Matthew Anderson
-
Interview: Peter Greenaway
Very few people can pull off wearing a navy blue pinstripe suit paired with a dark lined open-neck shirt. Yet not everyone is Peter Greenaway. The veteran British director, an intriguing, eloquent and eminently likeable subject, has been based in Amsterdam for the last twenty years. In a conversation as eclectic as his latest film,…
-
Film Review: Eisenstein in Guanajuato
★★★☆☆ Striking, controversial pieces of avant-garde filmmaking often contain one scene where the line in the sand of mainstream cinema is well and truly obliterated. The Odessa steps sequence of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin stands as an unparalleled and much-studied example. After a number of early warning shots in Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato –…
-
Film Review: Nasty Baby
★★★★☆ The latest film from Sebastián Silva, Nasty Baby is a 1970s Woody Allen movie for the hipster generation. The existential, chain-smoking intellectuals of Manhattan are displaced by scooter-riding conceptual artists, who drink out of mason jars, fill gentrified apartments with potted plants and go rock climbing in Brooklyn. A poignant, heartfelt and ultimately troubling…
-
Film Review: The Last Man on the Moon
★★★☆☆ Not too many men can sit by a campfire at night, look up at the moon and know that they once bounded across its chalky grey surface. Gene Cernan is one of only twelve lucky souls to have done so, leaving the final human footprints of the Apollo missions in its lunar dust. The…
-
Film Review: Dheepan
★★★★☆ Jacques Audiard is a strict adherent to the notion of quality over quantity. A career now spanning more than two decades customarily sees “the French Scorsese” spend three to four years in the development of a project. His seventh feature, Dheepan, does not bristle and hum with the same kind of violent magnetism as…
-
Interview: Tom Geens
Less is certainly more in Tom Geens’ sophomore feature Couple in a Hole. A Scottish couple go native in the French countryside as they grieve a great loss by living off the land. The Belgian director – who made London his home 23 years ago – sat down to chat with CineVue’s Matt Anderson about…
-
Film Review: Couple in a Hole
★★★☆☆ If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. Living a survivalist existence to rival any of Bear Grylls exploits deep in the Pyrenean wilderness are John (Paul Higgins) and Karen (Kate Dickie). Not the post-apocalyptic tale that one might expect from such an opening premise, Belgian director Tom…
-
Film Review: Boulevard
★★☆☆☆ The majority of headlines and reviews on Boulevard – this one included – will preface any thoughts on Dito Montiel’s latest offering with the simple fact that it is Robin Williams’ last appearance onscreen. Considering the final performance of a cinematic great brings with it a tendency for nostalgia and, occasionally, undue praise, so…
-
Film Review: Eddie the Eagle
★★★☆☆ Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Eddie the Eagle, British actor Dexter Fletcher’s third directorial outing after Wild Bill and Sunshine on Leith, is a speedy, light-hearted biopic of the remarkable young lad from Cheltenham who took the ski jumping world by storm at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. A film which…
-
Film Review: Black Mountain Poets
★★☆☆☆ The last chapter in his ‘Modern Romance Trilogy’ sees writer-director Jamie Adams and a band of British talent take to the hills in quirky, sardonic comedy Black Mountain Poets. Combining a hippy writers retreat with a shambolic Duke of Edinburgh expedition, it revolves around the uncontrollably mischievous antics of sisters Lisa (Alice Lowe) and…