Patrick Gamble
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Film Review: The Club
★★★★☆ Eschewing the historical context of his previous work, The Club (2015) sees provocative Chilean director Pablo Larraín, follow up the Oscar-nominated No (2012) with an eerily mordant portrait of Catholicism. With an abundance of sardonic wit and a punishingly dark atmosphere, Larraín dismantles the hypocrisy of the church and in the process uncovers the…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Nasty Baby’ review
★★★★☆ An innocuous US comedy that unsuspectingly morphs into a twisted noir, Sebastián Silva’s Nasty Baby (2015) is a socially conscious thriller that confronts the ignorance of a bohemian culture that refuses to accept responsibility for the societal conditions it’s created. Starring alongside Tunde Adebimpe and Kristen Wiig, Silva has crafted a brutal satire that…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Knight of Cups’ review
★★★☆☆ “You don’t want love. You want a love experience.” claims one of the characters in Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups (2015), almost as if she were addressing the audience directly. A visual symphony for the melancholy of modern life, his latest poetically externalises the internal trauma of a secular society left rudderless in a world…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Victoria’ review
★★★☆☆ There is no digital trickery or sleight of hand in Sebastian Schipper’s one-take wonder Victoria (2015). Ostensibly a contemporary Bonnie and Clyde with a slathering of immediacy layered generously on top, Schipper’s latest is an adroitly choreographed feat of cinematic ingenuity, capturing a single night in Berlin in real-time. The film opens with a…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Ixcanul’ review
★★★☆☆ Jayro Bustamante’s debut Ixcanul (2015) is a profoundly humanistic inquiry into the trafficking of Mayan children in North America. Focusing on the daily rituals of the victims, rather than the machinations of the crime, Bustamante has crafted an ashen-hued, anthropological portrait of indigenous life in Guatemala that deftly balances tragedy, humour and tradition. Maria…
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Berlin 2015: Our guide to this year’s lineup
The 65th Berlin International Film Festival opens this Thursday with Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s Nobody Wants the Night. Starring Juliette Binoche, Rinko Kikuchi, and filmed across Bulgaria, Norway and Spain, Coixet’s Arctic-set romantic escapade is a fairly low-key opener. However, whilst it may not be as glamorous or high profile as last year’s inaugural gala,…
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Film Review: ‘Pelo Malo’
★★★☆☆ Winner of multiple awards on the 2013 festival circuit including the Golden Seashell in San Sebastian, Mariana Rondón’s Pelo Malo (2013) distorts your typical coming-of-ager about gender confusion into a well-observed Polaroid snapshot of contemporary anxieties in Venezuela, as well as the country’s deep social fissures economic and political disquiet. Set within the overpopulated…
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DVD Review: ‘Kinetta’
★★★☆☆ The search for meaning can be a futile task in a world obsessed with imagined realities; especially when the line between fact and fiction is distorted and ill-defined. The innate quest for purpose is the core of Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal debut Kinetta (2005), where detachment from modern life is essential in order to unravel…
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Film Review: ‘Wild’
★★☆☆☆ After the Oscar success of last year’s Dallas Buyers Club (2013), where both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto walked away with awards, Jean-Marc Vallée returns with Wild (2014), an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s account of her treacherous, life-affirming hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Despite a career best performance by Reese Witherspoon, Vallée’s has again…
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Film Review: ‘Enemy’
★★★☆☆ Adapted from Nobel Prize-winning novelist José Saramago’s The Double, Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy (2013) employs the familiar narrative device of the doppelgänger to explore the duality of human nature. From Richard Ayodade’s recent Dostoevsky adaptation The Double (2013), to Cronenberg’s menacing tale of identical twin plastic surgeons Dead Ringers (1988), the alarming yet intriguing thought…