2011
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘The Artist’
★★★★★ A categorical success at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist is a gloriously executed love letter to the silent era of Hollywood, featuring an award-winning performance by Jean Dujardin (Best Actor at Cannes). A thoroughly enjoyable romp, The Artist looks set to be a crowd favourite at this year’s BFI London…
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LFF 2011: ‘Carnage’
★★★★☆ The cinematic adaptation of a stage play can offer a filmmaker many creative challenges. Either the film can largely ignore its theatrical origins (Casablanca [1942] was based on a pretty unsuccessful production called Everybody comes to Ricks), or then can be preserved in the form of a chamber piece – see Sidney Lumet’s 12…
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DVD Review: ‘A Film with Me in It’
★★☆☆☆ Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon impressed us last year with Perrier’s Bounty (2009), a darkly funny crime thriller which drew inevitable but fair comparisons with In Bruges (2008), amongst others. But this, his debut from 2008, has only just made it to this side of the Irish Sea: the cheekily titled A Film with Me…
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DVD Review: ‘This Boy’s Life’
★★★★☆ Starring Robert De Niro and a young Leonardo DiCaprio (in his first leading role), Michael Caton-Jones’ This Boy’s Life (1993) is the emotive tale of the youth of dirty realist author Tobias Wolff. The film is based on the autobiographical book of the same title by Wolff and was superbly adapted for the screen by…
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LFF 2011: ‘Elena’ review
★★★★☆ Director Andrei Zvyagintsev broke onto the scene with his remarkably assured 2003 debut The Return, a visually alluring and emotionally engrossing story of two young boys who embark on a road trip with their long lost father. His third feature, Elena (2011), also deals with fraught domestic relationships and is a welcome confirmation that…
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DVD Review: ‘Stalker’ (2010)
★★☆☆☆ Spandeux Ballet star Martin Kemp’s debut feature Stalker (2010) (not to be confused with the 1979 Andrey Tarkovskiy film of the same name) struggles to hide the inexperience of its director, yet his psychological thriller also demonstrates an understanding of his chosen genre by frequently doffing it’s hat to Hammer horror and trademark Hitchcockian…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Nobody Else But You’
★★☆☆☆ Rumours are currently swirling around the internet as to the identity of the ‘Surprise Film’ at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival, with Simon Curtis’ My Weekend with Marilyn currently a strong contender alongside Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary and Brad Pitt’s Moneyball. However, one film has already screened at this year’s LFF…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Las Acacias’
★★★☆☆ You know those long awkward car journeys you use to have as a kid in a foreigner’s car, crossing the border from Paraguay to Argentina? Pablo Giorgelli’s Las Acacias (2011) – which receives its UK premiere tonight at the 55th BFI London Film Festival – is one of those. At 90 minutes, it’s a…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’
★★★★★ Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes favourite since his debut film Koza won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film in 1995, so it came as little surprise when his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), walked away with Grand Jury Prize earlier this year. However, Ceylan’s win…
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DVD Review: ‘When China Met Africa’
★★★☆☆ With such a broad and sweeping title, When China Met Africa (2010) is an ambitious project to undertake by sibling filmmakers Nick and Marc Francis, who wrote, produced and directed this venture. Attempting to investigate the implications of China’s expensive investment in Africa’s economy in exchange for its natural resources, the Francis brothers cleverly…
