Patrick Gamble
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘The Artist’
★★★★★ A categorical success at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist is a gloriously executed love letter to the silent era of Hollywood, featuring an award-winning performance by Jean Dujardin (Best Actor at Cannes). A thoroughly enjoyable romp, The Artist looks set to be a crowd favourite at this year’s BFI London…
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LFF 2011: ‘Elena’ review
★★★★☆ Director Andrei Zvyagintsev broke onto the scene with his remarkably assured 2003 debut The Return, a visually alluring and emotionally engrossing story of two young boys who embark on a road trip with their long lost father. His third feature, Elena (2011), also deals with fraught domestic relationships and is a welcome confirmation that…
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BFI London Film Festival: ‘Pariah’
★★★★☆ Written and directed by Dee Rees, Pariah (2011) – starring Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans and Aasha Davis – is a refreshingly naturalistic film which explores themes of sexuality and acceptance without ever pandering to the formulaic approach of similar teen dramas.Pariah opens in a seedy back alley strip bar where Khia’s My Neck, My…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘She Monkeys’
★★★★☆ Swedish director Lisa Aschan’s debut feature She Monkeys (2011) is a hormonally-charged coming-of-age drama, depicting the conflict between two teenage girls, and stars Mathilda Paradeiser, Linda Molin and Isabella Lindquist. On the cusp of maturity, 15-year-old Emma (Paradeiser) lives with her younger sister, Sara (Lindquist), and their father, Ivan (Sergej Merkusjev). She’s about to…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Early One Morning’
★★☆☆☆ Director Jean-Marc Moutout returns to the BFI London Film Festival with Early One Morning (2011) – starring Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Valérie Dréville and Xavier Beauvois – as he continues his exploration of the insular and alienating world of executive business and showcases a similar degree of visual panache and assured direction.Darroussin plays Paul Wertret, a…
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DVD Review: ‘Potiche’
★★★☆☆ Set in the 1970s and showcasing the crème-de-le-crème of French film talent, Potiche (2010) is a lovingly nostalgic journey into the flamboyant films of Jacques Demy and Jean Renoir. Directed by renowned filmmaker François Ozon and starring legendary French actors Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, Potiche is a comedy about the emancipation and political…
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DVD Review: ‘Le Quattro Volte’
★★★★★ Whilst critics fell over themselves for Terence Malick’s metaphysical journey The Tree of Life (2011) there was another, less successful but in no way inferior existential examination into creation and spirituality – Michelangelo Frammartino’s sublime Le Quattro Volte (2010).An old Sheppard is living out his last days in a quiet rustic village set against…
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Barbican Film: ‘The Lost World’
Harry O. Hoyt’s The Lost World (1925) screened as part of the Barbican’s ‘Silent Film & Live Music’ series and was presented in partnership with ‘Bristol Silents’. Scissor Sister’s musical director and keyboard player John Garden has composed an original score for this unique presentation of a seemingly lost classic – restored from nine separate…
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Film Review: ‘La Piscine’
★★★☆☆ There are shades of vintage Chabrol in Jacques Deray’s 1969 psychological drama La Piscine, a tense but leisurely film starring French heartthrob Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Maurice Ronet. Digitally restored, Deray’s thriller is once again set to be released on the big screen.A young, attractive, bourgeois couple are spending their summer vacation in…
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Film Review: ‘The Green Wave’
★★★★☆ Breaking away from the traditional mould normally associated with documentary filmmaking, director Ali Samadi Ahadi’s The Green Wave’s (2010) unconventional approach to the genre is more akin to fictitious storytelling, resulting in a powerfully engrossing and uniquely presented account of Iran’s Green Revolution.The Green Wave follows the protests which accompanied Iran’s 2009 presidential elections…