Tag: drama
Jackie
Friday, January 20th, 2017 Film Reviews,Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. In an interview with Theodore H. White of Life magazine one week after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy insisted that no-one should forget Camelot. It was the song Jack loved most, the lines he […]
Passengers
Friday, January 13th, 2017 Film Reviews,Writing in the 1920s Aldous Huxley denounced the joyless “Good Time” that had made people into passive consumers of art and entertainment. Huxley regretted that the cinema had killed off amateur theatrics, while music making at home had been supplanted by the gramophone. He believed this indulgence in instant entertainment led to a crippling sense […]
Paterson
Friday, January 6th, 2017 Film Reviews,For most directors film is a narrative art. Those movies that abandon story-telling in favour of portentous ‘poetic’ imagery are rapidly consigned to the arthouse bin where they are admired by a handful of academics and ignored by everyone else. In Paterson, Jim Jarmusch has demonstrated that it’s possible to make a film about poetry […]
La La Land
Friday, December 16th, 2016 Film Reviews,With seven nominations for this year’s Golden Globes it will be surprising if La La Land doesn’t blitz the coming awards season. 31-year-old writer-director, Damien Chazelle came to prominence with his impressive second feature, Whiplash (2014), described as a horror film about music. Now he has given us a musical that pays homage to the […]
Little Men
Friday, December 9th, 2016 Film Reviews,This time of year is the Sargasso Sea of new releases. The big films have already been reviewed and there is very little to see until Boxing Day, when one is confronted with an embarrassment of choices. In the absence of a Big Film, I’m obliged to write about a little one. Everything is of […]
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Friday, December 2nd, 2016 Film Reviews,It takes a confident director to run with a title like Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, but we know that’s the case with Ang Lee – a fearless all-rounder who has worked in a wide range of genres since his debut in 1992. To keep the title is really a mark of respect for the […]
The Founder
Thursday, November 24th, 2016 Film Reviews,There are characters that can’t be made sympathetic no matter how many hardships they endure. One such is Ray Kroc, the “founder” of the McDonalds fast-food empire. In almost any other film we would warm to this story of a 50-something battler who succeeds in making it big through his commitment to unstinting hard work […]
Arrival
Friday, November 18th, 2016 Film Reviews,Anyone who enjoyed Independence Day (1996), or some similar tale of alien invaders trashing Planet Earth, would be well advised to give Arrival a miss. For those who feel an evening’s cinematic pleasures to be incomplete without two full hours of Armageddon, Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral, atmospheric sci-fi flick will be a massive disappointment. For the […]
Nocturnal Animals
Friday, November 11th, 2016 Film Reviews,If one had to nominate the most enviable person in the world today it would be hard to go past fashion designer, Tom Ford. Charming, handsome and successful, adored by the rich and powerful. It hardly seems fair that Ford should also possess an incredible talent as a writer and director. What does one do […]
Hacksaw Ridge
Friday, November 4th, 2016 Film Reviews,Hacksaw Ridge has been widely touted as a “redemption” for Mel Gibson after his spectacular fall from grace that began in 2006. If there is any truth in this rather glib idea, Mel hasn’t taken the meek-and-mild route. In fact there are two Mel Gibsons at the helm of this movie – the old-fashioned Hollywood […]