Film
Graham Fuller
At 23, Xavier Dolan may not be the new Jean-Luc Godard, but he could be the new Léos Carax. And Laurence Anyways – a tempestuous romantic melodrama spanning the entire 1990s – could be his Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The third feature made by the Québécois enfant terrible dazzlingly demonstrates his prodigious talent as a metteur-en-scène and director of actors, though, at 168 minutes, it’s about 45 too long.It’s also burdened by narrative cul-de-sacs (not least a clumsy framing device) and peppered with baroque and disco-flavoured visual flourishes that render it stylistically inconsistent. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Some say director Thomas Vinterberg has never equalled his triumph with Festen (1998), but with The Hunt it's time for everyone to think again. An assured and claustrophobic drama which ruthlessly picks apart the seemingly civilised facade of a small Danish town, it's a film that reverberates in the imagination and proves yet again what a fine actor Mads Mikkelsen is.Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a recently divorced 40-year-old working as a kindergarten assistant following the closure of the school which previously employed him. Though he's still trying to reassemble the disordered pieces of his Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
With a title like this, you know you’re getting something different. Madeleine Olnek’s first feature is a quirky love story set in her native New York, which is portrayed with enchanting zaniness. Where else would you expect the arrival of female space aliens, with bald heads and distinctive collared costumes (to hide their gills, since you ask) to pass unnoticed? Welcome to Olnek’s micro-budget, stylish black-and-white world that revels in its Fifties B movie sci-fi ancestry, complete with juddery spacecraft. Homely Jane works in a stationery store that gives new definitions to banality Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
LOCO London’s "four days of the world’s best funny films" is one of those about-time ideas, because London needs a great comedy film festival. As a warmup, this Saturday 1 December at 6pm, LOCO London and the Hackney Picturehouse are holding Woodystock, celebrating Woody Allen’s birthday with a big screen blow-out of Manhattan – one of Woody’s best. In this fest of all things Woody, there will be readings of Allen’s short stories, standup, jazz and Woody-inspired cocktails - although no one really knows what a Woody-inspired cocktail is, you'll be chasing lobsters in the kitchen by the time Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One has low expectations of Great Expectations. As the Dickens bicentenary draws to a close with yet another version, young Pip must once again come to the aid of the convict Magwitch, once again be raised up from apprentice blacksmith to gentleman, once again fall for the cold, unrequiting Estella Havisham. And once again make do without the first-person narrative that gives him his character. For this latest account Mike Newell, director of Four Weddings and the fourth Harry Potter, has teamed up with scriptwriter David One Day Nicholls, so you can intuit roughly what flavours Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Stubbled, chubby and aged beyond his 34 years, Yossi, the eponymous hero of Israeli director Eytan Fox’s film played by Ohad Knoller, has a hang-dog loneliness to him that stands out a mile away. He may be a qualifying cardiologist, but his own heart seems stuck at the glacier stage.With no friends or family in the picture, staff at the hospital seem to be the only company he gets in this sterile, green-tinged (coloured by the medical uniforms) environment. There’s a nurse who feels something for him, though the play she asks him out to, titled The Stranger, hardly looks set to raise the mood Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
What if your childhood teddy bear came to life and never went away? This unlikely premise (explained by Patrick Stewart no less) establishes the opening moments of one of the most unlikely breakout comedies of 2012. Ted, starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth (Family Guy) MacFarlane as the voice of Ted himself, is a brilliant shining example of stupid comedy made smart.As a child, John Bennett (Wahlberg) was never popular. He was so unwelcome that even the victims of bullies told him to go away while they were being beaten up. But Bennett's dream of a life long buddy becomes a reality Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Ben Wheatley’s last film Kill List was unmistakable in its moniker, aggressively advertising its deadly subject matter. Taken on title alone Sightseers suggests something more far more innocuous. Depending on your capacity for twisted thrills, you’ll get a nasty or nice surprise; the name may give no hint of the macabre but Wheatley’s third film is hardly less violent than its predecessor. It is, however, a lot funnier. Behind the façade of beauty spots and parochial quirkiness lurk “a ginger-faced man and an angry woman” - two cold-hearted killers primed to pounce. This couple don’t get mad Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There's a temptation to roll your eyeballs upwards when you hear Jake Gyllenhaal's introductory voice-over, which sounds like a corny photocopied mission statement they dish out to all new recruits to the LAPD. "I am Fate with a badge and a gun," he tells us, in his role as Officer Brian Taylor. He didn't make the laws, but he will uphold them with as much force as it takes. The police are the thin blue line.But Officer Taylor's robotic monotone is violently counterpointed by the images on screen. These are like extracts from TV's Cops With Cameras, except without any edits to protect Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In Magic Mike the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh turns his camera on the “cock-rocking kings of Tampa”, and the result is one of the most eye-wateringly entertaining and surprisingly stylish movies of the year. With more thrust than a jumbo jet and more packages than the Royal Mail will handle this Christmas, thank God they didn’t release it in 3D.Channing Tatum plays Magic Mike, one of the dancers at the Xquisite Strip Club in Tampa, Florida. His colleagues include the extraordinarily monikered Big Dick Richie (True Blood’s man mountain Joe Manganiello), with the club owned and run Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
If Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games had somehow left you in any doubt about the magnetic screen presence of Jennifer Lawrence, prepare to surrender your remaining misgivings. Playing outspoken, emotionally damaged young widow Tiffany, Lawrence is a firecracker, a powder keg, a force of nature. Watching her, you feel simultaneously secure and on edge, as though you’re in safe hands and yet as though anything could happen. One breathtaking sequence in a diner with Bradley Cooper’s Pat – an “undiagnosed bipolar” ex-teacher with rage issues – begins as gentle deadpan farce and snowballs Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It’s Gambit in name only. Producer Mike Lobell struggled for 14 years to bring the remake of this beloved caper to the big screen. In so doing, he has broken the new rule of Hollywood: Thou Shalt Not Remake Something Good, especially if you’ve gutted and purged the original story from its redolently good title.The 1966 version of Gambit was written by experienced scribes Jack Davies and Alvin Sargent (the latter also penned The Amazing Spider-Man of 2012), based on a story by the ever popular TV writer Sidney Carroll. It starred Shirley Maclaine, Michael Caine and Herbert Lom and was one of Read more ...