★★★★☆ Director Jim Jarmusch has managed an almost impossible feat with new film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival – he’s made vampires interesting again. British actors Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, a pair of night-dwelling bloodsuckers. Eve is Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Władziu Valentino Liberace was a phenomenal success, his recording and performing career spanning four decades. A flamboyant showman and housewives’ favourite, Liberace fought long and hard to keep his homosexuality a secret until his death in 1987. Thus, Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra (2013) arrives at in UK cinemas Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Award-winning Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda lights up this year’s London Film Festival with Like Father, Like Son (2013), a closely-observed family drama which delves into contemporary Japanese life and, in the process, becomes an examination of social values and class. Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) is a born winner – a Continue Reading
★★★★★ Last year, it was a tale of time-tested amour which ultimately went on to pick up the Palme d’Or. This year, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) – a tale of young love and the intensity/agony it entails – was the word-of-mouth hit that walked away with Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard section of the 66th Cannes Film Festival, Katrin Gebbe’s debut film Nothing Bad Can Happen (Tore tanzt, 2013) is a harrowing tale of abuse with a highly dubious morality at its core. Tore (Julius Feldmeier) is a young, gawky member of The Jesus Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ James Gray has always enjoyed a good reputation in France and so it comes as little surprise to see his fifth film, The Immigrant (2013), showing in competition here at Cannes. The year is 1920 and in the wake of the Great War, Polish immigrant Ewa Cybulski (Marion Cotillard) Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The Cannes Film Festival just got medieval on our asses with Arnaud des Pallières’ Palme d’Or outsider Michael Kohlhaas (2013), a tale of injustice and revolt set in 16th century France. Adapted from the Heinrich von Kleist novella, Pallières’ latest follows the plight of its eponymous hero (Mads Mikkelsen), Continue Reading
★★★★★ The Coen brothers return to the London Film Festival this year with the barnstorming Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a picaresque odyssey following the close-calls and mishaps of an also-ran folk songster within the New York Greenwich Village scene. It’s the early sixties, well before Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Continue Reading
Olivier Assayas fidgets endlessly. On the finer nuances of 1970s radicalism, the French director swivels around with unflappable urgency and a staccato delivery to his response. Such as the characters in his semi-autobiographical movie, Something in the Air (2012), Assayas exudes this infectious youthful dynamism, coupled with a profound understanding Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “We bring light to people’s homes” says Gilles (Olivier Gourmet), a middle-aged foreman in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Grand Central (2013). The protagonists of her latest film are young, unskilled French workers who, at the end of their tether, gladly jump at the chance to work in the dangerously radioactive areas Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ French director Claire Denis has maintained a wonderful run, from her 1998 debut Chocolat to recent efforts such as 36 Shots of Rum and White Material. Her latest, Bastards (Les Salauds, 2013), shows not in the main competition at Cannes – which, as ever, is woefully short on women Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ There are some films which simply don’t need sequels, but these days it’s increasingly likely that studios will green-light follow-ups after an a successful first outing. Such was the case with The Hangover (2009); the film struck a tone with cinemagoers, but spawned a lacklustre sequel. Director Todd Phillips Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ It’s entirely appropriate that Tony Britten, an established and well-versed composer himself, delivers this spirited biopic about the life of Benjamin Britten (no relation). His idle feature film record is in plain view however, as the structure and format of Peace and Conflict (2013), his second feature, spoil the Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ “If you marry a city man you will be short of money,” claims a young Cambodian boy in Kalyanee Mam’s glacial documentary A River Changes Course (2013). He goes on to reveal that if you were to choose him, you will have dollars to spend on such things as Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Heli (Armando Espitia), the protagonist of Amat Escalante’s 2013 Palme d’Or nominee of the same name, is a young Mexican who lives with his father, his son, his young wife (Linda Gonzalez) and 12-year-old sister, Estella (Andrea Vergara). He’s prone to bad luck, keen on his naps and, when Continue Reading