Film Reviews

Child's Pose

Kieron Tyler Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Cornelia is 60 and increasingly frustrated with her 34-year-old son, Barbu. He doesn’t communicate with her, she doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and the way he leads his life. Convinced she has to take command of her immature son, she’s suddenly presented with an opportunity to exert control.

Short Term 12

Tom Birchenough Tuesday, 29 October 2013

A film of contrasts, Short Term 12 manages to be simultaneously dark and humorous, casual yet intense. The relationships between staff and patients in the group home for troubled teenagers where it’s set – the facility is meant to be a place of refuge for up to a year, hence the title, though many stay longer – are both thick and thin, and as in the wedding vow must endure through difficult times.

Gloria

Kieron Tyler Monday, 28 October 2013

Gloria is 58. Divorced 12 years earlier, she’s intent on living life. Her two children are grown up, she works in a characterless office and is open to almost anything. She’ll try cannabis, attends a class where instruction is given on releasing laughter and tackles yoga for the first time. Beyond keeping in touch with her son and daughter, her greatest efforts are directed towards her nightlife. On her own, Gloria goes to ballrooms, bars and nightclubs where she hopes to make a connection...

The Selfish Giant

Emma Simmonds Friday, 25 October 2013

Former video artist Clio Barnard's second feature - which took Cannes 2013 by storm with its stark and striking humanity - takes inspiration and its title from the Oscar Wilde fairytale. However that's not the film's only, or most significant, influence: The Selfish Giant is, by its director's own admission, a response to the continuing, corrosive impact of Thatcherism, an ideology that put selfishness ahead of societal needs and pushed millions to the margins.

Closed Circuit

Nick Hasted Thursday, 24 October 2013

We have plenty to be paranoid about in the most surveilled country in the world. British contributions to the conspiracy thrillers that bloomed so fruitfully in the US around Watergate have, though, stayed slim. Maybe that’s one reason Closed Circuit’s extreme Secret Service behaviour in the aftermath of a bomb atrocity at London’s Borough market feels so fake.

CIA agents snuffing out inconvenient people on city streets is cinematic second nature. MI5 hunting Eric Bana and...

A Magnificent Haunting

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 23 October 2013

With a hero who’s an aspiring actor and an ensemble of theatrical types trapped outside time as supporting cast, the staginess of Ferzan Ozpetek’s A Magnificent Haunting comes as little surprise. It makes for sometimes nicely camp overplaying, though the comedy that made the Turkish-born director’s latest film a hit in his adopted Italy doesn’t travel easily beyond borders.

Muscle Shoals

Kieron Tyler Tuesday, 22 October 2013

“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969.

LFF 2013: Saving Mr Banks

Karen Krizanovich Monday, 21 October 2013

It's dueling stars when Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson go quite delightfully toe-to-toe as Walt Disney vs P L Travers, author of Mary Poppins, in Saving Mr Banks, the closing film of the London Film Festival 2013. The title suggests the Russian doll-like nature of the story – a story within a story wrapped in an enigma, with seriously fabulous hair and make-up turning both Hanks and Thompson into characters you can almost completely believe in.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Kieron Tyler Monday, 21 October 2013

Common sense indicates it’s a rare film which retains the impact it had on first exposure. Films can often reveal new depths and fresh detail with repeated viewing, but that initial effect is tough to duplicate. This new release of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens actually captures the thrill of the first-time experience. Partly, that’s due to the extraordinary restoration.

LFF 2013: Only Lovers Left Alive

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 19 October 2013

Jim Jarmusch's characters have always been ineffably cool, whether the slackers of Stranger than Paradise, the accountant lost in the Wild West of Dead Man, or the hit man with samurai pretensions of Ghost Dog. It goes without saying that if he makes a film about vampires, they’ll be dripping with style.

LFF 2013: 12 Years A Slave

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 19 October 2013

One of this year’s Oscar contenders, Lincoln, covered the ending of the American Civil War as it played out in the comfortable confines of the Capitol. 12 Years a Slave, an exceptional film that will surely be in the running next year, reveals the “fearful ill” that set the country alight in the first place.

Captain Phillips

Adam Sweeting Friday, 18 October 2013

Earlier this year we saw Tobias Lindstrom's A Hijacking, a Danish-made thriller based on true events, about a freighter hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Featuring familiar faces from Borgen and The Killing, the film skipped the part where the vessel was seized, and focused on the excruciating and seemingly infinite negotiations between the hijackers and the shipping company in Copenhagen. Harrowing and claustrophobic, it evoked the sufferings of the...

Comment

LFF 2013: The Past

Demetrios Matheou Friday, 18 October 2013

Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning A Separation was a marriage of drama, melodrama and social observation that was beyond compare; it’s expecting too much of his new film to equal it. That said, The Past confirms that few can match the Iranian's attention to the psychological minutiae of family relationships. It's riveting.

LFF 2013: Floating Skyscrapers

Tom Birchenough Thursday, 17 October 2013

Ground-breaking though it is as one of the first gay films to come out of Poland, Tomasz Wasilewski’s Floating Skyscrapers brings home how happy endings on such subjects are hardly to be hoped for in the conservative, Catholic country. Wasilewski’s second feature has real visual style though, with laconic imagery and accomplished performances. It has garnered plentiful festival acclaim already, and opens in the UK in December.

LFF 2013: Enough Said

Karen Krizanovich Thursday, 17 October 2013

James Gandolfini stars as an overweight charmer in the best romantic comedy of the year, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (Friends With Money). As Albert, Gandolfini – it's one of his last roles, in a film dedicated to “Jim” – brings all his warmth and allure to bear on lively divorced masseuse Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

LFF 2013: Adore

Nick Hasted Thursday, 17 October 2013

Naomi Watts’s rare misstep with Diana is forgotten as this playfully provocative tale of female friendship and forbidden love unfolds. It’s an equally rare return to Australia for Watts, who plays Lil, whose deep childhood bond with Roz (Robin Wright) lasts into middle-age, as their respective teenage sons Ian (Xavier Samuel) and Tom (James Frecheville) join them in an idyllic life spent roaming freely between neighbouring beach-side homes.