Joseph Walsh
-
DVD Review: ‘The Big Melt’
★★★★☆ Sparks fly and molten steel bubbles in Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and director Martin Wallace’s poetic homage to Sheffield’s steel industry, The Big Melt (2013). Images and clips are welded together to Cocker’s eloquent, soaring score for a spellbinding film which opened last year’s DocFest, whilst also having been designed to commemorate 100 years…
-
Film Review: ‘The Stag’
★★★☆☆ You’d perhaps be forgiven for thinking that John Butler’s The Stag (2013), co-written and starring Peter McDonald, might be in the vein of Bridesmaids (2011) or Bachelorette (2012) before it. What we actually get is a surprisingly tender Irish comedy, which traverses the depths of modern masculine identity, whilst aping the tropes of the…
-
Film Review: ‘A New York Winter’s Tale’
★☆☆☆☆ Burdened by a plot as saccharine as a Nicholas Sparks novel unceremoniously mashed with all the very worst clichés of teen movie fantasy (looking at you Mortal Instruments), Akiva Goldsman offers his tiresome and bizarre time travel romance A New York Winter’s Tale (2014). Opening to twinkly, glassy-eyed narration, the film’s tragic heroine Beverly…
-
Berlin 2014: ‘Thou Wast Mild and Lovely’ review
★★★☆☆ Beginning life as a Kickstarter project and now playing in the Forum section of the 64th Berlinale, actress and director Josephine Decker presents her sophomore feature, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2012), starring regular collaborator Joe Swanberg alongside Robert Longstreet and Sophie Traub. We open to an uncomfortable scene of father and daughter Jeremiah…
-
Berlin 2014: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’
★★★★☆ Wes Anderson ushers in the 64th Berlin Film Festival with his latest intricate offering The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Starring Ralph Fiennes in the lead as concierge extraordinaire M. Gustave, Anderson marries old world opulence with his signature stylistics in what is a frosted gateau of a dramedy, trimmed with vibrant charm and wry…
-
Film Review: ‘RoboCop’
★★★☆☆ Dead or alive, a 21st century remake of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 cult science fiction classic RoboCop was always an inevitability. Fortunately, when plans were first announced they also brought with them the welcome news that Brazilian director José Padilha, best-known for the action-packed Elite Squad (2007), would be at the helm. Set in a…
-
Film Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’
★★★★☆ Opening to a drug-addled Leonardo DiCaprio tossing a dwarf, Martin Scorsese’s raunchy, ribald and gloriously satirical attack on American hedonism, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), is a feast of such vulgar delights that it would make Bacchus blush. The tone, whilst distinctly of the director’s oeuvre, possesses a lithe energy as yet unseen,…
-
DVD Review: ‘The Frozen Ground’
★★☆☆☆ Based on the grisly case of serial killer Robert Hansen, Nicolas Cage and John Cusack star in Scott Walker’s functional yet largely forgettable thriller The Frozen Ground (2013). State trooper Jack Halcombe (Cage) is two weeks away from retirement, at which point he plans to move away from the city of Anchorage with his…
-
Film Review: ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’
★★☆☆☆ Director Justin Chadwick presents his protracted and ultimately disappointing biopic portraying the life of South Africa’s first democratically elected leader with Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013) – and what a trudge it is. Charting the rise of the late Mandiba from his tribal origins to his coming to power in 1994, Idris Elba…
-
Film Review: ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’
★★★★☆ After a slightly mixed response to the first instalment, Peter Jackson’s return to Middle-earth for the second part of his Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug (2013), should hopefully set fans and critics’ qualms aside, offering a rollicking adventure tale full of the Kiwi director’s signature attention to detail. We open before the events…