Film reviews and more
★★★☆☆ How to solve a problem like Abkhazia? Or rather, how to send a letter from Paris to a country that has not yet been acknowledged by the French state? Documentary filmmaker Eric Baudelaire again chooses the epistolary form in Letters to Max (2014) after employing a series of email exchanges to structure […]
★★★☆☆ The ironic naming of the cargo ship that director Lucie Borleteau uses in Fidelio: Alice’s Journey (2014) comes into view as the ‘Fidelio’ departs the port of Marseille for the first time. Employed as the literal and figurative vessel for the emotional and spiritual odyssey undertaken by the film’s eponymous voyager (Ariane […]
★★☆☆☆ “John Clare was a minor nature poet, who went mad,” voices repeat as a challenging refrain throughout Andrew Kötting’s By Our Selves (2015), a barmy reconstruction of a four-day walk/escapade that Clare took from the asylum near Epping Forest, where he was confined, heading for Helpston in Northamptonshire. Toby Jones has the […]
Though he dislikes the term himself, Andrew Bujalski is widely regarded as the linchpin of the nebulous mumblecore scene that spawned the likes of the Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg and Lynn Shelton. Whilst his first three features possess the low budget and shaggy tone that define the scene, Bujalski’s films have always been […]
★★☆☆☆ In a grey, rainy London, hued blue to add further sombre foreboding, the indomitable Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) finds himself in a familiar position: watching an op go south via screens in a new and improved Thames House, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bharat Nalluri – who directed half […]
★★★★☆ French filmmaker Bruno Dumont is a director strongly associated with serious, spiritual, and metaphysical European arthouse. What a surprise it was, then, when his latest project was announced as not only being a first foray into the world of long-form television, but a comedy to boot. The result is the four part […]
★★★★★ Alongside Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, and John Huston, Otto Preminger was one of the most influential film noir directors in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. This new collection by the BFI gives us three of his finest works, namely Fallen Angel (1945), Whirlpool (1949) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950). The […]
★★★★★ Adapted from Gerald Kersh’s 1938 novel, which at the time warned readers that it featured a story “not for the strait-laced or squeamish, but for those willing to taste it, a treat of rare substance”, Night and the City (1950) postmarked the end of the gloom-ridden cinema of the forties as something […]
★★★★☆ Bruce Goodison’s impressive feature Leave to Remain (2013) confronts the issue of teenage asylum seekers struggling to adapt to life in London and dealing with past trauma as they wait for their permanent leave to remain. In Britain, unaccompanied minors are granted temporary asylum and are placed in foster homes or shelters. […]
★★☆☆☆ Belonging to that wonky sub-genre of William Shakespeare’s commonly works known as the ‘problem plays’, Michael Almereyda’s Anarchy (2014) is an intriguingly off-the-wall production which ultimately doesn’t quite gel. Cymbeline (Ed Harris) of the Briton Motorcycle Club goes to war with the Roman police department headed by Caius Lucius (Vondie Curtis-Hall). Meanwhile, […]
★★★☆☆ The writer and director of 52 Tuesdays (2013), Sophie Hyde, must be commended for her sticking to the challenging rules that she set herself. The film was shot strictly on every Tuesday for a year, to the point that when one character takes a brief trip to San Francisco they still made […]
★★☆☆☆ “Insofar as I have any ambition for our music, it would be that it survives anonymously,” a band member with scant irony states at the beginning of Arcade Fire: The Reflektor Tapes (2015), begging the question: why not just release your music anonymously? Why allow a filmmaker access to your live shows […]
★★★★☆ No number of truisms about the strange relationship between truth and fiction can quite sum up the uncanny reality and fateful tragedy of Orion: The Man Who Would Be King (2015). Jeanie Finlay’s best-known film to date, The Great Hip-Hop Hoax (2013), was an unbelievable tale of a music industry swindle and […]
★★☆☆☆ A future where all drugs are legal and dispensed in candy coloured confections. Sounds fantastic, right? Apparently not. Funded by Kickstarter, Justin Trefgarne’s debut feature Narcopolis (2014) posits such a future as a dour urban nightmare in which everyone looks miserable, except when they’re dancing to futuristic house music – which basically […]
★★★☆☆ “La mamma è sempre la mamma” the Italian expression goes: mum is always mum. And yet mothers die. Director Nanni Moretti’s new film Mia Madre (2015), which first premièred at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a meditation on imminent grief and the loss of a mother. Margherita (Margherita Buy) is a […]
★★★☆☆ It would be a mistake to call Anton Corbijn’s Life (2015) a James Dean biopic, despite its subject matter. Far more interesting is the fact that Corbijn, a world famous photographer known for working with everyone from Bob Dylan to U2, has chosen to direct a film about photographer Dennis Stock, the […]
★☆☆☆☆ The warning signs are there even before the opening credits roll. Lessons in Love (2014) – the UK title of Tom Vaughan’s latest – went through two prior iterations for its appearance in Canadian (How To Make Love Like An Englishman) and US (Some Kind of Beautiful) cinemas. Unfortunately, much like giving […]
★★★☆☆ It’s always interesting to learn that an actor has taken on the directorial challenge. What makes Just Jim (2015) pretty remarkable is unlike those who had spent considerable time performing before making the leap (under the tutelage of Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, Eastwood had hit forty when he directed Play Misty […]