Festivals
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EIFF 2013: ‘I Am Breathing’ review
★★★☆☆ A documentary every bit as humorous and uplifting as it is tragic and melancholic, Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon’s I Am Breathing (2013) – which screens at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival ahead of a limited theatrical release – follows the final few months and weeks in the life of 34-year-old Neil Platt, who…
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EIFF 2013: ‘Fat Shaker’ review
★★☆☆☆ Winner of the Tiger Award at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, Mohammad Shirvani’s Fat Shaker (Larzanandeye charbi, 2013) went on to become the first ever Iranian film to screen at Sundance. Now receiving its UK premiere in Edinburgh, the surreal stylistics of Shirvani’s absurdist drama have already evoked extreme controversy in its native Iran.…
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EIFF 2013: ‘Taboor’ review
★★★☆☆ Pushing Iranian cinema into a new stratosphere, Vahid Vakilifar’s Taboor (2012) is a bleak and meditative study of a society rotting from the inside out. Vakilifar takes us through the streets of Tehran, charting the nocturnal activities of an enigmatic man (Mohammad Rabbanipour) clad in a tinfoil suit that protects his hypersensitive body from…
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EIFF 2013: ‘Viola’ review
★★★★☆ With latest effort Viola (2012), Argentine director Matías Piñeiro continues his fascination with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in what could be seen as a fitting counterpart to his 2011 short film, Rosalinda. Ostensibly an unassuming tale about a girl working for her partner’s pirate video delivery service in Buenos Aires, this deceptively simple drama is…
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EIFF 2013: ‘Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction’
★★★★☆ One of cinema’s silent heroes, Harry Dean Stanton has become a staple ingredient of many a film-lover’s diet. The career of Hollywood’s most pre-eminent character actor is presented in Sophie Huber’s Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012), an illuminating portrait of an enigma whose honesty and charisma seeps off the screen. Stanton makes it…
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EIFF 2013: ‘Breathe In’ review
★★★☆☆ The opening film of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, Drake Doremus’ sophomore effort Breathe In (2013) is the discreetly anticipated follow-up to 2011’s Like Crazy. Reuniting Doremus with Felicity Jones (who’s performance here marks a striking surge in maturity), the film also stars Guy Peace in one of his most tender and complex…
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EIFF 2013: Full programme unveiled
Last month saw the release of the full lineup for the 67th Edinburgh International Film Festival. In his second year as artistic director, Chris Fujiwara will be hoping to build on the success of 2012’s resurgent incarnation of the festival. Whilst boasting eye-catching heavyweights such as opening night drama Breathe In, Sofia Coppola’s The Bling…
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Cannes 2013: The Bling Ring review
★★☆☆☆ Opening the Un Certain Regard section of the 66th Cannes Film Festival comes Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring (2013), a teen crime movie/wannabe satire based on the true story of a gang of over-privileged kids (with serious entitlement issues) who burgled a succession of Hollywood celebrity abodes several years back. Marc (Israel Broussard) is…
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Sundance 2013: Mud review
★★★★☆ Premièring towards the end of last year’s Cannes Film Festival when the majority of critics had long left the sun and splendour of the Croisette, indie filmmaker Jeff Nichols’ highly anticipated Mud (2012), his follow-up to 2011’s Take Shelter, somehow fell off the cinematic map on both sides of the Atlantic. Almost a year…
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Sundance 2013: Blackfish review
★★★★☆ Newly positioned as one of this year’s most anticipated American documentaries following rave reviews at Sundance, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish (2013) makes its way to the festival’s London incarnation this week ahead of a late July theatrical release. Cowperthwaite’s slight naïveté as only a second-time feature director (having deputised back in 2010 with City Lax:…