★★★☆☆ “How much sorrow can one man bear? As much as a river of spring water flowing east.” This quotation from Li Yu’s 10th century poem bookends and provides the title for Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli’s Chinese melodrama The Spring River Flows East. The verse gives a palpable sense Continue Reading
★★★★★ The classic film noirs – The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep – are not always known for their complex or sympathetic female characters, so often characterised as dissembling sirens or maidenly ideals. Not so with Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, a pitch dark noir whose eponymous anti-heroine (Joan Crawford) Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ It’s difficult to remain objective in assessing the films of Roman Polanski, whose accomplishments in cinema have been rightly overshadowed by the fact that he drugged and raped a child in 1977 before fleeing to Europe, continuing to work in exile. Despite this, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Tenant Continue Reading
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land was ousted by Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight right at the death last night as the latter claimed Best Picture in controversial circumstances due to an error on the cards. Chazelle has previously won Best Director, adding to the film’s wins in the Best Song and Best Continue Reading
Of all the Oscar protests – from Sacheen Littlefeather and Marlon Brando in 1973, to #OscarsSoWhite last year, Michael Moore castigating George W. Bush and Richard Gere pleading for a free Tibet – a key one remains that of George C. Scott. His protest wasn’t about diversity, or the war Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ It’s some time since any degree of positivity has come out of a bitterly divided, and divisive, US of A. Peter Berg’s Patriots Day – a vivid, evocative and unflinching retelling of the April 2013 Boston marathon bombings and their immediate aftermath – is both a fitting tribute and Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Xavier Dolan has adapted theatrical works before. 2013’s Tom at the Farm was a divisive feature but rendered Michael Marc Bouchard’s play in a widescreen cinematic landscape. It’s Only the End of the World sees Dolan adapt Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play of the same name. In the film’s press notes, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Just a week after Moonlight graced UK cinema screens in all its feverish beauty we’re treated to another hard-hitting US indie release that places black characters front and centre. However, though there are certainly parallels to be drawn between Barry Jenkins’ Oscar hopeful and Anna Rose Holmer’s narrative debut Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Gore Verbinski’s new film A Cure for Wellness returns the gothic genre to its roots in melodrama. A grand tale of love and death set in a creepy old castle, it’s primed with the irrational, the repressed, the uncanny and the supernatural. It’s fair to say that Verbinski and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Regularly heralded as the greatest Cuban film of all time, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment is a ranging, challenging work. A cine-essay blend of fictional narrative and documentary observation, it stands out even in the febrile atmosphere of post-revolutionary Cuba. The 1960s saw a number of widely touted Continue Reading
★★★★★ The Crying Game has come to be defined by its twist. More than something like Psycho‘s shower scene, it’s treated as such a good secret that it can’t even be casually discussed and it’s a shame that it became the film’s main cultural legacy. To describe The Crying Game Continue Reading
★★★★★ Just over fifty years after A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor for Paul Scofield, Fred Zinnemann’s adaptation of Robert Bolt’s stage play has found unique points of modern relevance. It is re-released at a time when its more conventional view of Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Opening on a woodland as two deer search through the snow for food, it’s clear from the start On Body and Soul isn’t a conventional love story. Their eyes meet and the stag wanders over to the doe, laying his head on her neck, an act of warmth and Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Child’s Pose director and Golden Bear-winner Cãlin Peter Netzer returns to the Berlinale with Ana, Mon Amour, a tale of love, addiction and the memories of failed romances that linger and won’t be chased away. When we first meet, Ana (Diana Cavallioti) and Toma (Mircea Postelnicu) they’re at the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “Every family has their secrets,” claims Chilean director Lissette Orozco whilst introducing her debut film Adriana’s Pact – but what happens when these secrets get out? A deeply personal documentary about guilt and culpability, we see what happens when the personal and the political become inextricably entwined. Do the wounds Continue Reading
