2011
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DVD Review: ‘The Nutcracker in 3D’
★☆☆☆☆ Filling the traditional cinematic turkey position in this year’s lineup of Christmas-themed releases, The Nutcracker in 3D (2010) is a hauntingly amateurish experiment in trashing the beloved original ballet by subjecting a superb cast to an embarrassing amalgamation of sloppy direction and bland, undeveloped CGI. The essential magic of the story is swapped with…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’
★★☆☆☆ It’s 1942 on the island of Java where Tom Conti and David Bowie star as two British POWs in Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. The film received a mixed reception upon its release in 1983, and it’s easy to see why it divided critics in such a way.The film deals with two sets…
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Film Review: ‘The British Guide to Showing Off’
★★★★☆ Jes Benstock’s The British Guide to Showing Off (2011) opens with an animated sequence of a sparkling egg cracking open, with a wand-waving Andrew Logan appearing upon a statue of Pegasus. He races across London to sprinkle his friends and family with glitter, and with a touch of his wand they are transformed into…
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LFF 2011: ‘Wuthering Heights’
★★★☆☆ Wuthering Heights (2011), Andrea Arnold’s re-telling of Emily Brontë’s classic, is clever and full of passion and intensity; very little of which, unfortunately, is communicated to the viewer. Filmed in a social realist style, the film’s handheld aesthetic blends with close up footage of British flora and fauna as Arnold presents the doomed love…
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Film Review: ‘Arthur Christmas’
★★★☆☆ As the gang responsible for Chicken Run (2000), Flushed Away (2006) and – of course – the Wallace and Gromit series, Aardman Animations have turned their hand to festive frolics with latest film Arthur Christmas (2011). It’s great fun in places, and the humorously pompous British cast – including James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent and…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’
★★★★☆ Labelled the French Gone with the Wind (1939) when it was first released amid the victory celebrations of post World War II France, Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) is a wonderful and rarely-seen slice of 1940s art cinema, and this newly-restored version is a treat for old fans and willing converts. The…
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Film Review: ‘Kshay’ (‘Corrode’)
★★★★☆ A woman’s slide into blinding obsession rests at the heart of Karan Gour’s debut feature Kshay (Corrode, 2011). Ambitious – both conceptually and in its execution – the film’s tight budget and small crew belie Gour’s achievement. Kshay is intriguing, well-paced and full of arresting visuals that seem to strive beyond the limitations of…
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Film Review: ‘Tabloid’
★★★★☆ Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris (Thin Blue Line [1988], Fog of War [2003]) returns with his ninth feature-length documentary Tabloid (2010), an intriguing and jovial examination of the sensationalism which fuels tabloid journalism. Morris found the perfect subject in Joyce McKinney for his exposé of how truth can often be distorted by the mainstream…
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Film Review: ‘The Awakening’
★★★☆☆ Ghost stories are wonderfully appropriate at this time of year and The Awakening (2011) by Nick Murphy provides an excellent, atmospheric, and chilling tale to do the trick, with a superb cast boasting The Wire’s Dominic West, Red Riding’s Rebecca Hall and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake [2004]).Following the First World War, the country is…
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Film Review: ‘The Rum Diary’
★★★☆☆ Marking a welcome return to directing for filmmaker Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) and a partial return to form for acting megastar Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary (2011) has certainly taking its time in reaching cinemas. An extremely loose adaptation (if the term can even be used) of US Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s…
