Film Reviews
The DoubleMonday, 31 March 2014
Take some hot Fyodor Dostoyevsky, top it with two scoops of Jesse Eisenberg and stir with writer-director Richard Ayoade – and you'll have The Double, Ayoade’s second feature after his successful Submarine. You know to expect freshness, quirkiness and quality from that far southwestern pool of the UK creative arts. Stylish and sharp, this is a quirky black comedy that clicks with serious undertones, aided by terrific sound design and Eisenberg acting himself off the screen... Read more... |
20 Feet From StardomSaturday, 29 March 2014
Always the bridesmaid but never the bride: that adage, and its many equivalents, courses through 20 Feet From Stardom, the hugely entertaining but also gently poignant documentary that was a popular winner at this year's Oscars. A look at the life of backup singers over time - who they were and are and where they have got to - Morgan Neville's short (90-minute) and bittersweet film casts a necessary spotlight on those show biz folk who aren't necessarily given centre-stage. Read more... |
Captain America: The Winter SoldierFriday, 28 March 2014
The first outing of the re-tooled Captain America in 2011's The First Avenger was a bit of a hoot, thanks to its carefully-wrought 1940s setting and Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving portraying contrasting varieties of Teutonic craziness. Bringing the Cap into the present day after a 70-year slumber poses a few different problems, since he is quite literally a man out of time. Read more... |
The PastWednesday, 26 March 2014
It's not often we're told to strap ourselves in for a drama - it takes quite some skill to make the everyday excite and to make ordinary lives seem extraordinary, but these are gifts that the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has in abundance. Read more... |
Muppets Most WantedMonday, 24 March 2014
It’s sleazy being green. In Muppets Most Wanted, Kermit The Frog stars as both himself and evil Constantine, a frog that would annex the Ukraine if he could, in a star-studded follow-up to the enjoyable hit The Muppets. Like the feature of 2011, Muppets Most Wanted has some terrific songs, even if it lacks the momentum and funny logic of its predecessor. Read more... |
The Unknown KnownSunday, 23 March 2014
If Errol Morris lived in Middle Earth he’d make a documentary about Sauron. If he taught at Hogwarts, he’d be turning his cameras on Voldemort. You get the idea. Morris is drawn to Dark Overlords, powerful men of steely ambition and ego, convinced of their own rightness even after events have proven that their wrong-headed ideas have demonstrably contributed to the sum of human misery. Read more... |
A Long Way DownFriday, 21 March 2014
You'd have to go a long way to find a film as truly, mind-bogglingly bad as A Long Way Down, which trumps A New York Winter's Tale as the worst celluloid entry in this still-young film year and may likely set the bar for some while to come. Adapted from the darkly comic 2005 novel from Nick Hornby, the movie about four suicidal malcontents who find solace in one another's company manages to trivialise and cheapen every aspect of human behaviour that it touches. Read more... |
GBFFriday, 21 March 2014
Anyone who secretly liked High School Musical or is a fan of Mean Girls or Glee will find something to like in Darren Stein's candy-coloured high-school satire, which detonates some teenage culture bombs (albeit some of them years behind the curve) while giving some hearty laughs. Read more... |
SalvoThursday, 20 March 2014
Given the world’s most famous crime organisation hails from Italy, it’s odd that we associate the best crime movies with elsewhere, notably Hollywood (not least its quintessential Mafia films, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II). But Italian directors have been contributing some memorable additions to the genre of late. And following The Consequences of Love and Gomorrah comes the scintillating Salvo. Read more... |
Starred UpWednesday, 19 March 2014
Director David MacKenzie has made a prison drama for those who don’t like the genre and an ace in the hole for those who do. Starred Up is an example of how quality filmmaking captures an audience no matter what the topic – and here, that quality includes skilful cinematography, a tight script and tremendous performances from both leading and supporting cast. The result is that we get to see how the horror of prison life reflects the violent pockets of society outside. Read more... |
Labor DayTuesday, 18 March 2014
Like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters) Jason Reitman has shown himself to be a sure hand at helming comedy, and his less commercial sensibility has resulted in films as spiky and interesting as Young Adult, Juno, Up in the Air and Thank You For Smoking. Read more... |
The MachineMonday, 17 March 2014
In a Q&A at the London Screenwriters' Festival last year, Welsh writer/director Caradog James and producer John Giwa-Amu already had fans. If that Q&A is any indication, the team at Red & Black Films have a brilliant career ahead of them, all thanks to The Machine, a dark science fiction tale of artificial intelligence and human scheming that is finally released this week. Read more... |
SuzanneSaturday, 15 March 2014
As she proved in her exquisite debut Love Like Poison, French director Katell Quillévéré has an astonishing knack for delicately told stories which, in their sensitivity to character and credibility, pack a weighty emotional punch. And so it goes in her follow-up Suzanne, an aesthetically sunny story of unconditional familial love and the grand, gut-wrenching folly that comes from being romantically entangled with a dubious character. Read more... |
The Zero TheoremFriday, 14 March 2014
Terry Gilliam’s career currently resembles Orson Welles’ declining years, and not just in both men’s seemingly impossible quests to finish a film of Don Quixote. Gilliam too is trying to work outside a Hollywood system that has tired of his maverick talent, finding himself in far-flung European corners with motley casts of famous friends and fans, doing him favours in the hope his old lightning will strike. Read more... |
The RocketThursday, 13 March 2014
Ten-year-old Ahlo is the energetic, cheeky, joyous centre of Kim Mordaunt’s drama The Rocket (Sitthiphon Disamoe as Ahlo, main picture), which follows him through a series of challenges towards a triumphant and redeeming final act. That may sound like a familiar narrative arc, but it’s told with new freshness and considerable humour in the film, which is billed as the first ever to come out of Laos. Read more... |
Need for SpeedWednesday, 12 March 2014
The history of computer games being turned into movies has not been a happy one (Max Payne, Battleship, Lara Croft), but the blockbusting Need for Speed car-racing franchise fares rather better. This movie version is of course simplistically plotted and completely ludicrous for almost every one of its 130 minutes. Read more... |
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