CineVue
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Film Review: ‘Anton Corbijn: Inside Out’
★★★★☆ With a career spanning almost four decades, encompassing photography, visual installations and film, Anton Corbijn is one of the most highly regarded artists of his generation. Having worked with such high profile bands as Arcade Fire, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Nirvana and U2, as well as directing three acclaimed features, Klaartje Quirijn’s documentary Anton…
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Film Review: ‘Keyhole’
★★☆☆☆ A super stylised, visually evocative ode to good ol’ bricks and mortar from experimental Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, Keyhole (2011) is a difficult film to truly get a grasp of due to its myriad of textual influences. Part-Homer’s The Odyssey, part-Shock Corridor (1963), part-supernatural drama, Maddin’s monochrome mystery both confounded and astounded critics at…
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Film Review: ‘When the Lights Went Out’
★★★☆☆ Truth is often stranger and more unsettling than fiction, a fact which adds an extra chill to When the Lights Went Out (2012), the new British horror courtesy of writer/director Pat Holden. Based around what is considered to be one of Britain’s most famous cases of supernatural phenomena, Holden’s latest is made all the…
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Film Review: ‘Hope Springs’
★★★☆☆ Hope Springs (2012), the new US rom-com from The Devil Wears Prada (2006) director David Frankel, could easily have been given a full title of ‘Hope Springs Eternal’, so clear and transparent is its message about ‘keeping the faith’ through life’s rockier times. Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones star as…
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Film Review: ‘To Rome with Love’
★★☆☆☆ Woody Allen continues his European odyssey with To Rome with Love (2012), intertwining multiple stories which attempt to paint a portrait of life in the Eternal City. The various plots stretch across the social scale, including an Italian worker who finds himself an overnight celebrity (Roberto Benigni), a young pair of Italian newly-weds who…
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Film Review: ‘About Elly’
★★★★☆ About Elly (2009) finally gets its long-awaited UK theatrical release this week thanks primarily to the Academy Award and Golden Bear success of director Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2011). It’s a shame that it’s taken such a monumental accolade for Farhadi’s fourth feature to see the light of day, as this award-winning drama is…
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Film Review: ‘ParaNorman’
★★★☆☆ With the UK release of Chris Butler and Sam Fell’s ParaNorman 3D (2012), comparisons with Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012) seem almost unavoidable. Both claymation features draw upon established horror classics (albeit from different cinematic eras), and yet remain very different films in their own right. Whereas Burton pays tribute to 1930s horror, ParaNorman salutes…
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Film Review: ‘The Sweeney’ (2012)
★★☆☆☆ The opening scene of The Football Factory (2004) director Nick Love’s The Sweeney (2012) features a frenetically-paced – and unarguably entertaining – bank heist that packs a series of high-octane punches, all vaguely reminiscent of Antonia Bird’s Face (1997). However, what initially promises to be a thrilling tale of gangsters and morally-dubious coppers on…
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Interview: Karl Markovics, director of ‘Breathing’
This week sees the DVD and Blu-ray release of Austrian screen actor Karl Markovics’ assured and powerful directorial debut feature, Breathing (Atmen, 2011). The film follows Roman Kogler (played brilliantly by newcomer Thomas Schubert), a 19-year-old young man who has spent the last five years in a juvenile detention centre, until a job opportunity working…
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DVD Review: ‘Breathing’
★★★★☆ Austrian screen actor Karl Markovics (best-known for his turn as Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s 2007 Academy Award-winning The Counterfeiters) marks himself out as a director to watch with his compelling directorial debut, Breathing (Atmen, 2011). Following the daily life of an inmate at a juvenile detention centre – though never straying into…