Film Reviews
The Crow’s Egg
Thursday, November 19th, 2015 Film Reviews,Every so often one sees a small, irresistible film that puts the blockbusters to shame. Such is The Crow’s Egg, a low-budget feature about two young brothers who live in the slums of Chennai. It’s a story of crushing poverty that is never allowed to become grim or depressing. This is a first feature by […]
99 Homes
Thursday, November 19th, 2015 Film Reviews,It must be a relief for Andrew Garfield to appear in a movie without the Spider Man outfit. In Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes even those fabled Spidey powers would be of no use against the unstoppable force of the Global Financial Crisis. In opposition to the black-and-white moral universe of the super hero film, in […]
Now Add Honey
Thursday, November 12th, 2015 Film Reviews,It’s been a slow week for new releases, and for one reason or another I haven’t been able to catch He Named Me Malala, the only serious candidate as a second review. The other movie released this week, Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups, is being shown at such a small number of cinemas that Roadshow […]
Spectre
Thursday, November 12th, 2015 Film Reviews,Each new James Bond movie arrives like a cinematic tsunami. You know it’s coming, and that it’s completely unstoppable. If all the critics in the world decided that Spectre was rubbish it would make very little impression on the box office. A Bond film, regardless of its merits and demerits, is a ‘Must See’. I […]
Man Up
Friday, November 6th, 2015 Film Reviews,Ben Palmer is another director who has spent much of his career in television, but Man Up has more verve than most romantic comedies. There are moments when this movie becomes genuinely funny and anarchic, but the claims of the genre keep reasserting themselves, allowing the return of the godawful sentimentality that makes such films […]
Freeheld
Thursday, November 5th, 2015 Film Reviews,Some actors always get to play the romantic lead, the vamp or the action hero, Julianne Moore should be careful she doesn’t get stuck with another terminal illness. Having gradually succumbed to Alzheimer’s Disease in Still Alice, she now gets the chance to experience Stage 4 lung cancer in Freeheld. Unfortunately she’s really excellent in […]
Mistress America
Thursday, October 29th, 2015 Film Reviews,When one character says her campus has just got a frozen yoghurt machine, and the other replies: “I watched my mother die”, you realise you’re watching a film in which everyone talks at cross-purposes. And talks, and talks. Mistress America continues Noah Baumbach’s gradual metamorphosis into Woody Allen. This includes a high degree of productivity, […]
The Dressmaker
Thursday, October 29th, 2015 Film Reviews,There has been an 18-year gap between The Dressmaker and Jocelyn Moorhouse’s previous film, A Thousand Acres (1997), with a promising career being derailed by family matters. Although Moorhouse had intended to make an earlier comeback, with an adaptation of Murray Bail’s novel, Eucalyptus in 2005, this project turned into a shipwreck with as much […]
Bridge of Spies
Friday, October 23rd, 2015 Film Reviews,Steven Spielberg has spoken out against Hollywood’s over-reliance on superhero flicks, when there are so many other ways to make a popular movie. It’s what he’s been doing since Jaws (1975), the film that put him on the map. Today the name ‘Spielberg’ is synonymous with a certain style of Hollywood entertainment – lavish, detail-perfect […]
The Lobster
Friday, October 23rd, 2015 Film Reviews,Yorgos Lanthimos could never be accused of a lack of originality. All over the world, one imagines viewers wandering out of The Lobster, asking: “So what was that about?” If I say it’s an allegory, that will do little to ease the confusion. Think of the late, deadpan surrealist comedies of Luis Bunuel and you’ll […]