Sight & Sound. May 05.

Now that we've read the story of its making a few times, Andrew Osmond's cover story for the May issue of Sight & Sound presents the first substantive preview of what might turn out to be one of the few highlights of a very dry summer:

As a film, Hitchhiker may well suit its slot in the film release calendar as a gentle pre-emptive raspberry to Steven Spielberg's forthcoming remake of War of the Worlds, which is unlikely to keep the anti-humanist heft of Wells' original. At the same time Hitchhiker has none of the noisy obnoxiousness of Tim Burton's mischievous Mars Attacks! (1996), which played a counter-programming role in the year of Independence Day... The resulting film is intermittently funny and/or charming and sometimes genuinely strange.

David Thomson shoots for a "rehabilitation" of Otto Preminger, but not exactly a straight one: "What sort of film criticism or commentary is this, you may be asking, with rather more the sense of a dream's dissolve than of analytical exactness."

Reviews:

• Philip Kemp on The Consequences of Love: "Paolo Sorrentino's second feature... rises to the challenge of portraying a sterile, emotionless life without either boring or alienating his audience."

• Richard Falcon on Downfall, "ultimately of interest for [Bruno] Ganz's brave, slightly mad performance."

• Tony Rayns on Palindromes: "Since Todd Solondz found his groove in Welcome to the Dollhouse, it's become obvious that he's essentially a one-trick pony. Luckily it's a pretty good trick."

Posted by dwhudson at April 19, 2005 2:12 AM