Berlin 2015: ‘Life’ review
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★★★★★ Greek weird wave director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) hits his stride with his strangest yet most deeply satisfying comedy fable yet, Poor Things. This exhilarating mix of Fanny Hill and Frankenstein is adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name.
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★☆☆☆ In Wim Wenders’ facile return to narrative filmmaking, Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015), all of life’s problems can easily be resolved by...
★★★★☆ Jem Cohen is perhaps best-known to UK audiences for his tenderly observant drama Museum Hours (2012). A comparable romantic outlook on the world...
★★★☆☆ A luminous critique of the rising tide of consumerism engulfing South East Asia , director Phan Dang Di’s Big Father, Small Father and...
★★★☆☆ As We Were Dreaming (2015), a coming of age tale about a group of friends growing up in Leipzig, is German director Andreas...
★★☆☆☆ Director Mitchell Lichtenstein achieved cult veneration with Teeth (2007), a idiosyncratic body horror about a young fundamentalist Christian who develops a gynaecological abnormality...
★★☆☆☆ 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...
★★☆☆☆ 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...