Features

Cover feature: Daze of heaven

 

Terrence Malick’s first film in six years, The Tree of Life lived up to expectations at Cannes, winning the Palme d’Or – a first for the legendarily reclusive director. Nick James unravels the film’s mysteries

PLUS Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on his unique three-film collaboration with Malick

 

Shelter from the storm

 

Recurring themes of apocalypse and sexual abuse made Cannes 2011 a sobering but ultimately inspiring experience for Nick James

PLUS Jonathan Romney is mesmerised by Lars von Trier’s Melancholia

PLUS Amy Taubin applauds a ‘non-film’ from imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi

PLUS Geoff Andrew on the pick of the non-competition films

 

Scenes from a marriage

 

Viewing Iran’s social problems through the prism of a troubled marriage, director Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. He talks to James Bell

 

Breaking the vase

 

With trademark iconoclasm, director François Ozon has turned a 30-year-old farce into a riot of 1970s kitsch – with very contemporary political resonance. Ginette Vincendeau savours Potiche, and looks back over the love-hate relationship between French cinema and boulevard theatre

 

Red skies

 

From propagandist tales of space exploration to post-apocalyptic dystopias of the Chernobyl era, the history of Soviet science fiction mirrors that of the USSR itself, says James Blackford

 

Close to the bone

 

Buried on its original release in 1981, Cutter’s Way now looks like the last blast of the American New Wave of the 1970s. Michael Atkinson welcomes its rerelease

 

Selected reviews

Reviews in this issue:

• After the Apocalypse
• The Beaver
• The Big Picture
• Bridesmaids
• Checkpoint
• The Conspirator
• Countdown to Zero
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid Rodrick Rules
• Donor Unknown
• Dum Maaro Dum
• Fast Five
• The First Grader
• The Hangover Part II
• Hatchet II
• Honey 2
• Film of the month: Incendies
• Film review: Kaboom
• Life in a Day
• Mammuth
• Mother’s Day
• Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
• Planeat
• Point Blank
• Potiche
• Priest
• Prom
• Putty Hill
• Scre4m
• Senna
• A Separation
• Something Borrowed
• Stake Land
• Take Me Home Tonight
• Thor
• TT3D Closer to the Edge
• Upside Down The Creation Records Story
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 3D Bonds beyond Time
•  
• DVD: Kim Newman wonders at Alice in Svankmajer land
• DVD: Tim Lucas finds there was more than horror to Jacques Tourneur
• DVD: Adua and Her Friends
• DVD: Apocalypse Now
• DVD: Araya
• DVD: Bicycle Thieves
• DVD: The Bridge on the River Kwai
• DVD: The Clowns
• DVD: Civilisation
• DVD: Les Diaboliques
• DVD: Gaumont Treasures Volume 2 1908-1916
• DVD: Go Go Tales
• DVD: Kiss Me Deadly
• DVD: Ogro
• DVD: Films by Ozu Yasujiro
• DVD: Pale Flower
• DVD: Prostitute
• DVD: Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas
• DVD: Requiem for a Vampire
• DVD: Spyder’s Web
• DVD: Taxi Driver
• DVD: Taxi zum Klo
• DVD: The Theo van Gogh Collection
• DVD: Treme: The Complete First Season
•  
• Book: Michael Atkinson appreciates a bold but doomed attempt to decode the work of the Quay Brothers
• Book: James MacDowell is intrigued by a study of moments in film
• Book: Michael Brooke admires an examination of Czechoslovakian cinema’s surrealist links
• Book: Adrian Martin enjoys the online loosening up of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson