Film Reviews
No One Knows About Persian CatsFriday, 19 March 2010
The protests around the Iranian presidential elections of 2009 brought home to many in the West not only how dominated by youth the pro-democracy movement in Iran is, but also how westernised the youth of that country are. Symbolised by Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death at the hands of security forces was caught on camera and beamed around the world, this was an Iran a world away from the glowering Ayatollahs and pepperpot women in black chadors we tended to see on news... Read more...
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Film: Sons of CubaThursday, 18 March 2010
Cuban boxers have always punched above their weight in the world arena: the little island has clocked up no fewer than 63 Olympic medals - 32 of them gold - in the last 40 years. Enjoying extraordinary access to the mysteries of the Havana Boxing Academy, this emotional documentary follows the fortunes of three ten-year-old lads over eight months as they submit to a punishing regimen of training for the National Boxing Championship. But, as with the best sports films, Sons of Cuba... Read more... |
The Scouting Book for BoysTuesday, 16 March 2010
Teenagers David and Emily are inseparable friends, who live year-round on a crummy seaside caravan park on the East Anglian coast. They play games of chase among the caravans, scare sheep in surrounding fields and steal from the sweet shop on site. The friends, although the same age, are at different stages of their development; he still looks boyish, she is already flirting with Steve, the much older security guard on site. But the pair are equally emotionally inarticulate and struggling to... Read more... |
English Journey Revisited, AV Festival, NewcastleMonday, 15 March 2010
The description of the AV Festival’s closing event was vague in the promotional material. Going only by the promise of “music/performance,” and the undeniably odd combination of Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair with performance musicians including the guitarist from drone doom band Sunn O))), expectations were hard to form. The organisers must have realised the mystery - four sheets of A4 were thrust into our hands last night by ushers upon entry as a means of explanation, although the... Read more... |
Shutter IslandThursday, 11 March 2010
The opening scene of Martin Scorsese's new film - a storm-tossed ferry buffeting its way to an isolated island off America's East Coast - bears an unmissable resemblance to that of Roman Polanski's The Ghost. So too does its premise, of a vulnerable young man who falls under the sway of a powerful, indefinably sinister older one. Read more... |
Green ZoneWednesday, 10 March 2010
It seems both Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass felt it was time to leave the Bourne franchise on the shelf for a while, fearing they would corner themselves into making The Bourne Redundancy. Instead, they have transposed their working partnership into this Iraq war saga. Read more... |
The Girl with the Dragon TattooWednesday, 10 March 2010
When roused, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the sullen, leather-clad, metal-pierced heroine ofThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is as ferocious as the panther her physical presence evokes. Read more... |
The Kreutzer SonataTuesday, 09 March 2010
For scalpel-sharp dissection of the most vapid parts of Hollywood/LA life, told with low-budget digital flexibility that itself critiques studio indulgences, British director Bernard Rose is your man. He hit the note most viscerally in Ivansxtc a decade ago with a story of the drug-induced implosion of one of the city’s top agenting talents. Read more... |
Father of My ChildrenFriday, 05 March 2010
High summer in Paris. Jazz plays on the soundtrack, the boulevards are bright, leafy and humming and Grégoire, a good-looking man in his mid-forties, scuttles along the street, mobile phone glued to ear. He's troubleshooting on a truly international scale: the Koreans are arriving mob-handed, the Georgians are so demanding and that nutty Swedish director's budget is spiralling out of control. Read more... |
OndineThursday, 04 March 2010
Neil Jordan’s smaller films have often betrayed a fascination with wispy visitants from the borderlands of gender. In The Crying Game the beautiful young call girl turns out, in one of cinema’s more jawdropping reveals, to be somewhat less she than he. Breakfast on Pluto found Cillian Murphy’s girly boy swishing around working-class Dublin in frocks and furs. And now comes Ondine, Jordan’s reimagining of the watery fable transplanted to the rugged shores of Cork.... Read more... |
Alice in WonderlandWednesday, 03 March 2010
Must rush, have to hurry: like the fretful White Rabbit with his pocket watch, fans have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Tim Burton's Alice, which finally arrives in cinemas this week, albeit for a limited period following the controversial decision to push the film out quickly on DVD. Mindful of this, I hastened to the IMAX, Waterloo to catch it in 3D, larger than life and twice as natural, on the very biggest screen available. 30,000 people have already pre-booked tickets... Read more... |
ChloeWednesday, 03 March 2010
“I guess I’ve always been pretty good with words,” says the eponymous character in the opening, voiceover line of Atom Egoyan’s Chloe - and with that clunker we know the Canadian director's move into the mainstream isn't going to be as gripping or original as any of his previous indie efforts. With a join-the-dots script by Erin Cressida Wilson and overwrought music, it is, unusually for Egoyan, a linear movie and one that ultimately goes nowhere. Read more... |
Nitin Sawhney and LSO, Yogoto No Yume, BarbicanMonday, 01 March 2010
When I last met Nitin Sawhney, I’d heard that he was a whizz at mental arithmetic. I asked him, perhaps impertinently, what was 91 times 94? “8,827,” he relied, quick as a flash. Several hours later, I worked out he was probably right. “Vedic mathematics,” he said. What I can say about last night’s performance was there was some interesting mathematics going on. Some time signatures rubbed friskily against others in certain scenes in ways a mathematician would love. Read more... |
Everybody's FineWednesday, 24 February 2010
For a while, actually, it appears as if a dollop of irony might just be on the cards, and during those passages, at least, British writer-director Kirk Jones's road movie looks poised to be quietly revolutionary. But once the dictates of convention settle in, watch out! At the press screening attended, a fellow near me was crying what seemed to be tears brought on by the helpless laughter that accompanies mockery. One can only assume he wasn't moved. Read more... |
Capitalism: A Love StoryTuesday, 23 February 2010
If Michael Moore's new film were a person, it would be diagnosed with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. Read more... |
The Headless WomanSaturday, 20 February 2010
A merciless anatomy of the inner meltdown that follows a hit-and-run accident, The Headless Woman is as baffling, brilliant, demanding and utterly original a work as you're likely to see all year. Its themes are confusion, amnesia, disavowal. The director, Lucrecia Martel, by contrast is in vice-like control of her material. This film might be a real head-scratcher. But no-one seeing it can come out unconvinced that Martel is a world-class talent. |
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