Film Reviews
Seduced and AbandonedMonday, 04 November 2013
The 65th Cannes film festival acts as the backdrop for this compelling, if somewhat misguided documentary from James Toback. Accompanied by Alec Baldwin, Toback sets out to shame Hollywood for its decision to continually churn out megabuck franchises and mediocrity rather than investing in risky, original cinema as the pair try to get funding for their own film project. Read more... |
PhilomenaFriday, 01 November 2013
In 1998, Judi Dench slayed audiences on the London stage in Filumena, playing a former prostitute who learns belatedly to cry. The tears come more quickly - both for Britain's best-loved acting Dame and her public - in the comparably titled Philomena, the Stephen Frears film that tells an otherwise entirely dissimilar story about a doughty Irishwoman determined to locate the son... Read more... |
Drinking BuddiesThursday, 31 October 2013
Orgasms aside, it was When Harry Met Sally’s edict that sex always gets in the way of male-female friendships that hit home. Drinking Buddies comes to more nuanced conclusions, as we watch Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) steadily drink and comfortably banter during and after work at a Chicago micro-brewery, and wonder just when they’re going to leave their straitlaced partners, Chris (Ron Livingston) and Jill (Anna Kendrick), pictured below. Read more... |
Child's PoseWednesday, 30 October 2013
Cornelia is 60 and increasingly frustrated with her 34-year-old son, Barbu. He doesn’t communicate with her, she doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and the way he leads his life. Convinced she has to take command of her immature son, she’s suddenly presented with an opportunity to exert control. Read more... |
Short Term 12Tuesday, 29 October 2013
A film of contrasts, Short Term 12 manages to be simultaneously dark and humorous, casual yet intense. The relationships between staff and patients in the group home for troubled teenagers where it’s set – the facility is meant to be a place of refuge for up to a year, hence the title, though many stay longer – are both thick and thin, and as in the wedding vow must endure through difficult times. Read more... |
GloriaMonday, 28 October 2013
Gloria is 58. Divorced 12 years earlier, she’s intent on living life. Her two children are grown up, she works in a characterless office and is open to almost anything. She’ll try cannabis, attends a class where instruction is given on releasing laughter and tackles yoga for the first time. Beyond keeping in touch with her son and daughter, her greatest efforts are directed towards her nightlife. On her own, Gloria goes to ballrooms, bars and nightclubs where she hopes to make a connection... Read more... |
The Selfish GiantFriday, 25 October 2013
Former video artist Clio Barnard's second feature - which took Cannes 2013 by storm with its stark and striking humanity - takes inspiration and its title from the Oscar Wilde fairytale. However that's not the film's only, or most significant, influence: The Selfish Giant is, by its director's own admission, a response to the continuing, corrosive impact of Thatcherism, an ideology that put selfishness ahead of societal needs and pushed millions to the margins. Read more... |
Closed CircuitThursday, 24 October 2013
We have plenty to be paranoid about in the most surveilled country in the world. British contributions to the conspiracy thrillers that bloomed so fruitfully in the US around Watergate have, though, stayed slim. Maybe that’s one reason Closed Circuit’s extreme Secret Service behaviour in the aftermath of a bomb atrocity at London’s Borough market feels so fake. CIA agents snuffing out inconvenient people on city streets is cinematic second nature. MI5 hunting Eric Bana and... Read more... |
A Magnificent HauntingWednesday, 23 October 2013
With a hero who’s an aspiring actor and an ensemble of theatrical types trapped outside time as supporting cast, the staginess of Ferzan Ozpetek’s A Magnificent Haunting comes as little surprise. It makes for sometimes nicely camp overplaying, though the comedy that made the Turkish-born director’s latest film a hit in his adopted Italy doesn’t travel easily beyond borders. Read more... |
Muscle ShoalsTuesday, 22 October 2013
“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969. Read more... |
LFF 2013: Saving Mr BanksMonday, 21 October 2013
It's dueling stars when Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson go quite delightfully toe-to-toe as Walt Disney vs P L Travers, author of Mary Poppins, in Saving Mr Banks, the closing film of the London Film Festival 2013. The title suggests the Russian doll-like nature of the story – a story within a story wrapped in an enigma, with seriously fabulous hair and make-up turning both Hanks and Thompson into characters you can almost completely believe in. Read more... |
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des GrauensMonday, 21 October 2013
Common sense indicates it’s a rare film which retains the impact it had on first exposure. Films can often reveal new depths and fresh detail with repeated viewing, but that initial effect is tough to duplicate. This new release of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens actually captures the thrill of the first-time experience. Partly, that’s due to the extraordinary restoration. Read more... |
LFF 2013: Only Lovers Left AliveSaturday, 19 October 2013
Jim Jarmusch's characters have always been ineffably cool, whether the slackers of Stranger than Paradise, the accountant lost in the Wild West of Dead Man, or the hit man with samurai pretensions of Ghost Dog. It goes without saying that if he makes a film about vampires, they’ll be dripping with style. Read more... |
LFF 2013: 12 Years A SlaveSaturday, 19 October 2013
One of this year’s Oscar contenders, Lincoln, covered the ending of the American Civil War as it played out in the comfortable confines of the Capitol. 12 Years a Slave, an exceptional film that will surely be in the running next year, reveals the “fearful ill” that set the country alight in the first place. Read more... |
Captain PhillipsFriday, 18 October 2013
Earlier this year we saw Tobias Lindstrom's A Hijacking, a Danish-made thriller based on true events, about a freighter hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Featuring familiar faces from Borgen and The Killing, the film skipped the part where the vessel was seized, and focused on the excruciating and seemingly infinite negotiations between the hijackers and the shipping company in Copenhagen. Harrowing and claustrophobic, it evoked the sufferings of the... Read more... |
LFF 2013: The PastFriday, 18 October 2013
Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning A Separation was a marriage of drama, melodrama and social observation that was beyond compare; it’s expecting too much of his new film to equal it. That said, The Past confirms that few can match the Iranian's attention to the psychological minutiae of family relationships. It's riveting. Read more... |
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