Director Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross (2014) finally arrives on UK cinema screens this week after premiering in the competition strand of this year’s Berlinale where it won a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. It certainly a formally audacious and impressive work that rewards repeat viewings in the awakening of black humour Continue Reading
Palestinian cinema is relatively young in comparison to Arab cinema as a whole. This is for obvious reasons, but that hasn’t stopped a vibrancy developing over the last twenty years that has wowed both audiences and international film festivals. This year they have submitted a film for the Best Foreign Continue Reading
★★★★★ There are certain works that define the experience of what cinema is, and because of this they become difficult to create a discourse around. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is such a film. The idea of contemplating and theorising Kubrick’s iconic film and then having to Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Rigidity is both alpha and omega in Dietrich Brüggemann’s stark and startling new religious drama, Stations of the Cross (2014) which arrives in British cinemas this Friday on the back of much festival praise. With form echoing function it is aesthetically austere and structurally meticulous in telling the story Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Originally conceived in 1958 by Michael Bond, Paddington Bear is given new life in Paul King’s quintessentially British family comedy. Packed to the rafters with a stellar cast that boasts Sally Hawkins and Ben Whishaw, Paddington (2014) is a tale of delights. Opening with the click of a black Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis reunite for Horrible Bosses 2 (2014), a predictably bland and entirely unnecessary sequel to the 2011 comedy in which three mistreated employees conspired to murder their managers. While that film suceeded in at least partially delivering on its amusing premise, its follow-up Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In answer to what he would do to follow 2011’s multi-layered collage The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Göran Hugo Olsson has settled on the fight against Colonists in Africa by its indigenous people by again raiding the archives of Swedish Television for Concerning Violence (2014). This time he is Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ After causing a stir on the Croisette where it premiered last year in the Critic’s Week Sidebar You and the Night (2013) is the debut feature from Yann Gonzalez and it is as infuriating as it’s spectacular. With a wholly original score from the director’s brother, M83, it seems Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ Even as far back as 1843, when Charles Dickens penned his illustrious novella A Christmas Carol, the materialism of Christmas was already apparent. Dickens wrote “Christmas is a poor excuse every 25 December to pick a man’s pocket” and it’s a cynical, yet astute statement that resonates even to Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In the early 1920s, Douglas Fairbanks was transformed from comedy star into swash-buckling heartthrob via The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921) and Robin Hood (1922). Arguably one of the high-notes amongst his sensational ripping yarns is 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad, a reworking of the Arabian Continue Reading
★★★★★ There is a scene part of the way through Hayao Miyazaki’s exceptional Spirited Away (2001) in which the young girl, Chihiro (voiced by Rumi Hiiragi) helps to bathe an odorous spirit that frequents the bathhouse in which she is forced to work. Her tenacity in serving a customer that Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ After having his expressive wings clipped in exchange for genre formula with The Green Hornet (2011) and relinquishing his creative control to a group of Bronx school kids in his collaborative teen comedy The We and the I (2012), Michel Gondry returns to the land of the fantastical with Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Making his return to filmmaking after his adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fifth (2011), Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest, Ida (2013), is a spare and outstandingly minimalist drama very much in keeping with his cinematic fixation with outsiders who find themselves out of their depths. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s 1929 masterpiece Diary of a Lost Girl, demonstrates the luminosity of his iconic star, Louise Brooks, in what was their final of two legendary collaborations, the other being Pandora’s Box in the same year. Having left Paramount studios to work for the celebrated Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Memories of Tim Burton’s woeful 2001 Planet of the Apes remake were thankfully replaced with far fonder recollections in 2011 following the release of Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. An earnest entry in the flagging sci-fi franchise and a surprise hit at the international box Continue Reading