Film Reviews
As If I Am Not ThereThursday, 30 June 2011
The capture and arraignment of Ratko Mladic has brought atrocities committed in Bosnia back onto the front page. As Martin Bell used to argue, the Bosnian war struggled to hold the world’s attention even when it was going on. Two much more major conflicts, in which we have been doing the bombing rather than the peacekeeping, have since sent Bosnia plummeting down the squash ladder of important contemporary conflicts. Read more... |
Larry CrowneWednesday, 29 June 2011
What is it with Hollywood and education? Hot on the heels (shamelessly come-hither pumps, in fact) of Cameron Diaz in the lamentable Bad Teacher, we now get Julia Roberts as a disaffected babe who, we're told, is a teacher even though she spends precious little time in actor-director Tom Hanks's new film doing anything of the sort. Read more... |
The ConspiratorTuesday, 28 June 2011
Some directors are just grateful that their movies get funded and released, but Robert Redford has loftier aspirations. Scornful of the routine popcorn-spattered multiplex-filler, he thinks we should be prodded to improve our lot by learning the lessons of history, and says he wants to tell stories about "ordinary people that are affected by larger forces out of their control". This lofty blueprint has brought us Bob's latest behind-the-camera odyssey, The Conspirator. Read more... |
Transformers: Dark of the MoonTuesday, 28 June 2011
When the infantilisation of Hollywood started in 1977 with Star Wars, as a 10-year-old I was all in favour. The hugely successful Transformers franchise based on a series of clever 1980s toys - they’re a car; some Origami-style fiddling later, they’re a robot! - probably isn’t where that trend bottoms out. Read more... |
A SeparationMonday, 27 June 2011
Asghar Farhadi’s new film unostentatiously suggests that Iran has many of the same things we have: cars, cash machines, schools, sex, divorce, Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t, we gather, have modern law. Before howls of protest erupt over so banal and Western-slanted a generalisation, I stress that this is the film’s contention: the madness of law the film proposes is not necessarily fact. Read more... |
Cutter's WayFriday, 24 June 2011
Of all the curdled classics made during the neo-noir wave of the Seventies and early Eighties - including Klute, The Long Goodbye, Mean Streets, Chinatown, The Conversation, Night Moves, Farewell My Lovely, Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and The Postman Always Rings Twice - Ivan Passer’s Cutter’s Way is the most neglected. Read more... |
IncendiesWednesday, 22 June 2011
Denis Villeneuve’s impassioned, decorous adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad’s award-winning stage play sees a dead woman bequeath her children a mystery, which in turn unlocks the secrets of her past and ultimately theirs. The Oscar-nominated Incendies is an arresting and satisfying fusion of political thriller and family drama. Handsomely shot and mesmerising throughout, it’s a film told most memorably in the sensitive and resonant performances of its lead actresses. Read more... |
BridesmaidsWednesday, 22 June 2011
If you have begun to tire of blokey-jokey films such as Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hangover, then try this female-oriented movie that covers some of the same territory but from the distaff side. Read more... |
Love's KitchenMonday, 20 June 2011
Foodies will have a good laugh at Love's Kitchen, the British rom-com that casts Simon Callow as a bibulous restaurant critic and Gordon Ramsay as, well, himself. Read more... |
The First GraderSunday, 19 June 2011
The adult craving for education isn't a well that film-makers visit often. Educating Rita gave Willy Russell his finest cinematic hour. Say what you like about Kate Winslet’s concentration camp guard in The Reader, but such was her love of a good book at least she learned to read. Read more... |
The BeaverThursday, 16 June 2011
It doesn’t augur well when the first comment you hear as the credits roll is, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.” That’s really not a great place to begin a review either, but let’s anyway. Or rather with a fnar, fnar moment - did nobody point out the other meaning of "beaver" to the film's makers? Read more... |
Bad TeacherThursday, 16 June 2011
As if the education profession wasn't beleaguered enough at present in America, along comes Bad Teacher, the Cameron Diaz vehicle dedicated to the proposition that the only sector of society more deserving of contempt than students is filmgoers. Read more... |
PoticheWednesday, 15 June 2011
A potiche is a decorative vase but in this demeaning context it refers to a “trophy wife”. In this winsome French farce, from the reliably dynamic François Ozon, the “trophy” in question is the spousal equivalent of the World Cup: Catherine Deneuve. Read more... |
Life in a DaySunday, 12 June 2011
A teenage boy howls casually at the full moon; elephants in a river take a midnight dip, glossy with water and moonlight; a drunk on a park bench can’t hold back the laughter as he listens to an iPod. What were you doing on 24 July, 2010? It’s a question that executive producer Ridley Scott and director Kevin MacDonald, with the mighty aid of YouTube, asked people across the globe. Read more... |
KaboomFriday, 10 June 2011
The playfully titled, deliriously deadpan Kaboom doesn’t so much explode onto the screen as briefly sparkle then fail to ignite. Superficially it’s an intriguing confusion of murder mystery, Generation Sex romp and slacker comedy, and is relentlessly prone to flights of Gregg Araki’s trademark psychedelic fancy. As shag-happy as a teenage boy, with its drugs, witches, cults and cast of nubiles it sounds like fun, right? Unfortunately, for the most part, it’s a bit of a drag. Read more... |
Point BlankThursday, 09 June 2011
You could reduce the theme of Fred Cavayé's Point Blank to "man races to save kidnapped wife", but that wouldn't give you the full flavour of the movie's remorseless pace or devilishly wrought internal mechanism, or the quality of its performances. Read more... |
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