Tag: drama
Winter Sleep
Saturday, November 22nd, 2014 Film Reviews,For a film that goes for 3 hours and 16 minutes, Winter Sleep was a surprisingly popular winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes this year. Although the story gets anchored in intense conversations that may run for 15-20 minutes, it has a undeniable touch of greatness. After watching his previous effort, Once Upon a […]
My Old Lady
Saturday, November 15th, 2014 Film Reviews,Some films betray their stage origins too easily, some employ an all-star cast to paper over the cracks in a script or a story. My Old Lady might be found guilty on both counts. As the directorial debut of well-known playwright and occasional screenwriter, Israel Horovitz, it suggests the transition from theatre to cinema can […]
Two Days, One Night
Saturday, November 8th, 2014 Film Reviews,Two Days, One Night by Belgian filmmakers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes took out the major prize at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. It’s an indication of the socially conscious tastes of the jury that they should have preferred this slab of uncompromising realism to the unique experiment of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, or the irresistible charm […]
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
Saturday, November 8th, 2014 Film Reviews,Jean-Pierre Jeunet belongs to the other extreme of Francophone cinema to the Dardennes. His films are modern fairy tales with characters that are impossibly charming or grotesque. One of his favourite actors, Dominique Pinon, who has a small role in The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, manages to be both charming and grotesque. Jeunet’s films […]
Whiplash
Saturday, November 1st, 2014 Film Reviews,A movie about a young man studying to be a jazz drummer may sound like an entirely resistible proposition, but Whiplash is no lame musical comedy. Rookie writer-director, Damien Chazelle, has said he wanted to make a film about music that was more like a horror or gangster movie. Without including a single ghoul or […]
Kill the Messenger
Saturday, November 1st, 2014 Film Reviews,One might assume the public is willing to believe anything bad about the CIA, which has become a byword for clandestine criminality in the modern world, but Kill the Messenger suggests otherwise. It tells the true story of Gary Webb, an investigative reporter on the San Jose Mercury News, who breaks a once-in-a-lifetime scoop about […]
Living is Easy with Eyes Closed
Saturday, October 25th, 2014 Film Reviews,Since the end of the Franco era Spanish filmmakers have made many attempts to engage with that time of backwardness and isolation. The Movida that began in the late 1970s, best exemplified by the anarchic sex comedies of Pedro Almodóvar, was an explosive reaction to the greyness of the preceding decades. When the shock waves […]
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Saturday, October 25th, 2014 Film Reviews,Lawrence Block is a crime writer whose style seems made for the movies. Flat descriptive passages are punctuated by bursts of terse, witty dialogue. After a few pages the film is already rolling in your head. Add Liam Neeson as Block’s ex-alco, ex-NYPD, private dick, Matthew Scudder, and the package seems close to perfect. All […]
Force Majeure
Saturday, October 18th, 2014 Film Reviews,Force Majeure is a clever, ironic title for a Swedish film that was originally called Turist. The legal definition of force majeure is: “an event that is the result of the elements of nature, as opposed to one caused by human behaviour”. It’s a term used in contractual law referring to a situation when one […]
The Judge
Saturday, October 11th, 2014 Film Reviews,If Siddharth is a movie about a father searching for a son, The Judge is the story of a son looking for a father. That’s where comparisons end, because the latter is an old-fashined, pumped-up Hollywood soap opera that provides a star vehicle for two wellknown actors: reformed bad boy, Robert Downey Jr., recently transmogrified […]