Film
Karen Krizanovich
Who knew that Tim Burton remaking himself would, in effect, bring him back to creative life? Of three highly anticipated horror-based "family films" released this Halloween season, Burton’s Frankenweenie would seem like the rank outsider. A stop-motion animated feature about a boy who loves his dead dog isn’t the kind of thing you’d take little Emma to see. It isn’t the kind of film to discuss at the family dinner table. Nor should you. This is not a film for small children or those of a nervy disposition. It is, however, a high-quality labour of love for anyone who just adores the modern Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Michael Winterbottom’s Channel 4 commission for a film on prison life resulted in this five-year experiment in the passage of time for jailed Ian (John Simm) and his young family left on the outside. The oldest of the four child actors was almost teenage by the shoot’s end. More prosaically, Ian’s time inside is marked on his wearily hardening face.The grand Michael Nyman score rightly suggests there’s something profoundly important in the passage of everyday lives, reinforced by the rural seasons in the family’s Norfolk home. There’s even sex and potential violence. In an intensely erotic Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Featuring a towering, Cannes-award-winning performance from Mads Mikkelsen, The Hunt (Jagten) is a humane and horrifying story of the power of accusation from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen).Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a kindergarten teacher in a Danish village. Though he’s a natural with the kids and is popular and connected locally, he’s a taciturn, somewhat enigmatic figure whose recent divorce has left him alone and missing his son. When his best friend’s tiny daughter Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) develops a crush on him, his rejection of her causes her to blurt out the most damaging Read more ...
emma.simmonds
The latest film from innovative firebrand Sally Potter is something of a surprise given her back catalogue. Her last feature, Rage (2009) premiered on mobile phones and the internet and comprised a series of to-the-camera monologues; the one before that Yes (2004) was told in iambic pentameter; and, she is of course the maestro behind gender-bending masterpiece Orlando (1992). Ginger & Rosa – a sweet and sour coming-of-age story - by contrast seems pretty conventional, following two teenage girls who have been best friends since their simultaneous birth.It’s London, 1962, and Ginger and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
A film about an Aboriginal soul quartet in the Vietnam War should at least have originality covered. This adaptation of the hit Australian musical by Tony Briggs based on his mum and aunt's Saigon adventures rings most changes, though, in being a resolutely uplifting Aboriginal story. Australia’s deep racism in 1968 is well-caught when sisters Gail (Deborah Mailman), Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) and Julie (Jessica Mauboy) powerfully harmonise at a spitefully rigged small-town talent contest. But with the help of cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens) and the dubious management skills of sozzled Irish Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
A story of six years of conflict in the West Bank set against more timeless details of life in the Palestinian town of Bil’in, 5 Broken Cameras brings the reality of resistance to the expansion of Israeli settlements – a conflict between unarmed locals and the Israeli army with its modern armaments - to the viewer in a far fuller way than we see in news reports. Palestinian co-director Emad Burnat shot hundreds of hours of footage in and around his home community, his only “weapon” his video cameras (which, as the title suggests, fell victim to bullets and violence in just the same way as did Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It’s not often you get a sumptuous spectacle like Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows. Then again, it's not often 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) returns to his brooding family mansion in Maine. Burton’s love of style over content transformed America's favourite horror soap of the 60s into a gem-like retro horror comedy that combines just the right hair with just the right wardrobe in just the right car. Storywise, though, it's a glossy mess soundtracked with pop hits from the 1970s (sticklers will note The Carpenters' "Top of the World" is from the wrong year)The cast is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
In case you doubted the title, the great Cream drummer Ginger Baker breaks director Jay Bulger’s nose with a crack of his walking stick, after Bulger’s lived at his subject’s South African ranch for four months. Like a zoo-keeper thinking for a fatal second the tiger was his friend, Bulger found that Baker still bites.There’s ample testimony in this hugely entertaining documentary to the enduring “Baker temper”, both from former bandmates (“It wasn’t the knife thing” that bothered Cream bassist Jack Bruce during a blade-wielding beating), and wives and children left wrecked in his wake. He’s Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Balancing cool calculation with a touch of Potiche’s farce, In the House (Dans la Maison) sees French director François Ozon return to the story-within-a-story structure and enigmatic imposter subject matter of Swimming Pool.It stars Fabrice Luchini as Mr Germain, a frustrated French teacher, disenchanted by pupil apathy and his school’s new initiatives. His zeal for teaching is re-awakened when a talented pupil, Claude (Ernst Umhauer), starts turning-in intriguing but alarming assignments. These reveal that Claude has conned his way into a classmate’s house, and is observing and manipulating Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
This could be the best Bond yet: light on sex, heavy on storytelling, hard on action. This is 100 percent pure Bond - a distillation of beauty, action, surprises and locations. Let's start with the latter: perhaps it’s best to stay away from Istanbul, given Taken 2 and now the exciting chase scene in the opening of Skyfall. It's a chase scene, sure, but with stunts and camera angles that make you sit up and take just enough notice. Same goes for MI6 and Macau: terrible things happen there. But you can visit Shanghai perfectly nicely because, in this, the 23rd official Bond film, the city Read more ...
Russ Coffey
At the end of 2007 Led Zep’s reunion concert took “hottest ticket in town” to melting point. Everyone now knows 20 million fans chased 18,000 seats at the O2. What we hear less about is, given previous disastrous reunion efforts, how hard the pressure was on. And yet they pulled it off. Five years later people have still been asking for a tour. Earlier this week, however, the band categorically stated they’ve called it a day. Instead they’re releasing a film of their last concert. Last night, at Hammersmith Apollo, Celebration Day got its British premiere.After 20 minutes' delay, the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Australian Cate Shortland’s second film is a raw fairy tale about Nazi Germany, where indoctrinated, newly teenage Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) has always loved her war hero daddy. But when he returns from his SS unit’s long Belarus rampage in 1945, both parents are seized by the Allies, and she has to lead her abandoned siblings into the forest, to find their grandmother’s house.When Thomas (Kai Malina), bearing a concentration camp tattoo, offers help and erotic temptation, Jenny Agutter’s Walkabout odyssey with her brother and Aboriginal guide comes to mind. But for Lore, adolescent longing Read more ...