Carmen Gray's guide to new films, old films and event screenings
NEW FILM: SIDE EFFECTS
Our pharma-mad, pill-popping culture is the backdrop to Steven Soderbergh’s sleekly stylish if over-the-top neo-noir about New York couple Emily and Martin (Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum), whose enviable lifestyle is violently disrupted after Emily’s psychiatrist (Jude Law) prescribes a new drug to treat her depression. The director says this is his last film. Whether that's true, it’s sure to be remembered as one of his best. Out in the UK on March 8.
DOCUMENTARY: MODEL
Girls at castings, open calls and runway shows and on shoots (including a young Jerry Hall) are the subject of this rarely shown, loosely observational 1980 film from American documentary master Frederick Wiseman. It looks at how images were put together in the advertising business in a near-amateur era of the fashion industry before the advent of its huge powerhouses. Screening at London's ICA on March 9.
SHORTS: FRESH WAVE SHORTS
Originally screening in Hong Kong in December, this showcase of some of the boldest and most unique of Asia's fresh filmmaking talent comes to London for the first time this year as part of the Pan Asia Film Festival. The 100-minute hit of regional goodness screens at London's ICA on March 14.
OLD FILM: A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
This 1974 drama from improv-pioneer Director John Cassavetes was a labour of love financed through family and friends that’s become a great indie classic. The idiosyncratic behaviour of an LA housewife (Gena Rowlands) leads her construction-worker husband to reluctantly commit her to an asylum for treatment. Left alone with three children, he proves no wiser or better able to cope than his spouse. Screening at London's Barbican on March 10.
EVENT: DEATH LINE
Set in the London tube network, this 1972 Brit horror classic was released as Raw Meat in the US. A family of plague-ridden cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers have been dwelling in the Underground's disused lines, living off passenger victims from Holborn and Russell Square stations. A detective, along with an American college student and his English girlfriend, go on the hunt for the last remaining, lonely cannibal. Screening at London's Phoenix Cinema on March 8 as part of The Cigarette Burns film club's Midnight Movie events.