On 24th January 1975, American jazz musician Keith Jarrett performed to a sell-out crowd at Köln’s Opera House whilst playing a broken piano. The recording has since become the best-selling solo jazz album of all time, and the gig almost didn’t go ahead. Written and directed by Ido Fluk, period drama Köln 75 tells the amazing true story of how the evening came to be – the ‘scaffolding’ supporting the masterpiece as it is put in the film’s introduction.
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A gear shift from her mumblecore beginnings, writer and director Mary Bronstein has joined forces with the team behind the Safdie productions for her latest feature If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. An anxiety-horror of sorts, the plot follows psychotherapist Linda (Rose Byrne) whose life takes a turn when her ceiling caves in from a flood in the apartment above. With her husband out of town on a work trip, she and her sick daughter (Delaney Quinn) move into a shabby motel, and things go from bad to worse when her vulnerable patient Caroline (Danielle Macdonald) goes missing.
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It’s been thirty years since the first collaboration between actor Ethan Hawke and filmmaker Richard Linklater, when they began working on the now beloved ‘Before’ trilogy. They have reunited for period piece Blue Moon which, like a lot of the director’s work, takes place across one day – or one evening in this case to be more specific.
Set almost entirely in a New York City bar in 1943, the historical snapshot plot centres around troubled lyricist Lorenz Hart (Hawke) after he attends the opening night of stage musical Oklahoma! on Broadway. Feeling bitter about his writing partner Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) success in his new duo with Oscar Hammerstein II, he distracts himself and everyone else around him by regaling them with stories of his infatuation for Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old student who he claims is his latest protégé.
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Cinema Perspective 