It’s time to create your own home cinema...
THE TRUTH
★★★★✩
(PG, 107 minutes)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke
Streaming now on Curzon Home Cinema
THE JESUS ROLLS
★★✩✩✩
(Cert 15, 85 minutes)
Director: John Turturro
Stars: John Turturro, Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tautou, Susan Sarandon Streaming from tomorrow on Netflix
CRIP CAMP
★★★★✩
(Cert 12A, 107 minutes)
Directors: Nicole Newnham, Jim Lebrecht
Streaming from Wednesday on Netflix
THE CINEMAS have closed and Hollywood has shelved all its biggest films because of the Coronavirus outbreak. Smaller releases are now shifting to home streaming services and there are some joys to be had in world cinema.
The Truth should be in cinemas this weekend, but is now being released on Curzon Home Cinema, a platform that can be downloaded to smart TVS and various gadgets. It’s a good base to explore subtitled classics.the film’s leading lady is Catherine Deneuve who starred in a fair few herself over the years, including Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and Luis Bunuel’s racy, surreal Belle De Jour.
Now Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has handed her the juiciest role she’s had in decades. She wolfs it down, delivering a fearless performance that’s terrifying, funny and touching.
Fabienne Dangeville, like Deneuve, is an icon of French cinema. Her autobiography, The Truth, is about to be published, and her screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) has flown in from LA hoping to cast her eyes over a proof.
“This is not the truth!” she snarls after reading a very different account of her upbringing.
Fabienne is unrepentant. “I’d prefer to be a bad mother, a bad friend, but a great actress,” snorts the diva. Lumir has arrived in Paris with her American husband Hank (Ethan Hawke), a TV actor fresh out of rehab, and their lovely daughter Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier).
They are a solid family unit, something missing from Lumir’s own childhood.all go to a studio to witness Fabienne play alongside a young ingenue in a science fiction film about a slowageing mother who keeps beaming to Earth from a space station to visit her daughter at key stages in her life.
If this was Hollywood, the role would teach Fabienne an important lesson and tee up a happy ending. It does lead to a thawing of her frosty relationship with her daughter but this prima donna was never going to give up without a fight.
Kore-eda doesn’t deal in big showdowns or sudden epiphanies.this is drama built on regrets and resentments nursed over decades.
If you’ve spent 22 years hankering for a Big Lebowski sequel you may be excited to see
Sadly, this raunchy adventure for The Dude’s bowling nemesis Jesus Quintana definitely isn’t the second coming.the film is written and directed by actor John Turturro with the blessing of The Big Lebowski creators the Coen Brothers. He gets the ball rolling by putting the Gypsy Kings in a cell to serenade Jesus as he walks to freedom.
He’s met at the gates by fellow parolee Petey (Bobby Cannavale); they steal a muscle car from a vain hairdresser (Jon Hamm) and pay a visit to Jesus’s elderly prostitute mother (Sonia Braga).
Jesus’s mannerisms are funny, but we want a plot.when the rogues team up with sexually frustrated Marie (Audrey Tautou) it turns out he has decided to re-hash a Gerard Depardieu sex comedy. That, 1974’s Les Valseuses, had a pair of sexually adventurous twentysomethings in the driving seat and feels an odd fit for two grizzled, middle-aged jailbirds. I lost interest when bisexual Jesus made a pass at Petey and they both shared a night of passion with Marie.after a strong start, it just rolls around in the gutter.
Netflix’s Crip Camp is an inspirational, educational way to knock off a couple of hours of self-isolation. This documentary uses remarkable 1970s footage to tell the story of upstate New York’s Camp Jened. Co-director and attendee Jim Lebrecht calls it “a summer camp for the handicapped run by hippies”.to his friend Denise Jacobson, it was “utopia”.
These days, the unqualified young hosts wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near severely disabled children.and scenes of youngsters being hauled into swimming pools by hairy youths appear to come from a less enlightened age. But this was what made it so important. Freed from an uncaring society and over-protective parents, these children found a sense of self-worth and a collective voice.
The film tells how many founded the disabled rights movement. Judy Heumann, an organiser of a protest to enshrine disabled access in US law, deserves a biopic of her own.the spirit of the time runs through this joyous film.