Film Reviews
Child 44Friday, 17 April 2015
"There is no murder in paradise" is the official line of the authorities in 1950s Russia, but nevertheless Child 44 is the blood-drenched tale of a hunt for a mass-murdering paedophile in Stalin's deathly shadow. Read more... |
A Little ChaosThursday, 16 April 2015
We’ve waited 33 years since Peter Greenway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract for another film combining romance, intrigue and 17th century landscape gardening. Now we have one, and it couldn’t be more different. Read more... |
The SalvationWednesday, 15 April 2015
Boasting one of the most appealingly eclectic casts in recent memory, The Salvation – from Dogme 95 director Kristian Levring – might have hoped to emulate the success of Sergio Leone's Italian-infused approach by bringing a Danish flavour to traditional western proceedings. Read more... |
GlasslandMonday, 13 April 2015
The burden of responsibility weighs heavily on a young man struggling to deal with his mother’s alcoholism, in Gerard Barrett’s powerful and poignant second feature. Jack Reynor, who so impressed in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, turns in a nuanced and moving performance as a son driven to desperate measures in order to survive. Barrett empathises how difficult it can be to get by when you don’t have a regular income, or indeed plentiful cash to throw at your problems. Read more... |
John WickFriday, 10 April 2015
This shrewdly assembled, often near-monochrome actioner injects pathos from the off and mirrors the melancholic outlook of its grief-ravaged protagonist, played by Keanu Reeves, who dials down the befuddlement and proves rather endearing. Directed by stuntmen Chad Stahelski and (an uncredited) David Leitch, it's a lovingly crafted, pleasingly characterful effort that delivers impactful, imaginatively executed thrills. Read more... |
Force MajeureFriday, 10 April 2015
The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple, on a skiing vacation in the Alps with their two young children, having their photographs taken by a resort snapper: as they readjust their poses, it seems like a search for a depiction of the perfect family. Read more... |
JaujaThursday, 09 April 2015
In the past decade or so the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s minimalist masterworks have earned him an ardent, if particular following. With Jauja he’s moved beyond his comfort zone, by using professional actors for the first time and with more dialogue than in all his previous combined. The result is at once his most accessible film and his most mysterious, which is quite some trick. And it confirms his status as one of contemporary cinema’s great artists. Read more... |
Good KillThursday, 09 April 2015
When President Obama took office in 2009, he was riding a wave of idealistic expectations of a superior brand of politics and even a better kind of world. That all looks ludicrous now of course, and one of the lasting stains on his reputation is likely to be the way the USA has ramped up its campaign of drone strikes under his leadership. Read more... |
Lost RiverWednesday, 08 April 2015
Ryan Gosling throws a lot at his first film as director but Lost River is a sign he has found a single discipline which can accommodate many of his scattershot tendencies. He does not, though, find a place for his own musical output in the avowedly arty Lost River. Read more... |
While We're YoungSaturday, 04 April 2015
"He's not evil, he's just young," we hear in passing in Noah Baumbach's wickedly funny film about the growing pains that affect us at every stage of life. That's to say that by any objective standard, the 40-something Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) aren't especially old, but they inhabit an entirely different sphere from Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), the deeply hip – and younger – New York couple who soon take over their lives. Read more... |
The Water DivinerThursday, 02 April 2015
Russell Crowe, who has played more than his fair share of rugged action heroes, makes his directorial debut with The Water Diviner, a film in which he plays, you’ve guessed it, a rugged action hero. He is Joshua Connor, a farmer living in the Australian Outback in the early 1900s, who has an uncanny knack of finding water sources, enabling him to farm this otherwise arid landscape (beautifully shot by Andrew Lesnie). Read more... |
AltmanWednesday, 01 April 2015
Ron Mann’s laid-back documentary about the career vicissitudes and family life of Robert Altman (1925-2006) takes its cue from the tone of the director’s films. It was Altman’s habit to observe his character’s crises, collapses, and deaths with the same evenness and lack of melodrama with which he observed their humdrum moments. Read more... |
Kidnapping Freddy HeinekenTuesday, 31 March 2015
There’s no shame in being a jobbing actor, but you can’t help missing the Anthony Hopkins who dissected repression with definitive, painful finesse, back when he was great. The Human Stain (2003) is the last I’ve seen of that, amongst the last decade’s Norse gods, Greek generals and judges. Read more... |
Something Must BreakMonday, 30 March 2015
Sometimes, nothing can prevent love blossoming. Sebastian’s second encounter with Andreas is punctuated by the latter vomiting after too much booze. It doesn’t put the brakes on the former’s growing passion for the leather-jacketed object of his affections. Soon, the pair are lovers despite Andreas declaring that he is not gay. He cannot resist Sebastian. Read more... |
CinderellaSaturday, 28 March 2015
Lushly produced to within an inch of its pictorially ripe life, the new Disney/Kenneth Branagh live-action Cinderella couples swoony imagery with a cloying message about compassion. But all its pro forma qualities fall away as and when Cate Blanchett takes to the screen, the actress as beady-eyed as she is bristling – and Branagh's film that much the better for it. Read more... |
Wild TalesThursday, 26 March 2015
Six apocalyptic Argentine stories of revenge combine in this hugely enjoyable and extreme anthology. Producer Pedro Almodóvar must have been impressed by the perverse humour, and the lack of a handbrake as actions rocket out of control. Writer-director Damián Szifron is, though, the sole author of his characters’ nightmarish misfortunes. Read more... |
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