Film Reviews
Maps to the StarsThursday, 25 September 2014
Hollywood's veneer has been cracked so many times it's possible to see right through to its cynical core; in an age of irreverence and intrusion the stars simply don't glitter as brightly. David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars is a film that forgets all this and sets out its satirical stall anyway. Read more... |
The EqualizerTuesday, 23 September 2014
Denzel Washington steps into the shoes of avenger Edward Woodward (TV series 1985-89) as a quiet, private man wrestling with his demons as he tries to stifle his natural gifts for violent justice. He’s reluctant to hurt people but, you know, he has skillz. Washington's easy grace and intelligence give this predictable policier manqué almost edible allure. Read more... |
IdaMonday, 22 September 2014
Sometimes a film has you swooning from the very first frame, and Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's fifth narrative feature is one such film. The story of a nun's self-discovery is captured in delicate monochrome by cinematographers Ryszard Lenczewski (Margaret) and Lukasz Zal, who render the often austere surroundings with great, gob-stopping imagination in a film whose beauty is enough to make you bow down and praise Jesus, whatever your religious proclivities. Read more... |
Magic in the MoonlightWednesday, 17 September 2014
An ageing misanthrope is given a new lease of life and a fresh outlook by a pretty, young woman. Woody Allen wheels out this tired old trope for his 44th feature film set in his favourite era on the French Riviera with a light romantic yarn between Colin Firth and Emma Stone playing out as predictably as one might imagine. Read more... |
20,000 Days On EarthSunday, 14 September 2014
This excellent documentary considerably deepens the Nick Cave we know. If there is a Cave other than the spiritually and intellectually ravenous rock star with the raven hair, bone-dry wit and shamanic showman seen here, a bumbling secret identity behind the crafted persona, co-directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard don’t want to know. Read more... |
Down by LawSunday, 14 September 2014
Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law is back in British cinemas 28 years after it joined Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It and Lizzie Borden's Working Girls in galvanising the embryonic American indie movement. Read more... |
A Most Wanted ManFriday, 12 September 2014
Other films have been and still will be released featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, since his death earlier this year. But A Most Wanted Man is the one that serves as the final testament to what’s been lost. Here is not just a final great performance, but a character one might otherwise have imagined revisiting. Read more... |
PrideThursday, 11 September 2014
Buried deep in the final credits for theatre director Matthew Warchus's second feature film, Pride, is a shout-out to his late father for teaching his son the twin virtues of compassion and comedy. Both those qualities, as it happens, are on abundant display in this buoyant venture from Warchus fils which works on multiple levels, all of them richly engaging. Read more... |
Manuscripts Don't BurnWednesday, 10 September 2014
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Manuscripts Don’t Burn will raise many questions for its viewers, not least the practical one: just how was it made at all? Read more... |
In Order of DisappearanceTuesday, 09 September 2014
The frozen north of Norway seems an unlikely spot for a Serbian drug gang to be operating alongside a local mob, but this is the world which snow-plough driver Nils meets head on when avenging the death of his son. Read more... |
At BerkeleyMonday, 08 September 2014
Ever since his 1967 breakthrough film Titticut Follies, an unsparing look at a Massachusetts prison for the criminally insane, Frederick Wiseman has been turning his dispassionate observational camera on the workings of institutions ranging from the US Marines to high school, juvenile court, and the American Ballet Theater. Read more... |
MSunday, 07 September 2014
The newly restored, 111-minute cut of M is being screened 35 times during BFI Southbank's current Peter Lorre retrospective. One only has to see and hear Fritz Lang's first sound film once, however, to appreciate its undiminished power as a vision of a Germany teetering on the abyss less than three years before the Nazis took power. Read more... |
The Hundred-Foot JourneyFriday, 05 September 2014
Imagine The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel crossed with Chocolat. That’s The Hundred-Foot Journey in one, meshing a previous success of director Lasse Hallström with the previously neglected but growing genre of 'the mature person's movie'. After all, old folks like food, don’t they? Well, so do young people. Who doesn’t? Read more... |
Life of CrimeThursday, 04 September 2014
The task of adapting 1978 novel The Switch by Elmore Leonard - who sadly passed away last year - is given to relatively new director Daniel Schechter who brings together a superb ensemble cast, lush seventies set design and a gritty style. He mostly rises to the occasion thanks to confident camera work and an obvious rapport with his actors. Read more... |
Sex TapeWednesday, 03 September 2014
Slap and tickle and slapstick meet to varying degrees of not very funny in this comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as a married couple who attempt to spice up their love life with a home-made skin-flick. Extreme product placement, a lack of chemistry between the two leads and a tame script co-written by Segel and long-time writing partner Nicholas Stoller fails to deliver. Thankfully there are solid supporting turns from Rob Lowe and Jack Black. Read more... |
The GuestTuesday, 02 September 2014
Dan Stevens puts Downton behind him to become a CIA-built killing machine laying low in a New Mexico small town, in Adam Wingard’s bonkers new thriller. He looks all the better for it. Aristocratic English charm translates into Southern civility as his character David insinuates himself into a family grieving for a son he served with in Iraq. David’s just here to help. Read more... |
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