★★★★☆ From director James Wan (Saw, Insidious) comes The Conjuring (2013), a 1970s-inflected haunted house movie that throws every trick in the book at it audience – with surprisingly successful results. Wan’s latest is chock-full of kitsch class and effective scares that, whilst never attempting to reinvent the wheel, offers Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ After focusing predominantly on short film projects, director PJ Raval returns with only his second feature, Before You Know It (2013), a thoughtful documentary on growing old in the gay community. The film hooks between three elderly men in the US – Dennis from Florida, Ty from New York Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Like the revered work of the artist himself, Renoir (2012) – director Giles Bourdos’ biopic of the French impressionist, starring Michel Bouquet, Vincent Rottiers and Christa Théret – paints an idyllic picture of a life played out in bohemian decadence, tainted with rhapsodic and turbulent undercurrents. The arrival of Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Banned from Sydney’s Mardi Gras Film Festival due to its graphic real sex and ardently defended by friend-of-director James Franco, Travis Mathews’ I Want Your Love (2012) has traversed a treacherous path on its way into UK cinemas. A classic ‘point-in-time’ tale of middle-class frustration, Mathews’ debut is an Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Winner of the Crystal Bear at the 2012 Berlinale and Best Screenplay at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Reis Çelik’s Night of Silence (Lal gece, 2012) is yet another fine example of the incredible works emanating from burgeoning Turkish film industry. In UK cinemas this week, Çelik’s minimalist drama Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “When you’re in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all”. This is the line that introduces Canadian Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell (2012), a deeply personal yet shrewdly alluring examination of the art of storytelling. Thrusting her own family under the microscopic glare of her Continue Reading
