Joseph Walsh
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘The Samurai That Night’ review
★★★☆☆ Japanese arthouse drama The Samurai That Night (2012) is a compelling tale of a young, nervous man who, after losing his wife in a hit and run accident, collapses inward, failing to connect with the world that surrounds him and ultimately becoming consumed with revenge. Directed by Masaaki Akahori – who also wrote the…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Here and There’ review
★★☆☆☆ Nobody would question the fact that Antonio Mendez Esperanza’s Here and There (Aquí y Allá, 2012) raises some extremely important and relevant points about the challenges faced by Latin American migrant workers. Yet, even the most ardent fans of slow cinema may well find Esperanza’s film a chore. The narrative follows protagonist Pedro, who…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Spike Island’ review
★★☆☆☆ The 90s were great, weren’t they? You had Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and of course The Stone Roses, who are given near mythical status in Mat Whitecross’ love letter to band frontman Ian Brown, in Spike Island (2012). A group of lads from Manchester spend their days rehearsing together in their unsigned band, covering their…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Save Your Legs!’ review
★☆☆☆☆ The comedy feature debut from Aussie born director Boyd Hicklin, Save Your Legs! (2013) is an odd choice for a festival film, even if it is categorised under ‘Laugh’ in the new London Film Festival groupings, where it will undoubtedly find few friends on the festival circuit. Edward ‘Teddy’ Brown (Stephen Curry) is something…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Doomsday Book’ review
★★☆☆☆ Jee-woon Kim and Pil-Sung Yim’s portmanteau film Doomsday Book (2012) started production in 2006 when the first two segments of the piece were complete. Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – a year later the directors were able to raise funds for the third part of the anthology of shorts. All three shorts that make…
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Film Review: ‘On the Road’
★★☆☆☆ Jack Kerouac’s semi autobiographical novel On the Road captured the spirit of a generation, so telling it in film was never going to be an easy task, yet Walter Salles (perhaps foolishly) has stepped up to the challenge in his adaptation starring Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart. Post-war depression drips in the air, jazz…
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Film Review: ‘Ruby Sparks’
★★★★☆ Rarely do films about writers/writing successfully capture the creative process. However, married directorial duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris manage to hit the nail on the head with Ruby Sparks (2012), a magical romance with a perfectly-pitched level of quirky humour. Paul Dano stars as the socially awkward Calvin, an author who has never…
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DVD Review: ‘Prometheus’
★★☆☆☆ Ridley Scott first came to prominence in 1979 with the sci-fi horror spectacle that was Alien, so rightly the prospect of him returning to the material over 30 years later, with his prequel project Prometheus (2012) (out now on DVD and Blu-ray) met with a great deal of anticipation. How wrong that sense of…
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Special Feature: BAFTA & BFI Screenwriters’ Lecture Series
Over the past two years BAFTA have invited many of the finest screenwriters working today to discuss their methods and projects. Past guests at these prestigious talks have included William Nicholson, Charlie Kauffman and Armando Iannucci. This year the lecture series continues with a an equally impressive selection of screenwriters from both the UK and…
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DVD Review: ‘Casa de Lava’
★★★★☆ Loosely based on Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (1943), Pedro Costa’s 1994 effort Casa de Lava (oddly titled Down To Earth for its US release) is undoubtedly a demanding film – but then Costa’s cinema has always been a challenge. What the Portuguese director demands of his audience he richly pays back,…