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Articles by Neil Rosen

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About Neil Rosen

Neil went to the City of London School and Manchester University graduating with a 1st in economics. After a brief stint in accountancy, Neil emigrated to a kibbutz In Israel. His articles on the burgeoning Israeli film industry earned comparisons to Truffaut and Godard in Cahiers du Cinema. Now one of the world's leading film critics and moderators at film Festivals Neil has written definitively in his book Kosher Nostra on Jewish post war actors. Neil lives with his family in North London. More Posts

Phantom Thread

Ten minutes into this film I was truck by its similarity to a much better film Rebecca. There is the same three-way power struggle, the taking of a young awkward woman in servile employment into a house where she is made unwelcome and the debonair but unreliable Reynolds Woodcock resembles Maxim [...]

February 7, 2018 // 0 Comments

Churchill ( again)

Yesterday when I did the morning supermarket shop and was looking for the over-priced ink cartridges for my printer, I passed the DVDs displayed which only reminded me how disconnected I am from modern cinema. However I saw a DVD of Churchill – starring Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson [...]

January 31, 2018 // 0 Comments

The Darkest Hour

I came to this film late and was determined neither to be influenced by the favourable reviews nor the more negative critique of this  organ and several friends. The one scene that the latter did not like was that of Churchill on a tube. I liked the scene and would say it was pivotal to the film. [...]

January 30, 2018 // 0 Comments

View from the future

It’s always interesting to see a film set in the past but also produced in a different time as it tells you about both epochs. With this in mind I revisited this week Oh What a Lovely War! (1969)  and The Day of the Jackal (1973). Although no expert like Henry Elkins I am confident in [...]

January 25, 2018 // 0 Comments

Veteran film stars

In the week I had lunch with a film buff who spoke highly of  All The Money In The World and in particular  of Christopher Plummer who, aged 88, turned out a stellar performance. The interesting thing about Christopher Plummer is that he is best known for Fritz von Trapp in The Sound of [...]

January 20, 2018 // 0 Comments

Three American film classics…and one not so

Like our Rusters journeying to and from the Antipodes I do not enjoy a long haul flight. My way of passing the time is to watch classic movies by genre. Thus on a long haul flight recently I watched 3 American classics. The first two were Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch. Whilst [...]

January 12, 2018 // 0 Comments

Hollywood alcoholics

Watching Discovering William Holden on Sky Arts made me think of the great actors we lost to alcoholism: Richard Burton, Errol Flynn, Robert Walker, Veronica Lake and William Holden. One never knows, let alone understands, why anyone falls victim to the bottle and this is certainly  the case with [...]

November 11, 2017 // 0 Comments

The Cincinnati Kid

One of the most enjoyable screen tests is when a big star pits his ability against a great actor. I’m thinking here of Dustin Hoffman v Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man and later on Tom Cruise v Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man or Michael Caine v Laurence Olivier in Sleuth. In those films the [...]

November 2, 2017 // 0 Comments

Death of Stalin

There is a major problem about Armando Ianucci’s film inasmuch it treats a grotesque subject – the tyranny of Stalin and the subsequent scramble for power – as a comedy … and a not very funny one. The film opens with a live performance of the Moscow Radio orchestra and [...]

October 27, 2017 // 0 Comments

The Party

Older Rusters and readers may remember The Wednesday Play an often obscure dramatic venture into the avant garde on BBC. I felt the same slightly bored detachment that I experienced watching it as I did  during The Party. This might be because it was filmed in black and white and set in the [...]

October 22, 2017 // 0 Comments

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