Film reviews and more
★★★☆☆ There is plenty of focus but little flash in Anton Corbijn’s Life (2015), a snapshot of one of cinema’s most enduring icons. A renowned photographer, Corbijn knows a thing or two about capturing the elusive essence of stardom, yet […]
★★☆☆☆ In Wim Wenders’ facile return to narrative filmmaking, Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015), all of life’s problems can easily be resolved by a good old-fashioned hug. Loaded with unremarkable statements on moral resolve and brimming with arrogance, this […]
★★★★☆ Jem Cohen is perhaps best-known to UK audiences for his tenderly observant drama Museum Hours (2012). A comparable romantic outlook on the world and similarly intimate themes of urban identity are intermingled with much larger social concerns in his […]
★★★☆☆ A luminous critique of the rising tide of consumerism engulfing South East Asia , director Phan Dang Di’s Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories (2015) contrasts the arresting natural beauty of the Vietnamese countryside with the gaudy neon-lit […]
★★★☆☆ As We Were Dreaming (2015), a coming of age tale about a group of friends growing up in Leipzig, is German director Andreas Dresen’s competition entry for the Golden Bear adapted by Wolfgang Kohlhaase from Clemens Meyer’s award-winning novel […]
★★☆☆☆ Director Mitchell Lichtenstein achieved cult veneration with Teeth (2007), a idiosyncratic body horror about a young fundamentalist Christian who develops a gynaecological abnormality that she turns to her advantage in order to ward of the threat of male violence. […]
★★☆☆☆ Romantic comedy convention is condensed into forty-eight hours and a single apartment in Max Nichol’s debut, Two Night Stand (2014). Analeigh Tipton and Whiplash (2014) star Miles Teller play the twenty-something couple whose online hook-up is unexpectedly extended by […]
★★☆☆☆ The first film from editor Andrew Hulme has a promising visual edge but is saddled by a style-over-substance formula that harks away from character development and narrative discussion. Co-written by Martin Askew, on whose own story the film partly […]
★★★★★ Time has been favourable to The Philadelphia Story (1940). Even as a septuagenarian, it still sizzles and simmers in fine form. Dubbed a “comedy of remarriage”, it is now being played in all its rom-com glory at the British […]
★★★★☆ Using the optimistic innocence of children, Dancing in Jaffa (2013) succeeds in exploring the effect of explosive racial tensions in Israel between Jewish and Arabic peoples. This is done through the camaraderie developed by Israeli-Palestinians and Israeli- Jewish children […]
★★★☆☆ Western narratives have long been fascinated with fate, beguiled by those moments in the past where a decision irrevocably changes the direction of our lives. These points of divergence can seem insignificant, whilst others stay with you forever. It’s […]