Film reviews and more
★★☆☆☆ You only have to take an extended glance at the cast list in any Judd Apatow film to know what you’re letting yourself in for. Without trivialising, much of his feature-length work for cinemagoers can be summed up in a handful of words, which is a real shame given that it’s started […]
★★☆☆☆ David Gordon Green makes an underwhelming return to his indie roots with this tiresome remake of Icelandic comedy-drama Either Way (Á annan Veg, 2011), re-titled Prince Avalanche (2013) and starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Hirsch) spend the summer of 1988 remarking the seemingly endless roads that run […]
★★★☆☆ In Austrian video artist Gustav Deutsch’s Shirley: Visions of Reality (2013), pictures literally speak for themselves, with this experimental film using prominent US painter Edward Hopper’s calculated renderings of American society to tell the story of a fictional actress – a prime example of art imitating art. Recreated through the guise of […]
★★★☆☆ Challenging and incredibly divisive, French director Bruno Dumont is renowned for his harrowing and burdensome portraits of modern life, that fall somewhere in-between realist drama and avant-garde otherness. His latest feature, Camille Claudel 1915 (2013), is a biopic about this titular sculptress and remains just as taxing, yet curiously lacks the elegance […]
★★★★☆ American director Richard Linklater returns to the tale of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) that he began seventeen years ago in Before Sunrise (1995) with 2013’s Before Midnight. Set nine years after the events of Before Sunset (2004), this is an eloquently scripted dissection of a now middle-aged couple’s relationship. […]