★★★☆☆ New Yorkers staring skywards from below the World Trade Center, struck by a sense of terror and confusion, evokes dark memories of the not too distant past. However, in The Walk (2015), the latest film from Robert Zemeckis, the onlookers’ bewildered emotions are mingled with admiration, awe and sheer Continue Reading
★★★★☆ As much as writers and film critics in particular like to pronounce upon storytelling and the experiences of others, some tales are so miraculous and awe-inspiring that any words will completely fail them. The expression ‘triumph over adversity’ is used altogether too frequently nowadays to describe all manner of Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ The play within a film that South African director Henk Pretorius builds Leading Lady (2014) towards shows the minutest promise during a laborious rehearsal process. Unfortunately, it is revealed to be a predictably laughable am-dram production in a barn which has the audience of a dozen locals – all Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ How to solve a problem like Abkhazia? Or rather, how to send a letter from Paris to a country that has not yet been acknowledged by the French state? Documentary filmmaker Eric Baudelaire again chooses the epistolary form in Letters to Max (2014) after employing a series of email Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The ironic naming of the cargo ship that director Lucie Borleteau uses in Fidelio: Alice’s Journey (2014) comes into view as the ‘Fidelio’ departs the port of Marseille for the first time. Employed as the literal and figurative vessel for the emotional and spiritual odyssey undertaken by the film’s Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ In a grey, rainy London, hued blue to add further sombre foreboding, the indomitable Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) finds himself in a familiar position: watching an op go south via screens in a new and improved Thames House, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bharat Nalluri – Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ The warning signs are there even before the opening credits roll. Lessons in Love (2014) – the UK title of Tom Vaughan’s latest – went through two prior iterations for its appearance in Canadian (How To Make Love Like An Englishman) and US (Some Kind of Beautiful) cinemas. Unfortunately, Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ The saying goes that when in a hole you should stop digging. Meandering road movie Mississippi Grind (2015), co-directed by the Half Nelson (2006) and Sugar (2008) duo of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, features two hopeless gamblers on whom the sentiment of this old adage appears to have Continue Reading
★★★★☆ If there’s one thing that Australia has in spades it’s miles and miles of open road. Be it tarmacked or dust and dirt, lifelong cab driver, Rex (Michael Caton), covers a fair amount of both driving from Broken Hill, NSW, through Oz’s barren Red Centre, to Darwin at the Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ The Family Fang (2015) is Jason Bateman’s second directorial undertaking. Known predominantly for his work in Arrested Development, feature film comedies and oddball roles in more serious pieces, Bateman proved in this year’s The Gift (a scintillating debut picture by Australian actor Joel Edgerton) that he has a far Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Adapted for the big screen by writer-actor Sylvia Chang from her own play Design For Living, attempting to pigeonhole Johnnie To’s latest effort Office (2015) is a case of multiple square pegs and even more round holes. Classifying the part-musical, part-satire, part-comedy, part-Orwellian tale of consumerism and capitalism would Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Given the subject and its original title, Lars Kraume’s The People vs. Fritz Bauer (2015) pits the irascible and implacable attorney general against the West German state, rather than its people, which would be more accurate from both a linguistic and narrative point of view. Cantankerous and belligerent but Continue Reading
★★★★☆ As the name would suggest, Toronto’s Platform strand offers up-and-coming filmmakers a springboard from which to showcase their work on the world stage. The singularly named writer-director Diastème brings his devastating second feature French Blood (2015) to the festival from his native France, a country he considers overwhelmed by Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Actor Jake Gyllenhaal has recently proved himself more than capable of carrying a film on his alternately emaciated (Nightcrawler) or buffed-up (Southpaw) shoulders. In Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition (2015) they’re characteristically broad and Gyllenhaal’s performance is one of his finest to date; further proof of his ever-growing and impressively hirsute Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ During the Q & A session which followed the international première of Shemi Zarhin’s The Kind Words (2015) on the opening night of this year’s Toronto Film Festival, the Israeli director was asked how he struck a balance between the tragic and comedic elements of a story that teeters Continue Reading