Film
Thomas H. Green
It’s stockbroker Goodfellas, basically. If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s pacey, flashy, beautifully shot ensemble gangster flicks, Goodfellas and Casino, there’s little doubt you’ll enjoy this. Here the master director, absolutely on fire, has his cake and eats it with the “based-on-a-true-story” saga of corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall. The central character, played with audacious, astounding flare by Leonardo DiCaprio, exudes charisma from every pore and guzzles pleasure by the raw ton, taking no prisoners. While Belfort is a ruthless, unpleasant protagonist, the sort of Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Nodding to John Ford, Shane and almost every other western ever made, baby-faced writer/director/producer/lead Seth MacFarlane (Ted) replaces the shocking genius of Blazing Saddles with swearing and jokes about bodily functions in a fast, funny, get-it-or-get-out comedy that will divide friends, ruin families and make a lot of people laugh. Whether you’re one of them, you’ll have to watch and see.MacFarlane is Albert Stark, a frontier nerd whose refusal in a gunfight loses his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried). Distraught, he takes comfort in the friendship of unmarried Christian couple Edward and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Ken Loach’s regular collaborators have said that Jimmy’s Hall will likely be the director’s last film, at least on the level of major projects. And his latest work is a big piece, both in scale and in heart; it’s not a defining work in Loach’s oeuvre, but more than a reminder of some of the familiar motifs that have recurred in a remarkable career that now spans half a century.The film it’s closest to is clearly The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Loach’s 2006 Cannes Palme d’Or winner (Jimmy’s Hall came away without awards from the Croisette last week). Its main action, starting in 1932, takes Read more ...
Matt Wolf
For the latest in a seemingly endless line of misunderstood cultural icons, meet Maleficent, the preternaturally smooth-cheeked anti-hero (or maybe not ) of the new celluloid blockbuster of the same name. As played by Angelina Jolie like some sort of Lara Croft-style visitor to the Disney live action landscape, this creature with the clipped wings isn't so much evil as she is ripe for revision in the public imagination - much as the wicked witch, Elphaba, in the book and stage musical of Wicked was before her.Maleficent may sport black headgear and let rip with curses but beneath the feisty Read more ...
emma.simmonds
This low-budget Parisian dramedy about doctor-patient relations is as odd, timid and well-intentioned as its socially maladjusted protagonists. Miss and the Doctors is writer-director Axelle Ropert's second feature after 2009's The Wolberg Family. It's the story of a woman who bewitches two practically conjoined GP brothers - no surprise perhaps, considering she's played by the statuesque and striking Louise Bourgoin, better known as the titular adventuress in Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Miss and the Doctors suffers from the surely curable affliction of a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Not a lot gets spoken in Run and Jump, the gently eloquent first feature from San Francisco-born filmmaker Steph Green, a dramatic strategy that leaves the actors to charge the unsaid with meaning and the audience - not to mention Ireland, ah Ireland - to do the rest. That the result is as finely honed as it is honours not just the unforced beauty of a country that looks especially gorgeous soaked in rain. (The specific locations here are Counties Wicklow and Kerry.) Green to her credit knows how to turn understatement to advantage so that we feel as if we just might be watching life as Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Blood is thicker than water. Or is it? For anyone who’s struggled with this proverb, August: Osage County is a fascinating exploration of the ties that bind us. Examining an extended, quintessentially American family in the sticky summer heat of small town Oklahoma, Meryl Streep leads the film as Violet, a volatile matriarch addicted to pills, suffering from “a touch of” mouth cancer and awaiting news of her alcoholic husband’s disappearance. The aftermath of this dysfunctional family’s crisis allows deep insight into their darkest secrets and biggest fears. The cast, which includes Read more ...
ronald.bergan
There is a very old joke about a Hollywood actor, waiting to hear whether he has landed a plum role in an upcoming production, who gets a call from his agent. "I’ve got some bad news for you," says the agent. "Your mother has just died." "Oh, thank goodness!" says the actor. "I thought you were going to tell me I didn’t get the part." That says everything there is to know about the cutthroat world of the movie business, something that takes David Cronenberg almost two hours to say in this redundant and pointless evisceration of contemporary Hollywood.The television soap opera plot - which Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Somebody had to be Bikini Kill, otherwise we would have culturally starved to death.” The quote typifies the deferential The Punk Singer, a bio-doc on the driven Kathleen Hanna, the feminist front-person of the American bands Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and, most recently, The Julie Ruin.In contrast, Hanna herself was never and isn't deferential. Her vital importance to cultural and rock history is set in stone as, for the former, she initiated the Nineties feminist musical groundswell riot grrrl and, for the latter, she sprayed the words “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” (a deodorant brand) on Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Miss this “gay” film at your peril - a thriller with a stronger story than most. Directed and written by Alain Guiraudie (King of Escape), Stranger at the Lake’s a stealthy ineluctable drama that draws the audience in as few other films can, with explicit nudity and sex integral to its unfolding.A gay cruising lake is the solo setting where Franck (Pierre Dalndonchamps) goes to socialise and have casual sex. Out of shape, older bloke Henri (Patrick D'Assumçao) becomes his friend and a kind of Greek chorus, outlining the film’s subtext. It is Michel (Christophe Paou) who attracts attention as Read more ...
ronald.bergan
Any synopsis of Two Days, One Night is bound to make it sound like a worthy, sub-Loachian drama: A young mother, Sandra (Marion Cotillard), recently off work with depression, is made redundant from a small factory. In her absence, 14 of her 16 colleagues have voted to take their bonuses rather than let her keep her job. But she persuades her boss to host a second round of voting two days later, to allow her the weekend to persuade her fellow workers to support her.However, none of the above takes into account the brilliance of the Belgian brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, or the Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Frankly, the idea of a female superhero flying solo at the front of a modern movie is becoming a bit of a joke. Despite there being a Wonder Woman film in the pipeline, that this relies on the success of "Batman vs. Superman" (both of whom have had their fair share of reboots) is disheartening. But going into an X-Men film there’s always the hope of both sexes having gripping storylines - a trend we’ve also seen play out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - so step forward Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. In a film that’s all about righting past wrongs you can't do much better than casting Read more ...