★★★★☆ American director Alexander Payne (Election) returns to the LFF this year with his black and white, geriatric comedy Nebraska (2013), which stars veteran screen legend Bruce Dern as world-weary protagonist Woody Grant. We first spy upon Woody on the open road, plodding resolutely – if unsteadily – towards the Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Set during one particularly hot and steamy summer, in Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac, 2013) French men visit a secluded spot on the shore of the lake to cruise for sex. One individual seems to be there just for conversation, whilst another conceals far more sinister motives. Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ Cult Japanese director Takashi Miike is often forgiven for the hit-and-miss nature of his output due to the fact that he’s so prolific – occasionally churning out multiple films in a single year. Hopes were high for his new Cannes competition entry after the sublime 13 Assassins (2010) slashed Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ American actor Paul Walker has carved out a career that largely consists of driving cars and being both fast and furious. Playing firmly within type, Walker returns to screens this week in Mukunda Michael Dewil’s Vehicle 19 (2013). Alongside an international cast including Naima McLean and Gys De Villiers, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ English director Kevin Connor’s schlock comedy Motel Hell (1980) is perhaps best remembered for providing two of horror cinema’s catchiest tag-lines – “Meat’s meat, and a man’s gotta eat” and “It takes all kinda critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters”. However these expressions uttered by the film’s protagonist and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ When critics talk of works of cinema where “testosterone oozes from the screen”, they’re usually describing some machismo-laden action flick. That same terminology feels perfectly apt for Michaël R. Roskam’s Belgian crime yarn Bullhead (Rundskop, 2011), although it exists as a literal interpretation here, particularly in the case of Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Based on a true story, Ben Lewin’s emotive new US drama The Sessions (2012) follows the heart-felt journey of Mark (John Hawkes), a man trapped in an iron lung after being stricken with polo as a child, and his quest to ultimately lose his virginity. Played with incredible conviction Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Widely and rather wildly lauded as a dramatic return to form, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) serves as a brilliantly entertaining, although not altogether unexpected piece of pastiche, caricature cinema. Set to the backdrop of America’s pre-Civil War plantations, it is in equal parts a revenge thriller and a Continue Reading
