My French Film Festival.com: Preview
Unifrance, in partnership with Allociné and with the support of the Centre National de la Cinématographie and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is organizing...
★★★☆☆ It’s 1918, and the elderly woman that terrorised the screaming youths of X is still a tender young thing, stuck on her parents’ farm and dreaming of a life of stardom in faraway Hollywood. How far removed from that wizened psychotic killer this cherubic vision now stands.
★★★★☆ There is tragedy and there is comedy, but the hinterland has never really received a proper definition. Melodrama suggests histrionics and musical accompaniment milking the emotional teat. Drama is too broad. And anyone who suggests “dramedy” should be punished. It would be “dramedic”.
★★★★☆ One year on from the events of the previous franchise entry, Ghostface is up to their old tricks again, slicing and dicing their way through a new batch of shrieking victims, the action now shifted to New York. With the new generation of Screamers now firmly installed, headed by the Carpenter sisters Sam and Tara (Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega), can the ghost(face)s of the past be laid to rest?
★★★☆☆ His heavyweight champion status secured, the now-retired Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) spends his days lounging around his Hollywood mansion, having tea parties with daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) and running his gym with coach Little Duke (Wood Harris). But when a long-forgotten figure from Adonis’ past returns, his future is thrown into question.
★★★★★ Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are best friends. At 13, they are intelligent and autonomous enough to be allowed a certain freedom, but still full of the childish and spontaneous joy of being and imagining. They pretend villains are attacking the castle, run through the flower fields, and have so many sleepovers together that Leo’s mum wonders aloud if he’ll ever come home.
★★★☆☆ “Family isn’t a word…it’s a sentence”. So ran the tagline to The Royal Tenenbaums. For Hirokazu Kore-eda it could be argued that it’s a whole career. From Still Walking to the Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters, the Japanese auteur has spent the greater part of his career delineating the lines of attraction and repulsion, the dynamics of duty and care that make up families – both real and alternative.
Unifrance, in partnership with Allociné and with the support of the Centre National de la Cinématographie and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is organizing...
★★★★☆ Foresight is a wonderful thing. With the gift of foresight, British director Danny Boyle – perhaps best known for the cult classic Trainspotting...
Instant Swamp (2009), Satoshi Miki’s quirky comedy about the disillusionment of the contemporary Japanese lifestyle certainly doesn’t disappoint. As part of The Barbican’s ‘Girlsworld: Women in...
The Hunter (2010) is Iranian-British director Rafi Pitts’ follow-up to his acclaimed 2006 film It’s Winter. Again, we are in Iran, just before the elections. Progress...
Paranormal Activity (2007) was the infamous movie that spooked Steven Spielberg (who quickly jumped in to help distribute the film), and had audiences jolting out...
If you mention the name of Hammer Horror to any forty-plus film enthusiast (or similarly, any cinephile worth their salt), it’s more than likely...
Someone could argue (though probably not myself) that the supposed finale to the seemingly never-ending Saw saga, Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010), is...
★★★★★ Black Swan (2010) is a work of chilling beauty. Its excellent cinematography, dance, and music all accompanied by the performance of an exciting...
★★★★☆ The King’s Speech (2010) delves deep into the relationship between two men – one a common man and the other a royal –...
Night of the Demons (2009) director Adam Gierasch said he wanted to make the “ultimate film that my seventeen year old self wanted to...
US multi-billionaire Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) superhero ‘alter ego’ was revealed to the world at the end of Iron Man (2008), and John Favreau’s follow...
A truly bleak world view permeates Christopher Smith’s Black Death (2010), which is as much about the 21st century world as it is the...
Over 80 years after its initial cinematic release, German expressionist Fritz Lang’s silent dystopian masterpiece Metropolis (1927) has now finally been re-assembled back into...
★★★★☆ From his opening shots of a bride striding through the Italian countryside before turning a gun on herself, Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek plays...