Film Reviews
This Must Be The PlaceWednesday, 04 April 2012
“There’s something wrong here. I don’t know exactly what it is, but something.” It’s no coincidence that this line bookends Paolo Sorrentino’s much-anticipated English language debut – it's a beguilingly strange, distancing, even discombobulating venture, at times gently lyrical, at others nightmarish. While there is indeed something about it that feels wrong, a more accurate turn of phrase might be that there’s something missing here. Read more... |
HeadhuntersTuesday, 03 April 2012
Despite being called Roger Brown, the protagonist of Morten Tyldum's wickedly stylish and knowing thriller (adapted from Jo Nesbø's bestseller) is Norwegian, and earns himself a comfortable living as a corporate headhunter. Prowling the coolly minimalist boardrooms and restaurants of a seemingly recession-proof Scandinavia, Brown (Aksel Hennie) tracks his fat-cat candidates with smarmy knowingness, congratulating himself on his mastery of his own private game. Read more... |
Mirror MirrorMonday, 02 April 2012
Some gorgeous costumes get paraded about to little effect in Mirror Mirror, the latest in a series of Julia Roberts star vehicles to make one wonder whether this A-list thesp's management is actually out to torpedo her career. A terrific actress in material that actually asks something of her, Roberts looks irritated by her latest assignment in a wan Snow White rewrite, and who can blame her? Read more... |
Wrath of the TitansFriday, 30 March 2012
It sounded like a good idea at the time - go and see colossal special-effects epic at an IMAX cinema in 3D. There was even a fleeting pre-show visit from the stars, Liam Neeson and Sam Worthington, who play Zeus and his son Perseus respectively. However, having just about managed to say "Hello, enjoy the film," the pair of them couldn't get out of there fast enough. Read more... |
Corpo CelesteFriday, 30 March 2012
Now here is something genuinely original and genuinely innovative coming out of Italian cinema, a very welcome surprise. Alice Rohrwacher’s debut feature film has a freshness of outlook and a sharpness of overview that could put many of her more venerable rivals in Italy to shame. Read more... |
This is Not a FilmThursday, 29 March 2012
With only a modest, handheld camera and an iPhone at his disposal, the internationally acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi shot this film in secret whilst under house arrest. His close friend, and co-director of this film, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, then smuggled it into France hidden in a cake as a last-minute submission to Cannes last year. Read more... |
Tiny FurnitureWednesday, 28 March 2012
Perfectly peculiar and as cute as can be, Tiny Furniture is the second film from writer/director Lena Dunham. Her first, Creative Nonfiction (2009), was based on her own romantic woes, shot whilst she was attending college and featured a cast of non-professionals - mostly her friends. Read more... |
BonsaiTuesday, 27 March 2012
One of the most refreshing aspects of current Latin American cinema, most evident in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, is a particular brand of off-beat romantic comedy – one with echoes of the literate and quirky US independents of the Eighties and Nineties, of Hartley, Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo, but laced with melancholy and shards of realism that are specifically Latin. Read more... |
Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of LifeMonday, 26 March 2012
Into the Abyss sees celebrated German filmmaker Werner Herzog take a sharp turn away from those marvels of early man he so magnificently captured in the stereoscopic Cave of Forgotten Dreams to the shocking violence of which humanity is also capable, here both greed-fuelled and state-sanctioned. Read more... |
Wild BillFriday, 23 March 2012
The Olympics will be upon us all any minute now, but for the residents of East London they have been physically sprouting at the end of the road in the shape of a futuristic stadium for years. It takes the role of a shy walk-on in Wild Bill, a looming symbol of a local regeneration which was touted as integral to the hosting bid. It’s safe to say that the London seen here will not earn the grateful rubberstamp of the Cultural Olympiad. Read more... |
The Kid With a BikeThursday, 22 March 2012
There are many directors who profess (or have claimed for them) one sort of naturalistic cinema or another, from Ken Loach in the UK, to Bruno Dumont in France and Lisandro Alonso in Argentina. It’s an odd characteristic of the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, that one feels almost discourteous to give them any such label. Read more... |
The Hunger GamesWednesday, 21 March 2012
Given the numerous and now pretty tiresome comparisons that pundits and punters alike have drawn between the Hunger Games trilogy and the inexorable Twilight saga, it’s worth taking a moment to imagine how the franchises’ respective heroines might get on if they actually met. One can’t imagine they’d see eye to eye on much. Read more... |
Bill Cunningham New YorkFriday, 16 March 2012
If you’re the kind of person who appreciates auto-recommendations based on previous purchases, then perhaps I could do worse than begin this review by saying:” If you liked The September Issue, you’ll simply love Bill Cunningham New York.” There are obvious similarities: both are Cinema Verité-style documentary profiles centred around New York and fashion, both present a series of talking heads, and both feature the formidable Anna Wintour, managing editor of American... Read more... |
21 Jump StreetFriday, 16 March 2012
Those of a certain age will remember the television series 21 Jump Street, a huge hit for the then fledgling Fox network in America. It ran from 1987 to 1991 and starred Johnny Depp. The titular address was where he worked as an undercover cop, one of a team of youthful officers investigating crimes in high schools and colleges. Read more... |
In DarknessFriday, 16 March 2012
The world has heard of Schindler’s Jews, who were saved from the gas ovens by the patronage of an enlightened German industrialist. Socha’s Jews are not quite so celebrated. There are number of reasons for that. For a start, many fewer Jews were saved in this narrative, and their story has not found its own Thomas Kenneally - nor until now its Steven Spielberg. Read more... |
ContrabandThursday, 15 March 2012
I always used to avoid any film that had Mark Wahlberg in it, because he seemed to have the acting skills of a park bench. Then I saw The Departed - because you have to see Marty's movies - and thought he was brilliant as the astonishingly foul-mouthed Sergeant Dignam. Now I've seen Contraband and regrettably, it may be time to revert to Plan A. Read more... |
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