April 2012
-
Cannes 2012: ‘The Angels’ Share’ preview
Coming off the back of last year’s critically-acclaimed yet rarely-seen Route Irish (2010), Palme d’Or-winning British director Ken Loach reunites with screenwriter Paul Laverty this year for Scottish comedy-drama The Angels’ Share (2012). Yet again, Loach will present his latest film to the world via the Croisette after it was selected to screen in competition…
-
Film Review: ‘The Bad and the Beautiful’
★★★★☆ Rarely seen but frequently referenced in film studies lecture rooms, Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a twisted tale of the rise and fall of Kirk Douglas’ ruthless Hollywood producer Jonathan Shields and one of the greatest ‘movies about movies’ to ever come out of Hollywood.Wrongly regarded as a damning indictment…
-
Film Review: ‘Transit’
★★★☆☆ “You said nobody was supposed to die.” “I lied”, replies the gruff-voice of Marek (James Frain) near the beginning of Antonio Negret’s Transit (2012) – he’s clearly not a nice man. He’s just finished robbing an armoured truck with his angry number two Losada (Harold Perrineau) – he is also not a nice man.…
-
Film Review: ‘Fury’
★★★☆☆ Next week, Samuel L. Jackson will be hitting UK screens as Nick Fury in Marvel’s Avengers Assemble (2012), to which many minds may wander when they learn that he is also starring this week in Fury (The Samaritan, 2012). This is no Marvel spin-off however; Jackson stars as Foley, an ex-con eager for redemption…
-
Film Review: ‘The Divide’
★★☆☆☆ The Divide (2011), the new apocalyptic horror from Director Xavier Gens, both shocks and disappoints in equal measure. Though this thriller, starring legends Michael Biehn, Courtney B. Vance and Rosanna Arquette, was apparently harrowing enough to make people walk out of a recent FrightFest screening, it never quite manages to live up to all…
-
Film Review: ‘Elfie Hopkins’
★★☆☆☆ Elfie Hopkins (2012), the debut feature from British director Ryan Andrews, provides a modern spin on the murder mystery narrative, complete with a teenager-baiting comic book aesthetic and a solid British cast, including Jaime Winstone and her father Ray Winstone.Buried deep within the rolling hills of a Welsh valley resides young Elfie Hopkins (Jaime…
-
Film Review: ‘Town of Runners’
★★★☆☆ A timely release in this an Olympic year, British director Jerry Rothwell follows up his award-winning 2010 film Donor Unknown with Town of Runners (2012), a well-intentioned documentary that follows the trials and tribulations of two young Ethiopian athletes as they strive to climb the ranks of the country’s long distance runner roster.The film…
-
Film Review: ‘Gone’
★★☆☆☆ It’s fair to say that the majority of the press pack attending the recent screening of Heitor Dhalia’s Gone (2012) would have come along with preconceived ideas of what the film was going to be like. Whilst it did manage to regurgitate the innumerable clichés and terribly cheesy one-liners that arguably belong back in…
-
Film Review: ‘Lockout’
★★★☆☆ Before Guy Pearce ascends into the cinematic stratosphere with Ridley Scott’s long-anticipated return to sci-fi Prometheus (2012), the former Neighbours star can be seen starring opposite Maggie Grace in James Mather and Stephen St. Ledger’s Lockout (2012) – an adrenaline fuelled amalgamation of frantic thrill-per-minute action with the claustrophobic tension of a futuristic thriller.MS…
-
Film Review: ‘Beauty’ (‘Skoonheid’)
★★★★☆ Winner of the Queer Palm at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, South African director Oliver Hermanus’ sophomore feature Beauty (Skoonheid, 2011) is a devastatingly powerful story of obsession and sexual denial, which in itself acts as a powerful allegory for his country’s continued transition from a nation of archaic beliefs and traditions to a…