Berlin
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Berlin 2016: Hail, Caesar! review
★★★☆☆ ‘Second time’s a charm’ is not the feeling that hits home when reflecting upon the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar!, the opening film of this year’s Berlinale. Second as this is their second time opening the festival (after True Grit did the honours in 2011 before scooping a number of Oscars) and more importantly sees…
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Berlin 2016: Our picks of the festival
The 66th Berlin International Film Festival opens later today with the Coen brothers’ star-studded caper Hail, Caesar!. Starring George Clooney, Channing Tatum and Tilda Swinton to name but a few, the Coens’ latest is destined to steal the industry headlines. But don’t let the Hollywood nostalgia of the festival’s opening gala mislead you: the Berlinale…
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Glasgow 2015: ‘Black Coal, Thin Ice’ review
★★★☆☆ Cowardice, treachery and bloody murder coalesce in director Diao Yinan’s Golden Bear-winning Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014), a tonally erratic noir that blends the aesthetics and absurd comicality of Johnnie To with a mainstream cop procedural. The apathy and social malaise of Northern China’s contemporary heartbeat provides the rhythm for Yinan’s ostentatious detective drama – a…
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Berlin 2014: ‘Black Coal, Thin Ice’ wins the Golden Bear
The 64th Berlin Film Festival drew to a close tonight with its prestigious annual awards ceremony, rewarding the cream of this year’s crop with the International Jury’s highest accolades. Headed up by American producer extraordinaire James Schamus, and featuring American actress Greta Gerwig and French director Michel Gondry, the Jury presented the coveted Golden Bear…
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Berlin 2014: ‘The Little House’ review
★★★☆☆ A faded postcard from a bygone era, Japanese director Yôji Yamada’s The Little House (2014) drifted through this year’s Berlinale Competition like cherry blossom on the breeze, surprisingly scooping the Best Actress Bear for lead Haru Kuroki. It’s not that Kuroki’s performance is poor, per se; it’s just that so little about Yamada’s latest…
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Berlin 2014: ‘Boyhood’ review
★★★★★ A mind-boggling twelve years in the making, Richard Linklater’s quietly monumental new film, Boyhood (2014), somehow manages to dwarf his decades-straddling Before series in almost every conceivable way. Following the maturation of six-year-old Mason (a constant Ellar Coltrane) all the way up to his first day at college, never before has a coming-of-age tale…
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Berlin 2014: ‘La Belle et la Bête’ review
★★☆☆☆ Christophe Gans invites you to be his guest for yet another adaptation of classic French fancy La Belle et la Bête (2014). Attempting to capture the enchantment of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s fairytale, Gans’ overcooked adaptation stars Lea Seydoux, Vincent Cassel and a menagerie of furry critters. After losing his fleet, le Marchand (André Dussollier)…
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Berlin 2014: ‘The Second Game’ review
★★★★☆ Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich once described football as “the ballet of the masses”. In Corneliu Porumboiu’s minimalist documentary The Second Game (2014), we watch a recording of an intense local derby between Romania’s two largest teams (Steaua and Dinamo Bucharest) played in the winter of 1988 – a time when the backpass was still…
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Berlin 2014: ‘No Man’s Land’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Presumably conceived as an homage to the Italian westerns of Sergio Leone and perhaps the most dire inclusions in this year’s somewhat lacklustre Berlinale Competition strand, Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land (2014) is a smash and grab attempt to appeal to the English-speaking audiences. However, whilst Leone evoked a sense of epic grandeur and…
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Berlin 2014: ‘The Third Side of the River’ review
★★★☆☆ Produced by Martin Scorsese, Argentinian director Celina Murga’s The Third Side of the River (2014) is an oblique and slow-burning study of patriarchal oppression that aims to depict a certain truth about domestic intimidation. A beautifully observed father, son drama, Murga’s pressure-cooker of familial disquiet and indirect masochism asks a lot of question, yet…