Film Reviews
RisenFriday, 18 March 2016
It’s unbelievable how hard it is to retell the greatest story ever told. And yet dramatists still feel the urge. The BBC had a big Easter binge a few years ago with the Ulster actor James Nesbitt playing a sort of Prodius Pilate. Now here’s a film financed by producers of a missionary bent. It’s called Risen and it’s essentially a sermon disguised as a sword-and-sandals epic. Read more... |
High-RiseThursday, 17 March 2016
Dr Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) feels he’s “living in a future that had already taken place”. Director Ben Wheatley, too, has made a late-arriving Seventies exploitation pic from JG Ballard’s 1975 novel. High-Rise is a highly sexy and violent look through a distorting lens at both that familiar past, and the way we live now. Read more... |
MargueriteTuesday, 15 March 2016
You may never have heard of Florence Foster Jenkins, although she has definitely earned a certain renown among music-lovers. For all the wrong reasons: the American soprano, who performed at private recitals in the early decades of the last century, before a climactic Carnegie Hall appearance a month before her death in 1944, was famous for the sheer awfulness of her voice. Read more... |
AnomalisaFriday, 11 March 2016
"Girls just wanna have fun," or so we're told in the exuberant signature song from Cyndi Lauper making a surprise appearance midway through Anomalisa. But try telling that to the sad-eyed folk who move through Charlie Kaufman's dazzlingly sorrowful 2016 Oscar nominee, as if in a sort of hushed-voiced haze. Read more... |
The Ones BelowFriday, 11 March 2016
Home can be the most horrifying place, especially when you’re pregnant. Kate (Clemence Poesy) isn’t even sure she wants the kid that’s on the way to disrupt life with fellow arty professional Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore). That is, until a couple move in below their Islington flat, and she’s befriended by Theresa (Laura Birn), an exotically glamorous Finn evangelical about her own pregnancy, who Kate finds herself fascinated by. Read more... |
The Here AfterThursday, 10 March 2016
Perhaps if you are in a sufficiently patient state, this slowburn of a Swedish art house film will suit your mood, but if fast cutting and rapid crossfire dialogue is your thing, it may be best to steer clear of The Here After. The debut feature of writer-director Magnus van Horn has done well at overseas film festivals, but may be a harder sell as a night out in a UK cinema on a chilly March evening. Read more... |
Fifty Shades of BlackWednesday, 09 March 2016
In case anyone hasn’t guessed from the flauntingly obvious title, Fifty Shades of Black is a parody of 2012’s favourite piece of trash lit: EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which was adapted for film by director Sam Taylor-Johnson in time to underwhelm audiences on Valentine’s Day 2015. Read more... |
Hail, Caesar!Friday, 04 March 2016
As a title, Hail, Caesar! is as delightfully self-conscious and “inside Hollywood” as The Hudsucker Proxy and O, Brother Where Are Thou? An alternative might have been It’s a Wonderful Lie. Read more... |
Time Out of MindFriday, 04 March 2016
Richard Gere is a quiet knockout in Time Out of Mind, the Oren Moverman film that has for some reason remained as below the radar as its invisible (to the rest of society anyway) central character. Why wasn't this performance in the Oscar mix for the seasonal gongs just gone? Read more... |
London Has FallenWednesday, 02 March 2016
The get-the-President movie, a genre we might term "POTUS in Peril", has had a chequered history, from The President's Plane Is Missing, Air Force One and Escape from New York to White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. Now here's London Has Fallen, which is the sequel to the last of these, but adds almost nothing in the way of innovation or inspiration. Read more... |
Oscars 2016: Between Chris Rock and a hard placeMonday, 29 February 2016
The causes kept coming – diversity, of course, but also climate change, sexual abuse, LGBT rights and more – at the 88th annual Academy Awards, which surely ranked as the most politically charged Oscars in years. And that’s not only because one of the warmest welcomes of the night went to the American vice president, Joseph Biden, in an evening during which Donald Trump’s name – surprisingly or mercifully, or maybe both – was heard only once. Read more... |
ExposedThursday, 25 February 2016
Exposed is a film suffering from blunt force trauma to the head. Director Gee Malik Linton’s name only remains as screenwriter after his largely Spanish-language film – more meaningfully called Daughter of God and centring on Dominican-New Yorkers – had a helpful supporting role from producer Keanu Reeves greatly expanded by its US distributor, hoping to transform it into a Keanu cop movie. Read more... |
Secret in Their EyesThursday, 25 February 2016
Secret in Their Eyes is not a mystery-thriller that leaves us pondering for long “whodunit”. The focus is on how two investigators and a Deputy District Attorney can relinquish obsessions that have glued them to a murder case for 13 years. This is a story of longings, obsession, and the inability to move on from events unaccounted for by justice. Read more... |
The Propaganda GameWednesday, 24 February 2016
The set-up behind Spanish film-maker Álvaro Longoria’s intelligent documentary on North Korea is almost as bizarre and unlikely as the regime he’s attempting to probe. Read more... |
FreeheldFriday, 19 February 2016
There’s always a slight sinking feeling when the first words to appear onscreen are "Based on a True Story". The first worry is that it’s a story you already know, and the movie will lack any narrative surprises, the second that it will be a Good Cause. Sadly, Freeheld doesn’t dodge these pitfalls, despite a quality cast. This has to be blamed on the predictable script by Ron Nyswaner (of Philadelphia fame) and Peter Sollet’s by-the-numbers directing. Read more... |
ChronicThursday, 18 February 2016
This is a film which, if you want to see it in a cinema, needs to be caught fast. It’s unlikely to please big crowds. Chronic won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2015 and its elliptical narrative will certainly stay with you, but it’s not a joyous experience. Read more... |
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