★★★☆☆ Unsurprisingly, given its title, the past plays a major role in the debut feature film of Song Fang, best known as the nanny in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon (2007). Gentle, pleasant, and seemingly autobiographical, Memories Look at Me (2012) is […]
★★★☆☆ With several awards scooped on its festival travels thus far – including a Tiger Award in Rotterdam – and having being banned in Russia, Serbian drama Clip (Klip, 2012) now arrives at the London Film Festival. The feature debut, both as writer and […]
★★★☆☆ Brandon Cronenberg displays the creative genes he was born to engage with Antiviral (2012), a fittingly abstract body horror that whilst clearly influenced by his father’s distinctive style, ultimately culminates in an impressive debut. Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is an employee at […]
★★★★☆ Fresh from the Palme d’Or success of the undeniably bleak and dour 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007), Romanian director Cristian Mungiu returns to the fray once again with Beyond the Hills (2012), a balanced and observant examination of religion, love and […]
★★★★☆ A big-screen adaptation of Lucy Alibar’s play Juicy and Delicious, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) is a picturesque coming of age tale imbued with an aura of magical realism and an underlying cultural message about our fluctuating global environment. Precocious […]
★★☆☆☆ Nobody would question the fact that Antonio Mendez Esperanza’s Here and There (Aquí y Allá, 2012) raises some extremely important and relevant points about the challenges faced by Latin American migrant workers. Yet, even the most ardent fans of slow cinema may well […]
★★★★☆ Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf’s bleak and brutally affecting Eastern block drama Just the Wind (Csak a szél, 2011) was one of the very best films screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, rightfully finding itself in the running for the top Golden Bear […]
★★☆☆☆ The 90s were great, weren’t they? You had Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and of course The Stone Roses, who are given near mythical status in Mat Whitecross’ love letter to band frontman Ian Brown, in Spike Island (2012). A group of lads from Manchester […]
