Film Reviews
Aguirre, Wrath of GodFriday, 07 June 2013
The first image in Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) shows clusters of mist hovering over the darkened Andes. Mirroring the implacability of the terrain, Popol Vuh’s synth score evokes a celestial choir hymning the mountains' numinous might, worried though the music is by faint high-pitched vibrations. Read more... |
Behind the CandelabraThursday, 06 June 2013
The party's over in more senses than one in Behind the Candelabra, the Steven Soderbergh film dedicated to the proposition that all that glitters is most definitely not gold. It charts the downward spiral of the relationship between the American king of piano-playing glitz, Liberace, and his onetime "chauffeur" and companion, Scott Thorson. Read more... |
The Stone Roses: Made of StoneTuesday, 04 June 2013
Titling their long-delayed second album The Second Coming meant The Stone Roses had run out of religious metaphors for their 2012 reunion. They already had a song called “I Am the Resurrection”. Still, with super-fan director Shane Meadows on hand to capture their return, actions spoke louder than words. At their homecoming concert in Manchester’s Heaton Park, he caught their singer Ian Brown touching the outstretched hands of the faithful, anointing them with his mystic power. Read more... |
The IcemanMonday, 03 June 2013
Ariel Vromen's third film, and his first to command a major cast, is the story of mob contract killer Richard Kuklinski who, from his incarceration in 1986 (charged with just a fraction of the murders he supposedly committed) until his death in 2006, was the subject of media fascination based on the proflicacy of his criminal career and his willingness to tell his story. Read more... |
The ComedianFriday, 31 May 2013
The life of the stand-up is a balance, often precarious, between those stage moments when things seem to be going just right, and the ones which look like they're about to go very wrong. The hero of Tom Shkolnik's debut feature The Comedian, Ed (Edward Hogg), seems to be making decent progress with his club appearances, but when the chance of a new relationship comes along it puts the previously settled balance of his life right out of kilter. Read more... |
PopulaireThursday, 30 May 2013
Writer-director Régis Roinsard's feature debut is a perky French rom-com which brings together the talented, easy-on-the-eye trio of Déborah François, Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo. Set in the late 50s it contains oodles of delicious period detail along with shades of the much-loved Amelie and the adorable 60s TV series Bewitched. It should be likeable; it should be full of fun. So why doesn't it work? Two words seal its fate: speed typing. Read more... |
The Big WeddingTuesday, 28 May 2013
You gotta love Diane Keaton all the way from Annie Hall to Something's Gotta Give, but even her natural effervescence can't enliven The Big Wedding, a starry celluloid venture that is landing in cinemas briefly on its way presumably to an airplane near you. An in-flight video might in fact minimise the overriding coarseness of a venture whose brazen impulses don't hold up well to large-screen scrutiny. Read more... |
ByzantiumMonday, 27 May 2013
Byzantium is a vampire flick which in look and tone seems fashioned to resemble Tomas Alfredson's magnificently humane (if that's the right expression when speaking of the undead) Let the Right One In. Read more... |
The Hangover Part IIIFriday, 24 May 2013
You don't have to be a fan of The Hangover franchise to get most of the jokes in Part III, although it certainly helps. How else would you understand why the line “It all ends tonight” is so funny, or why the arrival of Mr Chow causes such hilarity in the audience? Read more... |
Something in the AirWednesday, 22 May 2013
Cinema sometimes seems to have left the Age of Aquarius behind. The filmmakers who came of age in the Sixties have long since said what they needed to, and nowadays the decade’s evanescent aura feels confined to 50th anniversaries of the likes of Billy Liar and The Leopard. Read more... |
The King of Marvin GardensWednesday, 22 May 2013
Bob Rafelson’s 1972 The King of Marvin Gardens takes its title from the Atlantic City Monopoly property, connoting the New Jersey resort’s then imminent future as a board game for real-estate developers. The conman Jason Staebler (Bruce Dern) acknowledges its status thus when his younger brother David (Jack Nicholson) arrives in town to bail him out of jail. Read more... |
The LiabilitySaturday, 18 May 2013
The title says it all. Whatever John Wrathall’s script for The Liability might have promised is resoundingly undelivered in Craig Viveiros’s direction, and that’s despite the presence of Tim Roth in a lead role, and Peter Mullan giving a supporting turn that proves at least that he can parody himself. Read more... |
The StokerFriday, 17 May 2013
Where there’s a stoker there must be a furnace, and this being Russian director Alexei Balabanov’s latest story from St Petersburg’s gangster 1990s, as well as heating some snow-bound Soviet industrial hulks, its flames also conveniently consume whatever corpses the local criminal gang brings in. Read more... |
The Great GatsbyThursday, 16 May 2013
The mothership has landed. After a year or so of countless stage adaptations ranging from a recitation of the novel in its entirety to a themed party and (just this week) a dance piece, Baz Luhrmann's celluloid version of The Great Gatsby has finally arrived in all its superhero-style 3D scale and scope. So, is this Gatsby great? Read more... |
Beware of Mr BakerTuesday, 14 May 2013
For those familiar with Ginger Baker’s virtuosic musicianship, but not with his life, the biggest revelation of the warts-and-all documentary Beware of Mr Baker may be that next to drumming, playing polo was the great time-keeper’s obsession. One might expect a jet-setting country gent like Bryan Ferry to mount up for a chukka or two before teatime, but the wild man of Cream and Blind Faith, late of Lewisham? Does Topper Headon play bowls? Read more... |
The Reluctant FundamentalistFriday, 10 May 2013
Just like Vietnam in 1970s, the so-called War on Terror has been a boon to filmmakers. It has allowed Hollywood to send another generation of buff leading males off to the front and, as the ordnance explodes, bravely question why it is that they are there. However, there’s not been a lot of mainstream filmmaking which puts the Muslim point of view. Read more... |
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