Day: 22 June 2016
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Film Review: Suburra
★★☆☆☆ Untangling the web of politics, sex, drugs and power that weave together crime families is a massive undertaking within film. Much like political dramas, we’ve been met with a myriad of crime family-related films over the years that try to suss out the nature of good and evil in a world so full of…
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Film Review: Remainder
★★★★☆ Can memories be trusted to document the past? Visual artist Omar Fast’s ambitious debut Remainder, an adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s eponymous novel questions the limitations of art as a tool to interpret history. Combining the devious logic of its source material with a stand-out performance by Tom Sturridge, Remainder presents the filmmaking process as…
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Film Review: The Meddler
★★★★☆ Although Lorene Scafaria’s tender, bittersweet comedy The Meddler, starring Susan Sarandon and J.K. Simmons, is marred by the occasional cliché, it’s also an unexpectedly perceptive film about loneliness, grief and mother-daughter relationships. After the death of her beloved husband, Joe, Marnie Minervini (Sarandon) moves to Los Angeles to be close to her daughter Lori…
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Film Review: Ma Ma
★★★☆☆ Heartstrings, prepared to be tugged at vigorously. Ma Ma is a quintessential tear-jerking melodrama that leans into its genre conventions heavily while still keeping an airy beauty to its characters and vision. Penélope Cruz’s charming turn as a breast cancer-stricken mother navigating her battle with her disease over the course of one year is…
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Film Review: Becoming Zlatan
★★★★☆ It’s hard to fathom how an Irish left-back could bring the international career of a footballing great to an end but Robbie Brady’s last-gasp winner rang the death knell for Sweden’s talismanic striker Zlatan Ibrahimović. With a forthcoming domestic move to Manchester United reportedly on the cards, the timely release of Fredrik and Magnus…
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Film Review: Adult Life Skills
★★★☆☆ Grief is not uncommon thematic ground for the cinema. Making sense of loss, the void to be filled and one’s individual reaction to bereavement is a tale as old as time. From a wealth of experience in the editing room, writer-director Rachel Tunnard steps behind the camera with debut feature Adult Life Skills. It…
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Edinburgh 2016: Little Men review
★★★★★ Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri are future stars. The titular protagonists of Ira Sachs’ Little Men give extraordinarily mature performances that belie their tender age. They feature in a perceptive, affecting family drama that channels the director’s characteristically graceful, understated and emotionally enrapturing style through a subtly crafted story of class and gentrification in…
