which draws crowds from Europe and across the globe. With its various Galas, Official Competition and hordes of talent – there is only one question worth asking.
