December 2010

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Features

#Capra before he became ‘Capraesque’

Celebrated each Christmas for the ‘Capracorn’ of It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra deserves reappraisal as a director in the light of the restoration of his 1920s silents and his luminous talkies of the early 1930s. By Joseph McBride

PLUS Kate Stables revisits Capra’s It Happened One Night, not just the urtext of the romcom, but also a document of the Depression

#Lost and found: Penn & Teller Get Killed

Barely seen in this country, Penn & Teller Get Killed more than earns its place in the oeuvre of its director, the late Arthur Penn, says Brad Stevens

Cover feature: Extraordinary Joe

With the Palme d’Or awarded to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives marking a new level of recognition for Apichatpong Weerasethakul aka Joe, Adrian Martin probes the syndromes and mysteries of the Thai director’s universe

PLUS Kieron Corless talks to Apichatpong about Buddhism, Fellini and the joys of working with non-professionals

Fear in the mirror

Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom was reviled on its 1960 release but subsequently canonised for its analysis of voyeurism. Fifty years on, Graham Fuller takes stock

Shadow of a gunman

Like Bourne and Ripley before him, George Clooney’s antihero in The American is a well-travelled killer who finds Europe a fitting backdrop for existential dilemma. Nick James follows the tracks

A boom of one’s own

A new collection of British documentary shorts from the 1950s to the 1970s offers glimpses of a vanished world, says John Wyver

Mod man out

Updating Graham Greene’s classic Brighton Rock to the mod era is a shrewd move for writer-director Rowan Joffe, but not one he took lightly, he tells Quentin Falk on set

Selected reviews

#Film of the month: We Are What We Are

Following a family of flesh eaters as they struggle to make ends meet in modern Mexico, Jorge Michel Grau’s debut We Are What We Are spices its horror with a bracing dash of social comment, says Paul Julian Smith

#DVD: The Thin Red Line

Michael Atkinson hails Terrence Malick’s elegiac, mainstream-defying war epic, now given the Criterion treatment with extras that clear up a little of the mystery – and add to the mythology

#Film review: Let Me In

Kim Newman explores Matt Reeves’ Anglophone version of Let the Right One In and finds that it makes for even grimmer viewing than the original

#Film review: The American

Anton Corbijn’s fastidious, retro-ish Euro-espionage thriller is written, acted and directed as if it were still 1974. Only George Clooney could have got it made, says Michael Atkinson

Reviews in this issue:

  • Adrift
  • The American
  • Film review: The American
  • An Ordinary Execution
  • Another Year
  • brilliantlove
  • Chico & Rita
  • Collapse
  • Devil
  • Dream Home
  • The Edge of Dreaming
  • The First Movie
  • Freight
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
  • Into Eternity
  • Jackass 3D
  • Leap year
  • Legend of the Guardians The Owls of Ga’Hoole
  • Film review: Let Me In
  • Life as We Know It
  • Machete
  • My Afternoons with Margueritte
  • Out of the Ashes
  • RED
  • Red & White
  • Robinson in Ruins
  • The Stoning of Soraya M.
  • This Prison Where I Live
  • Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
  • Film of the month: We Are What We Are
  • Film of the month: We Are What We Are
  • You Again
  • DVD: The Thin Red Line
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011