Festivals
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Flying Fish’
★★☆☆☆ Following three parallel stories set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s debut feature Flying Fish (Igillena maluwo) – starring Chaminda Sampath Jayaweera, Rathnayaka Marasinghe and Siththi Mariyam – is unfortunately too languorous to sustain any prolonged sense of drama, despite an undeniably shocking finale.Flying Fish has a great deal…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Without’
★★★★☆ One of the twelve nominees for this year’s Sutherland Award at the BFI London Film Festival (and surely a strong contender), Mark Jackson’s minimalist debut Without certainly doesn’t lack emotion and intensity beneath its slow-burning exterior, and welcomes a new emerging talent in the face of Joslyn Jensen.Newcomer Jensen is endlessly watchable as a…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Amador’
★★★☆☆ Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa writes and directs well-meaning drama Amador, focusing upon the lives of Bolivian immigrants in Madrid – an under-represented group in cinematic terms – specifically Marcela (Magaly Solier) and her flower-selling partner Nelson (Pietro Sibille).After discovering that she is pregnant (and in order to make ends meet due to…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Stopped on Track’
★★★★☆ Jonathan Levine’s ‘cancer comedy’ 50/50 (2011) may have grabbed a significant slice of BFI London Film Festival press attention this week, but it is Andreas Dresen’s deeply honest, darkly comic family drama Stopped on Track (Halt auf freier Strecke, 2011) that deserves to win the majority of plaudits thanks to some stellar performances, most…
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LFF 2011: ‘Terraferma’
★★☆☆☆ Every European country seems convinced that it is an especial victim of illegal immigration. The UK sees itself as a soft touch, as do Germany and France. For Italy, the geographical proximity to Northern Africa and a long coastline has led to some extremely draconian legislation to deal with the perceived crisis. This is…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Abu, Son of Adam’
★★☆☆☆ The yearly Muslim Hajj (the holy pilgrimage to Mecca) remains one of the most incredible feats of faith and endurance in human history, which makes it all the more baffling that Salim Ahamed’s directorial debut Abu, Son of Adam (Adaminte Makan Abu, 2011) – starring Salim Kumar, M.R. Gopakumar and Jaffer Idukki – is…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Asshole’ (‘Gandu’)
★★★☆☆ Described by its director Kaushik Mukherjee (Q) as a ‘rap musical’ and starring Anubrata Basu and Joyraj Bhattacharjee, Bengali film Asshole (Gandu, 2011) is perhaps the most controversial – and arguably the bravest – selection made by this year’s BFI London Film Festival committee due to its explicit language, graphic drug abuse and scenes…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘360’
★★☆☆☆ Messy, disorganised and far from an ideal way to start a film festival – this statement could as easily be applied to the scenes of furious construction currently taking place in London’s Leicester square as it can to the 55th BFI London Film Festival’s Opening Night Gala film, Fernando Meirelles’ 360 (2011), which stars…
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Venice 2011: ‘Texas Killing Fields’ review
★★☆☆☆ Ami Canaan Mann’s (daughter of Michael Mann) debut film Texas Killing Fields (2011) is a run-of-the-mill police procedural, which really has no place this year’s Venice Film Festival. Detectives Souder (Sam Worthington) and Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are investigating a series of abductions and murders of young women. The older detective is gripped by…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: Our top 20 programme picks
The 55th BFI London Film Festival 2011 is nearly upon us (make sure you visit our coverage section here from the 12th onwards), so to celebrate this impending cinematic feat, the CineVue team have put our collective heads together and produced a list of our top 20 picks from this year’s extremely strong LFF programme.…