Film
Katherine McLaughlin
An anonymous voice screams “Please stop” over the opening credits of Noel Clarke’s sci-fi thriller and after about fifteen minutes of watching it those words are sure to haunt your thoughts, as this dull slog runs out of ideas far too quickly for it to sustain any semblance of tension or real worth. This is Clarke’s third endeavour in the director’s chair - after Adulthood and 4.3.2.1 - and it’s a disappointing and confused effort that relies on the outdated Hollywood action formula to pull its narrative along.To its credit the core idea is an intriguing one. Ryan (played by none other than Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Melissa McCarthy has been one of the decade's most notable comic finds. Although she's been plugging away for years on TV, as a stand-up, in sketch troupe the Groundlings and in various supporting roles, it was Bridesmaids and The Heat which brought her much deserved attention - including an Oscar nomination for her part in the former. More than just comic fodder, these characters were tough (but sensitive), smart and sisterly women railing against preconceptions and prejudice. In the altogether less fabulous Tammy she once again teams up with her husband Ben Falcone - best known as her air Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite the profusion of slapstick jappery, explosions, a whimsical veneer and cartoonish portrayals of its characters, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is not a film aimed at children. The Swedish blockbuster also includes castration, explicit violence, death by being locked in a freezer and near-the-knuckle racial categorisation. Balancing the picaresque and the macabre, the film ends up as neither one nor the other, or a harmonious hybrid. Although intermittently funny, it is not the sum of its parts.The 100-Year-Old Man (Hundraåringen som klev ut Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Women everywhere may start cutting loose in their kitchens after seeing Goddess, a sweet if slight Australian film that suggests a hybrid of Mamma Mia! and Shirley Valentine. Adapted (and greatly expanded) from a solo play written and performed by co-screenwriter Joanna Weinberg, the film's terrain is sure to hit many distaff moviegoers where they live, whether or not they find themselves displaced to Tasmania with a former boyband star (in this case, Ronan Keating) as their often-absent husband. At times too peppy for its own good, the film's abiding virtue is the first leading role onscreen Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Much has been said before about these two Leos Carax greats, but the beauty of these surrealist French films is that you can enjoy them again and again, each time finding something new to appreciate. It's been a while since Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais Sang (The Night Is Young) were first released, but that only makes them that little bit more iconic.Like blowing the dust off an old painting, we are re-introduced to the blanched faces and melancholic characters that remind us of a love that burns fast but lasts forever. With Carax, everyone is either in love, Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It’s not unusual for Jon Favreau to go small, despite his reputation for the big hits such as Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Elf. There was the much-touted squib Cowboys & Aliens alongside the nifty minnows of Made and Very Bad Things. Favreau loves acting and making movies so much that he’s a realist when things go wrong. Or right, in the case of his latest Chef, which one reviewer strangely called "shallow", a word that would only apply if you expected something Bergmanesque from a juicy romp through the world of a professional chef trying to get back his magic meal-making mojo.Favreau stars Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Two brothers who are at polar opposites, one an indie rock star, the other a heavy-metal loving, B-movie making slacker who still lives at home with his parents and is longing to find his place in the world, are at the centre of this gleeful, touching and manic rockumentary about The National. The band consists of two pairs of brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Bryan and Scott Devendorf and lone front man Mat Berninger who in a bid to support his younger brother invites him on tour to work as part of the crew. What ensues is a surprisingly poignant portrait of brotherly love, self-loathing Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
You can almost feel the dust on your skin in Spanish director Diego Quemada-Diez’s debut feature The Golden Dream. It’s the dust of the precarious journey from Central America towards the US, undertaken by four teenage Guatemalan kids intent on finding a better life north of the final border. And of the gritty immigrant experience of jumping train after train, and struggles with the authorities, where each new stage presents new challenges, and more acts of betrayal than of kindness are to be found along the way.We are introduced to the protagonists only gradually. Juan (Brandon Lopez) looks Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For a long time, Kathleen Hanna was ensconced in a world where she cared more about the noise she made onstage than off. Despite being in a band that couldn't really play their instruments, her political message was what mattered.
The Bikini Kill front-woman and outspoken feminist punk idol’s life is explored in this biographical documentary, hinged on the mystery of why she suddenly stopped performing in 2005.
Directed by Sini Anderson in a fanzine style, the film pays homage to a singer that rocked the riot grrrl movement, sparking a sub-culture of female empowerment and launching third Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Director Jim Mickle and writing partner Nick Damici made a big splash on the horror scene back in 2007 with fierce debut Mulberry St. Since then they have impressed with low-key apocalyptic vampire flick, Stake Land, and a reimagining of the well-regarded Mexican cannibal horror, We Are What We Are, which they turned into a story of female empowerment and a slight on organised religion. Cold in July may not be what their ever increasing fan base expected them to do next but that’s exactly what makes it so satisfying. Mickle and Damici’s daring attitude, passion and knowledge of genre, and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
A pervading sense of melancholia runs through this film, and yet it is neither chilling, nor disaffecting. Akin to one of the key characters, watching it is a bit like having an out-of-body experience. The Past hovers somewhere between fight and flight, with characters in myriad sliding door moments. They dissect the past and analyse the future, but are stuck in an impossible limbo between the two. It is a labyrinthine tangle of what might have been - accidentally leaving your child on the metro as you head out of the station; a complete and happy marriage; an extra-marital affair; a Read more ...
Ian Knight
I can remember the exact moment that Zulu grabbed me. I was seven at the time and watched the film at some now-defunct widescreen cinema in Brighton early in 1964, probably just a few weeks after it was released.I had been intrigued by the posters spread on hoardings around my nearby hometown. They depicted small figures locked in battle at the foot of the gigantic letters making up the title, which stood, Ozymandias-like, in the African veldt. The movie promised to be right up my street, a classic Boys’ Own adventure – although I can’t remember now if I badgered my parents to take me to see Read more ...