Harriet Warman
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘To Kill a Man’ review
★★★★☆ The fourth feature from director Alejandro Fernández Almendras, To Kill a Man (2014) opens with a wide shot of a dense forest, the trees cut by light forcing its way through the canopy. We see a man in the right of the frame walking slowly yet purposefully through the foliage and then disappear from…
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DVD Review: ‘Exhibition’
★★★★★ A man (H) and a woman (D) live together in a modernist house in London designed by the architect James Melvin in director Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition (2013). Both are artists, though the specifics of their particular media are for the most part ambiguous, and they work and cohabit within a space defined by sliding…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Sorrow and Joy’ review
★★☆☆☆ Film director Johannes (Jakob Cedergren) returns home from a trip to be told that his wife Signe (Helle Fagralid) has killed their infant daughter in director Nils Malmros’ largely autobiographical effort Sorrow and Joy (2013). Initially filled with disbelief, Johannes quickly rallies himself into supporting his wife’s case for psychiatric care, rather than psychiatric…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Club Sandwich’ review
★★★★☆ Opening with a Spanish cover of The Pixies’ Where Is My Mind, the laidback rhythm of this angst-laden classic sets the tone for Club Sandwich (2013), a perfectly paced, acutely observed portrayal of a mother-son relationship. Paloma (María Renée Prudencio) and her teenage son, Hector (Lucio Giménez Cacho), are holidaying in the off season…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘X/Y’ review
★★★☆☆ Ryan Piers Williams returns to Edinburgh with his sophomore feature as director (following 2010’s The Dry Land) with X/Y (2014), a largely insightful and refreshing portrayal of relationships between several thirtysomethings in New York. Beginning with the break-up of Mark (Williams) and Sylvia (America Ferrara), played with an economy of dialogue by the two…
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Edinburgh 2014: ‘Palo Alto’ review
★★★☆☆ Based on a series of disparate short stories written by James Franco – who also stars – Palo Alto (2013) is the directorial debut of Gia Coppola and concerns the lives of a group of teenagers living in the titular city in California. Employing a laid back, observational style not unlike that of her aunt…
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DVD Review: ‘Out of the Furnace’
★★★★☆ For Crazy Heart (2009), director Scott Cooper immersed himself the Americana of the country music scene, and with the aide of T Bone Burnett crafted a sincere and hopeful portrait of a man wrestling with his innate talent. Again inspired by his fascination with American culture, but more closely rooted to a specific place…