Award-winning filmmaker and Hollywood star of more than 85 blockbuster films Kirk Douglas died on February 5 at the age of 103. Peter Frost recalls how Douglas helped break the notorious ban on writers and actors during the early years of the Cold War.
films
Bombshell
Directed by Jay Roach
Staring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman & Margot Robbie
In cinemas now
Nominated for three Oscars, this powerful drama is based on the real-life sexual harassment scandal and the women who brought down Roger Ailes, the infamous head and creator of Fox News, laying the foundations for the Me Too and Time's Up movements that were to come.
Mrs Lowry & Son
Directed by Adrian Noble
Starring Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Spall
In cinemas as part of the MINI British Film Festival
This film adaptation of the stage play by Martyn Hesford shows the early life of one of the titans of modern British art, L. S. Lowry, famous for his paintings of “matchstick people” going about their lives in working class northern England.
His simplistic style evokes beauty in what was considered squalid and lower class.
Based upon Marcia and Thomas Mitchell's 2008 book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, director Gavin Hood shows how Gunn leaked an email exposing the fact that the US government was eavesdropping on other countries in order to win United Nations approval in the lead up to its March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Reviewed by Alex Salmon.
Great films spark debates, perhaps even controversy. Todd Phillips' Joker certainly has.
The Report is based on the real-life work of US Senate staffer Daniel Jones, who led the investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s international torture program that followed the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks.
In 2011, retired British lawyer Rupert Grey and his wife Jan set off on a driving tour of India — in a 1936 Rolls Royce that he had inherited from his father. Filmmaker Oliver McGarvey tagged along for the six-month journey across mountains, deserts, through civil war zones and bureaucratic snafus.
Blinded by the Light is a coming-of-age film set in 1980s Britain during the era of Margaret Thatcher. It revolves around the trials and tribulations of 16-year-old Pakistani teenager Javed as he struggles to deal with his domineering and traditional Pakistani family, racism and Thatcher's neoliberal assaults.
This Australian-made film dramatises the experience of a 14-year-old Cambodian boy who is tricked into boarding a fishing vessel, where he is enslaved.
Iconic characters in popular culture such as Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and Frankenstein's monster are in the public domain, allowing anyone to use them to create new stories. Spider-Man should be too, writes Peter Robson.
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