★★★★☆ Having featured in a variety of documentaries that explore the fashion scene in and around New York City, the unique and irrepressible fashionista Iris Apfel now takes centre stage in one of her very own. The final feature from […]
★★★☆☆ Queen & Country (2014), which screened in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at Cannes last year, is the second part of John Boorman’s filmic memoir, following on directly from his 1987 Best Picture Oscar nominee Hope & Glory. It’s 1952: […]
★★★★☆ In a nameless girls’ school, somewhere in wet, rural England, girls are falling – in both senses. The year is 1969, and it starts with the 16-year-old Abbie (Florence Pugh). Her dusky voice is beyond her years and she’s […]
Carol Morley was in high spirits on the breezy spring morning CineVue met her (she likens press junkets to speed dating). The wind rustled in the air outside, but not with the sense of foreboding mysticism of her remarkable new […]
★★★★☆ If you only know Eyes Without a Face (1960) from the Billy Idol rock ballad, then you are in for a treat. Georges Franju’s Gallic body horror is a complex atmospheric chiller which balances graphic shocks with subtle characterisation. […]
★★★★☆ “Heaven forbid if he ever comes back,” intones a village elder as Martin Lepiš, otherwise known as ‘Dragon’ (Radovan Lukavský), is led, restrained, into exile. This sequence is told in flashback to give context to the thick atmosphere of […]
★★★★★ City Lights (1931) begins with a scene of splendour as the gathered dignitaries and the jubilant crowd attend the unveiling of a new monument, a group of statues personifying valour, industry and justice. As the nattering speeches finish and […]
★★★☆☆ Commonly referred to as the ‘Father Knows Best Trilogy’, Ang Lee’s first three films are notable primarily as an introduction to key themes and his devotion to nuanced emotional drama. They also staved off the retirement of famous Taiwanese […]
★★☆☆☆ Alan Rickman’s second stint as director yields mixed results wrapped up in a stylish French bow, A Little Chaos (2014). It’s a beautiful effort but completely sophomoric in all its trappings. There is something inherently off-kilter while watching, the […]
★★★★☆ This Sundance award-winning documentary recalls English poet Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad…” Then again, Larkin probably didn’t have parents as paranoid as Oscar Angulo who, with ex-hippie Susanne, raised their […]
★★★★☆ Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf opened last year’s Venice Orizzonti sidebar with The President (2014), which attains the open force of a parable while at the same time maintaining the excitement and tension of a political thriller. Georgian actor Misha Gomiashvili […]
★★☆☆☆ “A boring woman sick of her boring life is not boring,” claims Martin (Fabrice Luhini), the nosey French neighbour of Gemma Arterton’s titular Gemma Bovery (2014). He’s the narrator of this strangely quaint adaptation of Posy Simmons’s graphic novel […]
★★★☆☆ Set largely in the mountainous Kingdom of Lesotho, The Forgotten Kingdom (2013) isn’t lacking for a spectacular backdrop to tell its gentle ‘hero’s journey’ tale. The vistas that dominate the film are truly spectacular and director Andrew Mudge peppers […]
★★★☆☆ Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was the Colombian drug lord par excellence. Ruling his own fiefdom of Medellín, he first made his money stealing gravestones and ended up, through kidnapping, murder and cocaine to be one of the wealthiest criminals […]
★★★★☆ David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), on Blu-ray this week through Arrow Video, sees the Canadian auteur at the peak of his pre- Hollywood career, angling subversive body horror into broader political and social commentary. The film starts of with the […]
★★★★☆ A contender for last year’s Palme d’Or – if not the most deserving, according to its modest director – Naomi Kawase’s Still the Water (2014) is a fluid, dreamlike tone poem of mothers and fathers, death and continuance. Violent […]
★★★★★ In an age where more films are available to us than ever before, the role of the curator is paramount. As the medium of criticism becomes defined by an anxiety born of the continued uncertainty of the uneasy shift […]
★★★★☆ Adding fuel to the long-running argument that quality television is overtaking and even overriding the contemporary cinematic landscape is The Knick (2014), whose first season establishes itself as the kind of expansive serial storytelling the likes of which, indeed, […]
