This morning at London’s Odeon Leicester Square, the British Film Institute announced the full programme for the 57th BFI London Film Festival, a twelve-day extravaganza showcasing the very best in upcoming mainstream, world and experimental cinema. With British director Paul Greengrass’ hijack thriller Captain Phillips and Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks Continue Reading
The Venice Golden Lion returned to the host country after fifteen years this evening with Gianfranco Rosi’s biography of a Rome ring road, Sacro GRA, picking up the festival’s top prize. Renowned director Bernardo Bertolucci and his jury plumped for high arthouse cinema over the more crowd-pleasing fare of Stephen Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Timothy Sutton’s second film, Memphis (2013) – in show at this year’s Venice Film Festival – is a meditation into music, “God-given” talent and madness starring and scored by Willis Earl Beal. Beal, a fascinating compelling presence, is first seen looking a bit lost in a TV studio. “I Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Tsai Ming-liang, joint-winner of the 1994 Golden Lion for Vive L’Amour, returns to Venice with new film Stray Dogs (2013), a motionless motion picture which may challenge even the hardiest arthouse advocates with its tale of a family living on the edge of poverty in Taiwan. Lee Kang-sheng plays Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Part of a new generation of young horror directors, Ti West arrives in Venice with The Sacrament (2013), a found-footage frightener based loosely on the true events of the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. Updating the story, West has a trio of filmmakers – Sam (A.J. Bowen), Jake (Joe Swanberg) Continue Reading
★★★★★ The opening film of the 70th Venice Film Festival is Alfonso Cuaròn’s sci-fi blockbuster Gravity (2013), featuring Lido regular George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as two astronauts cast adrift in space when their shuttle is struck by satellite debris. Cuaròn has had something of a directing hiatus of late Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Showing in the Orizzonti sidebar at the 70th Venice Film Festival, Ruin (2013) is by turns a gritty and dazzling lovers-on-the-run tale set in modern day Cambodia. Directed by Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson, the film tells the story of two of society’s worst-off down-and-outs. Sang Malen plays Sovanna, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Following the dreadful A Burning Hot Summer which showed in competition in 2011, Philippe Garrel returns to the Lido with Jealousy (La Jalousie, 2013), a modest relationship drama of love and betrayal. Garrel casts his son in the lead role of Louis, a struggling actor who we see splitting Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ No stranger to the Venice Lido, Amos Gitai’s new film Ana Arabia (2013) – in competition this year – is a quiet exploration of love and tolerance in Israel. On the border between Jaffa and Bat Jam exists a small dusty enclave of Arabs and Jews. A young reporter, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi has been at Venice on several occasions, but with his new film, Sacro GRA (2013), he has graduated to the main competition. Rosi’s roam on the orbital road of the title is a fascinating, witty and meditative piece which delivers an alternative view of Rome, Continue Reading