★★★★☆ A chamber piece constructed in pallid pastel shades, Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth (2015) marks a tonal if not thematic departure from the precocious misanthropy of last year’s well-received Listen Up Philip (2014). A feminist exploration of jealously contained within the lurid overtones of a domestic horror, the Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Revered Bavarian director Werner Herzog strains to marry his eccentric directorial style with the period epic in this rather stolid and strangely formal romance starring Australian actress Nicole Kidman as British explorer-cum-spy Gertrude Bell. Queen of the Desert (2015), which premièred in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Arriving at the Berlinale with another probing examination into Chile’s harrowing past, The Pearl Button (2015) makes for a fitting diptych to Patricio Guzmán’s previous documentary, Nostalgia for the Light (2012). Whilst the focus may have shifted, Guzmán continues to gaze at the stars in search of answers, yet Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A festering beauty of a film slowly reveals itself in this bleak but uplifting black-and-white study of grief from Quebeçois director François Delisle, an acutely aware portrait of a relationship after the unimaginable. Fresh from Sundance – where it was largely unnoticed – Chorus (2015) arrives in Berlin held Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Last year’s Stranger by the Lake (also distributed by Peccadillo Pictures) marked something of a sea change in the transitioning of LGBT cinema into mainstream acceptability. Like that film, this lovely coming of age feature, The Way he Looks (2014) – a much gentler affair and minus the sometimes Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The feature debut of the most recent member of the Coppola clan to pick up a film camera, Gia (granddaughter of Francis), is also an entry to the evergreen staple of American cinema: the teen movie. Coppola acknowledges the tropes of the genre without bowing to them. Based on Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Another year, another Young Adult book series optioned and adapted to spin into a trilogy (or more!) of action-packed and spectacular films. Based on James Dashner’s novels, Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner (2014) depicts the nightmarish dystopia of a peaceful forest glade populated exclusively by school-age boys. The daily Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Tragedy says “We all die”, whilst comedy says “Ah, but life goes on”. The winner of last year’s Golden Lion, Roy Andersson’s first feature film in seven years – the brilliantly titled existential comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – is essentially a tragi-comedy which Continue Reading
