★★★★☆ Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Fox unravels her own history of sexual abuse in The Tale, a sharp and harrowing account of stories and lies hidden away at the expense of innocence. The truth of the story as far as Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) knows, The Tale centres around the discovery Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Fresh faces Maia Mitchell and Cami Morrone star in the debut feature film from Texan director Augustine Frizzell, the chaotic, stoner-girl trip Never Goin’ Back – playing this weekend at Sundance London. High-school dropouts Jessie (Morrone) and Angela (Mitchell) are inseparable. Nothing matters more to them than each other Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Whit Stillman’s films are often concerned with the absurdities of human interactions. His latest, Love & Friendship, is no different – except that it’s based on a Jane Austen novella. Yet Stillman, whose previous work like 2009’s Damsels in Distress focuses in a skew-eyed perspective of modern America, is Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ At the beginning of Josh Fox’s breakout 2010 documentary Gasland, he stated that he was not a pessimist. Further along the same road of ecological activism that he embarked on in that film, his newest endeavour sees him presented with a very real challenge to his otherwise sunny disposition. Continue Reading
The sleepy Utah ski resort of Park City explodes into life once again as Hollywood and the world’s press bombard its slopes. This is the Sundance Film Festival, which despite its modest indie circuit origins (as the Utah/US Film Festival in 1978) is now America’s foremost film festival, perhaps in Continue Reading
★★★★☆ When Mark Duplass and Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss first sit and discuss their relationship in a couples therapy session, audiences will feel they have a fair idea of where The One I Love (2014) is headed. A romantic dramedy of sorts with hints of mumblecore, in which the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Recent lo-fi Brooklynite comedies such as Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2013) and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (2010) feel positively old-hat compared with Gillian Robespierre’s bracing Obvious Child (2014), which is funnier and more urgent than both. Robespierre and her breakout star Jenny Slate give us a feminist comedy about Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ To describe Tim Sutton’s Memphis (2013) – screening this week at the Sundance London film and music festival – as ‘meditative’ would be something of an understatement. With his 2012 debut, Pavilion, the director was likened to a cross between Terrence Malick and Gus Van Sant, producing an ephemeral Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Moral crises abound in Sara Colangelo’s brooding debut feature, Little Accidents (2014). A small mining community in the Appalachian Mountains is devastated by the deaths of ten of its workers when a mine collapses. After a few months, the sole survivor Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) returns from hospital to Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Following on from 2012’s Kid-Thing, a feverish tale about a destructive young girl operating freely beyond all tangible moral boundaries, the Zellner brothers returns with Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014). Perfectly pitched between lighthearted whimsy and all-out absurdity, the Zellners’ latest is a forlorn tale about our own obsession Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ In 1990, Sydney Freeland’s home of Gallup, New Mexico was dubbed Drunktown, USA by a report on ABC’s 20/20 news programme. Decades later, Freeland has reclaimed the undesirable moniker for the name of her feature debut set in her hometown and the adjoining reservation. Drunktown’s Finest (2014) has been Continue Reading
Following on from the overwhelming success of last year’s sophomore outing, American actor and director Robert Redford’s Sundance London film and music festival returns to the nation’s capital this month for its third incarnation, which takes place at the O2 Arena from 25-27 April. As with 2013, the majority of Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ David Wnendt’s Wetlands (2013) stars Carla Juri as Helen, an adventurous teen experimenting with sex, drugs and haemorrhoids.The daughter of divorced parents – and with countless issues feeding her angst – Helen spends her days indulging in casual encounters with strangers, vegetables and public toilet seats. One day the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 Continue Reading