John Bleasdale
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Cannes 2014: ‘Winter Sleep’ wins Palme d’Or
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan this evening won Cannes’ top prize, the coveted Palme d’Or, for his latest film, Winter Sleep. A worthy award winner after previously coming close with such past efforts as 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) and Three Monkeys (2008), Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders and Bennett Miller’s Oscar hopeful Foxcatcher had…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Winter Sleep’ review
★★★★☆ Having carried home the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film back in 2011 with the exceptional Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, celebrated Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to both the Croisette and the Official Competition with Winter Sleep (2014). Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) is a landlord and hotelier in a remote mountain region…
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Cannes 2014: ‘White God’ review
★★☆☆☆ The recently crowned winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes is Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s sixth feature, White God (2014), a sort of canine Rise of Planet of the Apes (2011). Following a short surreal opening which sees a girl cycling through a deserted Budapest, pursued by a large pack…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Snow in Paradise’ review
★★☆☆☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, film editor Andrew Hulme’s directorial debut, Snow in Paradise (2014), is a brave attempt to inject new life into the tired genre of the London gangland thriller. However, the original twists and a certain visual flair struggle to overcome a sense of familiarity and implausibility…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Jauja’ review
★★★☆☆ Viggo Mortensen takes a leisurely stroll through South American arthouse territory in Lisandro Alonso’s oddly compelling peculiarity Jauja (2014). From a screenplay by poet Fabian Casas, the film tells the story of Danish captain Gunnar Dinesen (Mortensen), something of a wanderer who has in tow his 15-year-old daughter, Ingeborg (Viilbjork Mallin Agger). We begin…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Charlie’s Country’ review
★★★☆☆ When Aborigine actor, dancer and activist David Gulpipil was just sixteen he starred in Nicolas Roeg’s masterful Walkabout (1971), accompanying the director and his co-star Jenny Agutter to the Cannes Croisette for the film’s world premiere. Unfortunately, tribal business meant that he was unable to attend the first showing of his new film, Charlie’s…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Leviathan’ review
★★★★★ Life is “nasty, brutish, and short” wrote Thomas Hobbes, the author of the philosophical and political work from which Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan (2014) takes its name. Returning to Cannes this year (Elena was in the Un Certain Regard strand in 2011), Zvyagintsev’s latest is a powerful and compelling retelling of the biblical Book of…
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Cannes 2014: ‘Jimmy’s Hall’ review
★★☆☆☆ Veteran British director Ken Loach makes what could to be his narrative curtain call with Irish political period piece Jimmy’s Hall (2014), which premièred at this year’s 67th Cannes Film Festival. Operating within his comfort zone, Loach wants to educate and inspire the workers, but has ended up with something entirely workmanlike. It’s the…
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Film Review: Whiplash
★★★★★ Following on from its hugely successful world premiere at Sundance this year, Damien Chazelle’s second feature, Whiplash (2014), hits the Croisette showing in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. After catching the eye and winning plaudits for his impressive lead turn in The Spectacular Now (2013), Miles Teller plays Andrew, a dedicated young music student and…
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Cannes 2014: ‘The Search’ review
★★☆☆☆ “This isn’t Saving Private Ryan,” a Russian soldier remarks to camera as one of his comrades films the aftermath of a battle and an ensuing massacre with a video camera. Yet, for all his latest offerings’s fleeting moments of gritty realism, Oscar-winning The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius’ The Search (2014) is a gruesomely sentimental…