Tag: drama
The Trip to Italy
Saturday, June 7th, 2014 Film Reviews,Four years ago, Michael Winterbottom had a hit with The Trip, a six-part television series, in which British comedians, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon drove around the Lake District, supposedly writing a series of restaurant reviews for the Observer. The series was condensed into a feature film that seduced audiences around the world. The Trip […]
Under the Skin
Saturday, May 31st, 2014 Film Reviews,Michel Faber’s novel, Under the Skin (2000), was that rarest of beasts: a science fiction story with real literary merit. I say that as a reader who has dipped into science fiction for decades and identified only a handful of authors – notably Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem – that ever made me feel […]
My Sweet Pepper Land
Saturday, May 31st, 2014 Film Reviews,If you’ve ever wondered what sort of movies they’re making in Kurdistan nowadays, enlightenment is at hand. My Sweet Pepper Land, by Kurdish director, Hiner Saleem, is a dead ringer for those Hollywood westerns in which a new sheriff arrives in a violent frontier town, intent on restoring law and order. Needless to say, he […]
Ida
Saturday, May 24th, 2014 Film Reviews,Pawel Pawlikowski left Poland in 1971 at the age of 14, and settled with his family in England. In a peripatetic career as a filmmaker he completed a series of offbeat documentaries before making an acclaimed “quintessentially English” drama, My Summer of Love, in 2004. With Ida not only has he returned to his Polish […]
The Zero Theorem
Saturday, May 17th, 2014 Film Reviews,After cutting his teeth with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Terry Gilliam is habitually viewed as a maker of dark, fantastic comedies. The truth is that he makes essentially bleak films festooned with comic touches, like Rococo decorations on a coffin. The Zero Theorem has been mooted as the third part of a dystopian trilogy, along […]
The Broken Circle Breakdown
Saturday, May 17th, 2014 Film Reviews,Belgians have a reputation for pursuing individualism to the point of eccentricity. The Broken Circle Breakdown will confirm that reputation, but the film has a lot more to offer than mere quirkiness. Viewers who enter the cinema in one piece may emerge trying to reassemble the fragments, having experienced alternating extremes of exhilaration and tragedy, […]
Belle
Saturday, May 10th, 2014 Film Reviews,It’s impossible not to view Amma Asante’s Belle in relation to Steve McQueen’s phenomenally successful 12 Years a Slave. Both films are by black British directors, both deal with the theme of slavery. Admirers of 12 Years a Slave might say that one film is an entertainment, the other a work of art. But there […]
Transcendence
Saturday, May 3rd, 2014 Film Reviews,With poor attendences in the United States and disastrous reviews, Wally Pfister’s Transcendence is set to be the biggest hi-tech, mega-budget, sci-fi flop since After Earth, last year’s misbegotten star vehicle for Will Smith and son. It’s not an entirely fair comparison because Transcendence is a much better film. Its failure is not due to […]
Young and Beautiful
Saturday, May 3rd, 2014 Film Reviews,Young and Beautiful is a film about every parent’s nightmare and the French film industry’s abiding obsession. Imagine finding your 17 year-old daughter had taken up prostitution as a way of earning spare cash in the same way that other girls take up baby-sitting. Fans of French cinema may feel a sense of déjà vu […]
Only Lovers Left Alive
Saturday, April 26th, 2014 Film Reviews,Last time we saw Tilda Swinton on screen, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, she was playing a corpse. In Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, she is a vampire. This may be considered a form of progress. Since the days of Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) there have been thousands of vampire films […]