2011
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Film Review: ‘Moneyball’
★★★☆☆ Baseball has always been a popular subject for Hollywood to tackle and the passion for the US national pastime usually equates to a multitude of bums on seats. During the 1980s there was a flood of big-hitting baseball films such as Field of Dreams (1989), Major League (1989) and John Sayles’ superb dramatisation of…
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Special Feature: Martin Scorsese and cast discuss ‘Hugo’
Earlier today at a press conference in Central London, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese discussed his latest feature Hugo (2011), a magical 3D journey about a young boy (Asa Butterfield) who lives in Paris’ Gare du Nord train station, mending clocks and stealing parts in order to repair a complex automaton that he believes is holding…
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DVD Review: ‘Sarah’s Key’
★★★★☆ Sarah’s Key (2010), directed by Gilles Paquet Brenner and starring Kristin Scott Thomas (soon to appear in the film adaption of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) is a sophisticated film full of emotion. It takes the familiar topic of the Holocaust and combines it with a contemporary tale of a woman suffering an existential…
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DVD Review: ‘Blood in the Mobile’
★★☆☆☆ Studies attempting to find a link between mobiles and medical traumas are infamously vague and inconclusive, mainly due to the fact that many of them are carried out by the phone companies themselves. Fortunately, Blood in the Mobile’s (2010) Finnish director Frank Poulsen has found a new angle to attack the industry: cassiterite, a…
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DVD Review: ‘Happy People’
★★★★☆ From directors Dmitry Vasyukov and Werner Herzog – and thanks to DVD distribution from Second Sight – comes 2010 feature documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010), an affectionate look at the lives of those who live and work in the remote Siberian wilderness. Herzog has produced some extraordinary factual films over…
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DVD Review: ‘Mildred Pierce’
★★★★☆ After a string of high quality TV drama successes in the form of The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones (DVD/Blu-ray release date pending), you only have to look at Mildred Pierce’s (2011) credit list to get an idea of the pedigree behind the HBO miniseries. Starring Kate Winslet, Melissa Leo,…
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Film Review: ‘Dream House’
★★☆☆☆ Director Jim Sheridan, best known for the Academy Award-winning In the Name of the Father (1993), returns with Dream House (2011), a mystery-thriller starring Daniel Craig (returning in the role of 007 for Bond 23, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall [2012]), Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts (next seen appearing alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Clint Eastwood’s eagerly-awaited…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ’50/50′
★★☆☆☆ Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 (2011) stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen in a tragic comedy about a young man who discovers he has a rare form of spinal cancer, yet is unwilling to let it ruin his life. It is loosely based on the similar experiences of the film’s screenwriter Will Reiser, who himself suffered…
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Interview: Simon Curtis, ‘My Week with Marilyn’
This week, CineVue met up with British director Simon Curtis to talk about his newly released homage to Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier and the amazing story of Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn (2011). The film blends two of Clark’s publications, The Prince, the Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn, beginning as the…
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Film Review: ‘Parked’
★★☆☆☆ Despite accruing an impressive array of film festival credits, director Darragh Byrne’s feature debut Parked (2010) is unable to compare in ambition or quality to recent notable Irish efforts such as In Bruges (2008) or this year’s The Guard. All to often finding itself on the wrong side of whimsical mawkishness, the film follows…
