Film Reviews

300: Rise of an Empire

Emma Simmonds Friday, 07 March 2014

300: Rise of an Empire is the follow-up to perhaps the most homoerotic film of all time, 300 - a film whose obsession with the well-lubricated muscularity of the male form was matched only by its unabashed exaltation of ultra-violence (rendered endlessly and often tediously in slow-mo). It was hardly high art or sound history, but it had aesthetic bravado and a certain logic, with the strangely sexy battles effectively evoking the Spartan idea of a glorious death.

Wake in Fright

Nick Hasted Friday, 07 March 2014

Nick Cave called this ferocious, blackly comic Outback nightmare “the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence”. Lost and almost forgotten since its 1971 nomination for Cannes’ Palme D’Or, as a film of innately Australian fear and loathing it compares well with Wolf Creek. But this tale of a smug English teacher having his civilised skin torn off him in strips during an endless week in a purgatorial mining town is less of a pure “Oz-ploitation” film than that.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Katherine McLaughlin Wednesday, 05 March 2014

The beautifully adorned Grand Budapest Hotel is not only home to the fastidious, foul-mouthed concierge Gustave H. and his bellboy and confidante Zero but to a myriad of other fantastic characters. This is director Wes Anderson's candy coloured ode to the art of storytelling, and his tribute to the actors he's collaborated with and strong friendships he's forged via his illustrious filmmaking career.

Oscars 2014: All that glitters is not Gravity

Matt Wolf Monday, 03 March 2014

If ever an Oscar ceremony pointed to the fundamentally schizoid nature these days of Hollywood’s defining love-in, the 86th annual Academy Awards was it. On the one hand, you had an out-gay host in Ellen DeGeneres taking selfies, ordering pizza, and generally trying to treat the crowd at the Dolby auditorium as an extension of her own funky, vaguely edgy persona.

Funny Face

Emma Simmonds Saturday, 01 March 2014

For those who haven't seen it, the funny face of the title belongs to Audrey Hepburn. As preposterous as that seems for someone so iconically gorgeous and although when others fail to notice her beauty it seems insane, Hepburn was famously insecure, so when her character Jo Stockton says, "I have no illusions about my looks, I think my face is funny" it doesn't sound insincere.

Non-Stop

Emma Simmonds Friday, 28 February 2014

At some point during Non-Stop - a mostly serviceable though increasingly nuts peril-on-a-plane movie - I began to doubt that Liam Neeson had ever had a credible career. Recently we've seen him starring in assorted nonsense such as Battleship and Wrath of the Titans and if you go back a few years you'll recall him looking bored in The Phantom Menace.

We Are What We Are

Nick Hasted Wednesday, 26 February 2014

There aren’t many understated films about cannibal clans. Jorge Michel Grau’s We Are What We Are, the Mexican original on which this American remake is based, reeked of despair and depravity, in a tainted Mexico City where a family fed on the homeless. Director Jim Mickle has almost inevitably made a sleaker, less disturbing film. More surprising is just how slow a burn it is.

The Book Thief

Adam Sweeting Monday, 24 February 2014

Derived from Markus Zusak's bestseller, director Brian Percival's movie is well cast and brimming with good intentions, but it's too long, too safe and too uneventful to do justice to its subject matter. The story charts the rise of Nazi Germany through the eyes of Liesel Meminger and her adoptive parents the Hubermanns, but the horrors are sanitised and the anticipated emotional punch is never delivered.

A New York Winter's Tale

Matt Wolf Saturday, 22 February 2014

"What's happening here?" Jennifer Connelly asks somewhere near the not-a-moment-too-soon ending of A New York Winter's Tale, a question filmgoers will have been muttering from pretty much the first frame. Not long after, Connelly lets rip with "this is crazy", a sentiment similarly likely to strike home with that hapless few who find themselves at this magical-realist foray into psychobabble and soap suds.

Nymphomaniac

Graham Fuller Friday, 21 February 2014

Over many months, the release of stills and teaser trailers from Nymphomania, as well as the poster showing the faces of its stars (presumably) faking orgasms, have maximized press speculation on the nature of Lars von Trier's hardcore-laced saga about the life of a female sex addict.

Comment

Stranger by the Lake

Tom Birchenough Thursday, 20 February 2014

The lakeside beach that is the only scene of action in Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake is a concentrated crucible of desires. The sense of languid summer and the limpid beauty of the lake itself, beautifully and compellingly caught throughout in Claire Mathon’s widescreen cinematography, are deceptive: this gay cruising area is a place of urgent, largely silent action, and deadly undercurrents, where sexual fascination can become potentially fatal.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Katherine McLaughlin Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Unique, dreamy, super cool and splendidly silly, just like its maker Jim Jarmusch, Only Lovers Left Alive is a vampire flick packed full of romanticism, wit and enchanting, fuzzy music. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are perfectly cast as a pair of vampires named Adam and Eve entangled for eternity by the bonds of love.

John Travolta, Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Katherine McLaughlin Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Hopelessly devoted women queuing up for hugs and to cut a rug with a playful John Travolta all dressed in black were just two of the highlights of an often pensive and surprisingly serious discussion, hosted by film critic Barry Norman, but one that still came littered with moments of real fun. “I want to make love to you all!”, Travolta exclaimed as he came out on stage to rapturous applause and screams of adoration.

BAFTAs 2014: Hollywood winners made in Britain

Emma Simmonds Monday, 17 February 2014

Long before the stars had begun walking (and working) the red carpet, this year's British Academy Film Awards were a hot topic. Unfortunately it was for all the wrong reasons. A whistleblower writing for the Daily Mail alleged that many of the Academy's 6,500 members make little effort to consider the full gauntlet of options, often voting for the big-budget American favourites sight unseen.

Berlinale 2014: 20,000 Days on Earth

james Woodall Monday, 17 February 2014

He cuts a dash, that man Cave. Very tall, gangly, with his idiosyncratic snub nose and upside-down-U-shaped hair, the Australian is a one-off. His growly music isn’t always easy to like. In his fury days with the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, he was a post-punk rock poet. He has, of course, oceans of fans.

Berlinale 2014: The Winners

Tom Birchenough Sunday, 16 February 2014

The Chinese thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice by director Diao Yinan won the Golden Bear at the closing ceremony of the Berlinale last night, as well as picking up the best actor prize for its star Liao Fan.