Joseph Walsh
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Berlin 2013: ‘The Daughter’ review
★★★★☆ The impressive third feature from Greek director Thanos Anastopoulos, The Daughter (2012) provides an intelligently rendered, gripping drama reflecting the wider issues of Greece’s current financial crisis. When 14-year-old Myrto (Savina Alimani) discovers that her father has mysteriously disappeared, she stalks the Athenian streets trying to discover where he’s fled to and why. She…
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Film Review: ‘Hitchcock’
★★☆☆☆ With Alfred Hitchcock arguably the toast of 2012, celebrated with a year-long season at the BFI and his classic 1958 film Vertigo topping the Sight & Sound ‘Greatest Films of All Time’ poll, Sacha Gervasi attempts to prolong the celebration of the ‘Master of Suspense’ with his all-too-comfy biopic Hitchcock (2012), starring Anthony Hopkins…
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Film Review: ‘Everyday’
★★★★☆ One thing can be said for sure of prolific British director, Michael Winterbottom: he certainly likes a challenge. His latest is Everyday (2012) which, with its stripped back, grittily realist approach, presents a quietly moving, slow-paced tale of working-class life. Set over the course of five years, we find con Ian (John Simm) jailed…
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Film Review: ‘American Mary’
★★★★☆ Jen and Sylvia Soska (aka the twin Canadian Soska sisters) made their first collaborative feature, the brilliantly titled Dead Hooker in a Trunk, all the way back in 2009. The sinister siblings marked their long-awaited return to horror cinema last year with the Film4 FrightFest UK premiere of their macabre follow-up American Mary (2012),…
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DVD Review: ‘The Girl’ (TV)
★★★★☆ It seems almost impossible to talk about Julian Jarrold’s BBC/HBO drama The Girl (2012) without mentioning Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock (2012) – starring Anthony Hopkins as the ‘Master of Suspense’ – in the same breath. Whilst comparisons will undoubtedly be made they each have very different agendas with Jarrold’s proving to be both the more…
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Film Review: ‘Chinatown’
★★★★★ Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning Chinatown (1974), starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, took the film noir in a whole new direction, subverting the American Dream into a bleak portrait of corporate America. Jack J. Gittes (Nicholson) is a PI brought in to investigate an adultery case for a women he believes to be Evelyn Mulwray…
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Film Review: ‘Lincoln’
★★☆☆☆ Steven Spielberg’s sprawling historical biopic Lincoln (2012), starring Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role, gained near universal praise State-side for its depiction of the final four months of Abraham Lincoln’s life. This side of the pond, the rally cries have not been quite as potent, but interest has undoubtedly been piqued. We open to…
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Special Feature: Intel and VICE present ‘Four Stories’
Intel and the world-renowned W Hotel chain joined forces with VICE this month for short film competition Four Stories, that aimed to seek out the world’s next bright young things in film. From over 1000 submissions from aspiring filmmakers around the globe, developed into 10-minute short films, four were selected. A panel of industry judges…
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Film Review: ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’
★★★☆☆ American director Robert Aldrich’s 1962 psychological drama What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? celebrates its 50th anniversary in style this week with an impressive digital restoration, courtesy of Park Circus, and follows the melodramatic tale of two rival sisters clinging on to the remnants of the fame of their youth, played by Joan Crawford…
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Film Review: ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’
★★★☆☆ Kiwi filmmaker Peter Jackson effectively revolutionised fantasy cinema with his awe-inspiring The Lord of the Rings series. Eleven years later, Jackson returns to Middle Earth with an equally groundbreaking – though ultimately disappointing – liberal adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s first book, The Hobbit. Set 60 years before the events of The Lord of…
