From the Archives: Genova (2008)
6 MarMichael Winterbottom has certainly enjoyed an eclectic directorial career. And while his subjects have been as diverse as the Bosnian War in “Welcome to Sarajevo,” the Manchester music scene in “24 Hour Party People” and the plight of Gitmo inmates in “The Road to Guantanamo,” his work has always paid particular attention to the human aspect of the story. Family relationships form the crux of his latest picture, “Genova,” as he delivers an intimate portrait of the dynamics of a family dealing with loss, youthful rebellion, guilt and cultural change.
THE LOWDOWN WEEK 8
5 MarThe post awards season malaise continues unabated this week with the release of two contenders for Worst Film of 2012. The ludicrously monikered McG scores a hatrick of stinkers with This Means War, which follows Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Terminator Salvation into an unenviable pantheon of awfulness. Vying for the turkey of the week prize is Project X, a film that will make you hate teenagers. Elsewhere, Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston once again team up,15 years after starring together in The Object of My Affection, in Wanderlust, Putin’s dirty politics are exposed in Khodorkovsky and Austrian film Michael portrays a discomfiting tale of paedophilia.
From the Archives: Who Killed Nancy? (2009)
5 MarThe death of Nancy Spungen – the drug addict, part-time prostitute girlfriend of Sex Pistol’s bassist Sid Vicious – will always be a much debated footnote in the history of punk. The assumption (and indeed the conclusion of a much-maligned investigation by the N.Y.P.D.) was that she was murdered by a heroin-addled Sid, who predictably had no recollection of how Spungen ended up stabbed to death in their dilapidated hotel room bathroom. Sid’s untimely death a mere four months later meant a trial never happened and the police closed the case believing Spungen’s murderer to have met his own sort of justice. Predictably, speculation over what really happened in room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea on the night of Oct. 11, 1978 has been rife ever since: Did Sid really murder his girlfriend – was he even physically capable of such an act – or was it the result of a bungled robbery? It is this uncertainty that Sid Vicious biographer Alan G. Parker attempts to unravel with this frustrating examination of the events leading up to Spungen’s murder.
From the Archives: Bullet in the Head (2008)
2 MarIn FIPRESCI award-winning director Jaime Rosales’s own words, his latest film is “really difficult for the audience.” Citing inspiration from the silent era of cinema while making a metaphorical statement on the “noise, not words” of Spanish politics, Rosales pushes the boundaries of filmmaking with a study in audience patience by essentially delivering a silent film – just two words are uttered in the 84-minute running time – in which, as Rosales readily admits, “nothing happens.”











