Patrick Gamble

★★★★☆ There’s an alluring alchemy to Olivier Assayas’ new work Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), a serpentine inquiry into the female interior masquerading as a film about cinema and the ephemeral nature of fame. Entangled in the dreamlike sensibilities of a filmmaker who delights in blurring the line between fiction and reality, it’s a complex,…

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★★☆☆☆ How ethical is it to pry into the personal life of an artist who actively shunned fame? That’s the questioned posited by Nikolas Dylan Rossi’s Heaven Adores You (2014), about the life and music of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. In a candid radio interview at the beginning of the film, Smith proclaims that he was…

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★★★☆☆ Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz returns with Berlin Film Festival 2014 select Futuro Beach (2014), a tactile and deeply personal account of sexual identity and the longing to belong. Tracing a line through the relationship between a Brazilian lifeguard and his German motorbike mechanic, Aïnouz’s doomed love story does, however, find itself caught in an…

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★★★☆☆ In August 2011, fourteen students from Le Roy High School in upstate New York inexplicable began exhibiting perplexing medical symptoms including, but not limit to, verbal outbursts and seizures. Doctors were baffled, describing the incident as an outbreak of mass hysteria or a ‘phenomenon of collective suggestion’. This incident, and others like it form…

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★★★★☆ Celebrated Taiwanese cinematographer Chienn Hsiang’s debut feature Exit (2014) is a tactile and strikingly vivid expression of isolation which alludes to wider national anxieties. Bristling with sexual repression Exit‘s familiar tale of generational disparity and middle-aged melancholy is elevated thanks to the poignant performance of Tsai Ming-Liang regular Chen Shiang-Chyi. With a precocious teenage…

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★★★★☆ Widely-acclaimed Swedish director Roy Andersson’s latest offering, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) aims to demythologise the commercial image of reality, shutting the door on the stock-photo swaths of smiling happy faces of advertising and instead focus on the world’s ignored. Observing humanity’s endless capacity for error, cruelty and self-humiliation,…

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★★★★☆ Rob Brown’s Sixteen (2013) is a beautifully realised debut that breathes new life into British cinema’s obsession with urban thrillers, fashioning a refreshingly gentle tale of redemption in a city frequently painted as the last refuge of the lost and the destitute. Tribal drums punctuate the film’s inner-city veneer like an echo of Jumah’s…

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★★★☆☆ Courage and kindness (and perhaps a little magic for good measure) are the cornerstones of Kenneth Branagh’s sweet retelling of Cinderella (2015), a benevolent yet paradoxically cravenness reimagining of Charles Perrault’s classic fairytale. A live-action Disney production starring Cate Blanchett, Lily James and Richard Madden, its safe to assume there are no evil stepsisters…

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★★★★☆ Arriving on UK screens a year after its Berlin bow, Blind (2014) – the debut feature from Norwegian screenwriter turned director Eskil Vogt – imbues cognitive visualisation and the mechanics of storytelling to achieve what many have tired and failed to do – successfully insinuate what life without vision might be like. Ingrid (Ellen…

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★★☆☆☆ Identical twins are a staple of the horror genre pantry, a corporeal conduit in which to explore the dichotomy between good and evil. Frequently presenting an image of innocence alongside a capricious, often deadly parallel, the audience is forced to look beyond the superficial for deeper understanding. In the eerie, yet tepid psychological horror…

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