Film
Tom Birchenough
There’s little beauty of any conventional kind in this tale of the hidden queer - "gay" would have associations of a very different world - life of South African patriarch François (Deon Lotz) imploding. He falls for Christian (Charlie Keegan), the 20-something son of an old friend, with violent and wrenching consequences: the closet door may be opening, but the cracks are in a deeply repressed family life.An opening wedding shows François in all his provincial Bloemfontein status, a proud father giving away his daughter, the prosperous owner of a timber yard, a figure in the local Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
The cast of On the Road is an embarrassment of riches. There’s Viggo Mortensen, high on many people’s lists of favourite contemporary actors, with a rum portrayal of William Burroughs; talented British actors Sam Riley and Tom Sturridge as those other Beat colossi Kerouac and Ginsberg; Kirsten Dunst and Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss, and indie stalwart Steve Buscemi.But the film’s biggest box office draw is the youngest of all. Kristen Stewart may just be 22, but having started acting aged nine she’s now a veteran of 26 movies; moreover, her best-known role is as a certain Bella Swan, heroine of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
For Darcey Bussell it’s Baryshnikov in The Turning Point; for Carlos Acosta it’s The Red Shoes. No one at last week's starry premiere of Love Tomorrow at the Raindance Film Festival, when I asked them for their favourite dance film, mentioned Black Swan. Films about the ballet life are rareties - are the memorable ones those that are realistic about their strenuous world or are they the expressionistic shockers that let rip with the curtains and OTT fantasies?Indeed, it’s unusual to see a dance film being made at all, let alone picked for a celebrated indie film festival like Raindance this Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Who are Wes Anderson’s films actually for? They can be read as wistful visits to the confusing domain of childhood or kids’ movies full of droll turns from Hollywood stars. Moonrise Kingdom, which tells of a pair of damaged runaways who find solace in the woods and each other, exists charmingly on that faultline. And in Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman, it features delightful turns by its two young leads.Suzy, troubled oldest daughter of a loveless marriage, and Sam, an unpopular scout who is dumped by his latest foster parents, conspire a resourceful escape into the wilderness. They also take a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio should see an uptick in admissions on the back of Liberal Arts. The wan cross-generational love story was shot on the invitingly leafy grounds of a campus whose alumni over time have included E L Doctorow, Paul Newman and this very film's own co-star, Alison Janney. But if the place looks lovely, the people decidedly don't. One's best advice for Elizabeth Olsen, who walks off with the film playing a lovestruck undergrad, is to get out - and fast. Instead, this vibrant actress spends most of the film mooning over Jesse (Josh Radnor, who also functioned as Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Like a Dirty Daddy Harry, Taken saw bad people get rough justice: if you kidnap a covert operator’s daughter, you'll be mercilessly tracked down and dispatched with giddy, impossible violence. In Taken 2, the whole family gets 'taken', making this sequel a study in scary togetherness. Conceived as a schlocky action vehicle for durable star Liam Neeson, Taken was a surprise hit. Doing what every good sequel should, Taken 2 puts the audience back into the exciting world of the first film where they can enjoy those lovable characters as well as a new twist on the story. It also prods them to Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This year’s glut of haunted house films have been unusually, often painfully intimate. Elizabeth Olsen’s pure, panting terror in Silent House, like Gretchen Lodge’s depraved unravelling in Lovely Molly, added to the sub-genre’s essential horror: the thought that when you shut your front door you’re locking something awful inside, not out; that your home, every creaking floorboard and attic thud of it, isn’t a safe haven but an insidious foe. Even as a long-time horror film lover, I’ve found them at times almost unbearably tense, creeping under my skin in minutes.Sinister seems set to push the Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Clare Stewart arrived in London from Australia a year ago this month, into one of the biggest jobs in the UK film industry. For film buffs, it might seem like she entered a giant playground, a job to die for. Stewart is Head of Exhibition at the British Film Institute, a newly-created role that brings together responsibility for the day-to-day programming of the BFI Southbank and IMAX and for the institute’s festivals, including the London Film Festival, of which she is the festival director. Her first LFF, which theartsdesk will be covering extensively, is about to kick off.It’s a massive Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
Teenage angst is a tough thing to get right on screen. It's perenially popular territory for dramatic writers in part because of the heightened emotions it allows for – as Joss Whedon once phrased it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a series which was in itself an extended metaphor for the horrors of high school, "everything feels like life or death when you're 16 years old."But push that inevitably narcissistic young worldview too far, and and your audience will be alienated, regardless of how appealing your performers are. Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his own late Nineties novel Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A confession: though very fond of the Beatles, I'd never seen their self-directed Magical Mystery Tour before this DVD release. Not that I have anything against psychedelic follies, but I felt like I'd had my fill of this sort of thing a long time ago and had never bothered seeking it out. Consider me chastened; it's a joyous film – yes, it's the result of a bunch of rich young men fooling about with drugs and looks like it, but there's so much warmth, so much colour, so much affection for the textures and quirks of a lost Britain shot through it that it's hard not to love.Two things make it Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, released on DVD and Blu-ray today, is the fifth feature written (or co-written) and directed by the French actress-filmmaker and her sequel to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris. It is, therefore, another hyper, chaotic comedy of Franco-American cultural discord.Since we last saw her, Delpy’s neurotic art photographer Marion has split up with truculent boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) and moved into a Manhattan apartment with Village Voice writer and radio talk-show host Mingus (Chris Rock), forming a new family with her son and his daughter. Their stability is ruptured Read more ...
Steven Yates
Almaty may have lost its capital status to Astana in 1997, but this city of 1.6m inhabitants, about nine percent of the country's population, remains the commercial and cultural hub of Kazakhstan. The Eurasia Film Festival was first held here in 1998 with the support of the Filmmakers Union as a forum for movies from the CIS and Baltic countries. Though initially intended as an annual event, some years there hasn't been a festival at all - in 2009 it officially closed only to resume again in 2010. Prior to 2011 the program leaned heavily towards Central Asian films, but last year more Read more ...