★★★☆☆ Following his Oscar-nominated, deeply moving anti-war film Beaufort (2007), director Joseph Cedar continues to raise his profile with Footnote (2011), a uniquely comedic exploration into issues of pride, sacrifice and jealousy through a fragile family dynamic which won him the prestigious best screenplay award at the 2011 Cannes Film Continue Reading
★★★★★ Italian director Nanni Moretti has been making films since 1973 and is often labelled as the ‘Italian Woody Allen’ by lazy critics with a passion for tenuous comparisons. Yet Allen, even on his best day, couldn’t match the skill, humour and ambition Moretti displays in his latest effort We Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Initial critical responses to David Cronenberg’s latest effort A Dangerous Method (2011) were less than positive following the film’s premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Now screening in the UK for the first time at the BFI London Film Festival, Cronenberg’s psychoanalytical drama is markedly flat and even Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ W.E. (2011) attempts to explore the remarkable love affair between King Edward VIII and the infamous Wallis Simpson (played by James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough respectively), yet told with a twist. The film receives its UK premiere tonight at the 55th BFI London Film Festival after a barrage of Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Director Pema Tseden has almost single-handedly reinvented Tibetan cinema. His previous two films, The Silent Holy Stones (2005) and The Search (2009), both screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival to great critical acclaim. Like his previous efforts, Old Dog (2011) is set in the Tibetan region of the Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Dexter Fletcher has a fine film pedigree: Bugsy Malone (1976), The Elephant Man (1980), The Long Good Friday (1980) and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) are just a few of the movies on his 30-year CV, and his directorial debut Wild Bill (2011) – starring Charlie Creed-Miles, Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom is renowned for his ability to switch between genres with relative ease, with past successes including Jude (1996), 24 Hour Party People (2002) and The Killer Inside Me (2010). His latest venture is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s penultimate novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles set Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The Monster of Nix (2011) is an entertaining and quirky existential animation from Rosto, featuring the voices of Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits, and is one of the highlights of the 55th BFI London Film Festival’s animation programme. Willy (Joe Eshuis) lives with his grandmother in Nix – a Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Ichimei, 2011) – starring Kôji Yakusho, Naoto Takenaka and Hikari Mitsushima – can best be described as troublesome; a remake (based on Masaki Kobayashi Harakiri [1962]) that is full of potential, yet ultimately fails to deliver. The plot is your usual fair Continue Reading
★★★★★ Criminally overlooked at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s seminal psychological drama We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) – starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly – receives its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival tonight and stands as not only Continue Reading
★★★★☆ One of the finest documentaries screening at this month’s BFI London Film Festival, if not all year, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 has been a labour of love for its Swedish director Göran Olsson and production team (including US actor turned co-producer Danny Glover). Olsson has poured over hundreds Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011) – with a large ensemble cast including Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet and Jude Law – marks a re-emergence of the old ‘revenge of nature’ genre, but rather than sharks, bees or birds, the enemy to humanity here is much smaller (microscopic in fact) Continue Reading
★★★★★ Directed by two time Palme d’Or-winning Belgium duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo, 2011) continues this remarkably consistent sibling partnership’s ability to capture the poetic essence beneath the misery which often consumes life.We’re thrust straight into the action as the film Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Screening at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival, Take Shelter (2011) once again unites Shotgun Stories (2007) director Jeff Nichols and actor Michael Shannon. Set against a backdrop of Middle American domestic life, Take Shelter is a far more visual film, combining elements of terror with a kitchen Continue Reading
★★★★☆ One of many unexpected highlights of this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival, Natural Selection (2011) is an amusing, unconventional comedy from first-time director Robbie Pickering, starring Rachael Harris, John Diehl and Matt O’Leary.Barren, evangelical housewife Linda (Harris) discovers that her husband Abe (John Diehl) has been secretly donating Continue Reading
