John Bleasdale
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Film Review: ‘Macbeth’
★★★★☆ By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes – namely Snowtown director Justin Kurzel’s visually inventive take on the Scottish play Macbeth (2015), starring Michael Fassbender as the murderous Thane and Marion Cotillard as his Lady. Scotland is in the grip of civil war and the survival of King Duncan’s (David…
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Film Review: ‘By Our Selves’
★★☆☆☆ “John Clare was a minor nature poet, who went mad,” voices repeat as a challenging refrain throughout Andrew Kötting’s By Our Selves (2015), a barmy reconstruction of a four-day walk/escapade that Clare took from the asylum near Epping Forest, where he was confined, heading for Helpston in Northamptonshire. Toby Jones has the thankless task…
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DVD Review: ‘Anarchy’
★★☆☆☆ Belonging to that wonky sub-genre of William Shakespeare’s commonly works known as the ‘problem plays’, Michael Almereyda’s Anarchy (2014) is an intriguingly off-the-wall production which ultimately doesn’t quite gel. Cymbeline (Ed Harris) of the Briton Motorcycle Club goes to war with the Roman police department headed by Caius Lucius (Vondie Curtis-Hall). Meanwhile, his second…
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Film Review: ‘The Reflektor Tapes’
★★☆☆☆ “Insofar as I have any ambition for our music, it would be that it survives anonymously,” a band member with scant irony states at the beginning of Arcade Fire: The Reflektor Tapes (2015), begging the question: why not just release your music anonymously? Why allow a filmmaker access to your live shows and recording…
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Film Review: ‘Narcopolis’
★★☆☆☆ A future where all drugs are legal and dispensed in candy coloured confections. Sounds fantastic, right? Apparently not. Funded by Kickstarter, Justin Trefgarne’s debut feature Narcopolis (2014) posits such a future as a dour urban nightmare in which everyone looks miserable, except when they’re dancing to futuristic house music – which basically sounds like…
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Film Review: ‘Mia Madre’
★★★☆☆ “La mamma è sempre la mamma” the Italian expression goes: mum is always mum. And yet mothers die. Director Nanni Moretti’s new film Mia Madre (2015), which first premièred at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a meditation on imminent grief and the loss of a mother. Margherita (Margherita Buy) is a stressed modern…
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Toronto 2015: ‘The Event’ review
★★★★☆ With Maidan (2014), Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa made a stunning document of recent events, giving the sensation that history was being freshly minted and world-changing events taking place amidst the stink of burning tires and the febrile excitement of new hope. Although The Event (2015) is set in Russia and relates to a moment…
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Venice 2015: ‘From Afar’ wins Golden Lion
The red carpet has been walked upon, the Spritz has been supped and the lion has roared. This year’s Golden Lion selection is yet another surprise choice, the perfectly serviceable but by no means extraordinary Venezuelan-set drama From Afar, which follows the unlikely relationship between a maker of false teeth and a Caracas street tough.…
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Venice 2015: ‘From Afar’ review
★★★☆☆ Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at Venice this year, Lorenzo Vigas’ debut film From Afar (2015) is a tightly controlled tale of quiet desperation and alienation set in present day Venezuela. Armando (Pablo Larraín muse Alfredo Castro) is a well-off small businessman with a false teeth business who regularly cruises the streets of…
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Venice 2015: ‘Remember’ review
★★★☆☆ When it comes to the Holocaust, remembering is a serious matter: a moral imperative in fact. However, as the years pass, living memory inevitably diminishes with the death of the survivors, witnesses and the perpetrators. That which must not be forgotten, never forgotten, eventually will be. Life becomes history. In Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s…