Film Reviews

12 Years a Slave

Emma Simmonds Thursday, 09 January 2014

Some films quite rightly have awards glory etched into their DNA, and when the admirably uncompromising Steve McQueen announced that his next project, focussing on the subject of slavery, would feature that cast, only a fool would have bet against it collecting armfuls of prizes. Moreover, the brutality and societal impact of slavery has seldom been seen on screen; thus in the words of its director, 12 Years a Slave fills "a hole in the canvass of cinema".

Based on...

The Railway Man

Nick Hasted Tuesday, 07 January 2014

The agony of war and of surviving it almost destroyed Eric Lomax. A British POW after the fall of Singapore who was put to work by the Japanese on the Burma Railway, he suffered brutal and prolonged torture, trauma he dealt with in subsequent decades by sealing it inside him, and plotting revenge on his abusers as he fell into troubled sleep. Lomax’s memoir The Railway Man describes this and the reconciliation with one of his captors which finally defined his life.

The week...

The Missing Picture

Tom Birchenough Friday, 03 January 2014

History has been told in many ways on film, but Rithy Panh achieves something new, something unique and unsettling, in The Missing Picture.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Nick Hasted Thursday, 02 January 2014

It took the last 16 years of Nelson Mandela’s life, almost to the day, to bring his autobiography to the screen. South African producer Anant Singh eventually handed Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom to British director Justin Chadwick and screenwriter William Nicholson to make a film for international audiences. The iconic weight of a violent rebel who became a living saint can’t wholly be thrown off in this authorised (though freely made) biopic.

Last Vegas

Nick Hasted Monday, 30 December 2013

Hollywood’s sexism and obsession with youth half-hobble this lunge for the grey dollar. In a cast seemingly assembled by birth certificate more than likely chemistry, 69-year-old Michael Douglas is playboy businessman Billy, whose Vegas stag weekend before marriage to a thirtyish beauty requires the presence of childhood pals Paddy (Robert De Niro, 70), Archie (Morgan Freeman, 76) and Sam (Kevin Kline, 66, pictured below).

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Karen Krizanovich Thursday, 26 December 2013

Patchy but visual, actor/director Ben Stiller ignores the Hollywood motto of not remaking anything good to create an all-encompassing take on the daydreamer Walter Mitty.

All Is Lost

Karen Krizanovich Monday, 23 December 2013

Going from a talky debut with Margin Call, J C Chandor plunges Robert Redford into the solitary, (virtually) silent sea. All Is Lost is Hemingway for now. As the story of a solitary sailor in a single-handed adventure in the Indian Ocean, metaphor and meaning abound. Unlike some heavy, worthy piece of obtuse art house, however, Chandor wrests a tense, puzzling dynamic from a situation that could go cold in another filmmaker’s hands.

American Hustle review

Emma Simmonds Thursday, 19 December 2013

The exquisitely eclectic David O. Russell is fast becoming the go-to director for Oscar hungry actors. His last two films, 2010's The Fighter and 2012's Silver Linings Playbook, garnered their respective casts an astonishing seven Academy Awards nominations between them, including three wins.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Veronica Lee Wednesday, 18 December 2013

When Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was released in 2004 it became a sleeper hit and has since appeared on several “Funniest Movies of All Time” lists.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Graham Fuller Friday, 13 December 2013

Unless Peter Jackson and his team decide to mine The Silmarillion for three more J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations, their films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit will, by this time next year, comprise a complete hexalogy – or, at least, two consecutive triptychs.

The Innocents

Kieron Tyler Thursday, 12 December 2013

“The film too often comes over as a prettily decorated edition of a sick spinster’s diary” was how the Monthly Film Bulletin concluded their review of The Innocents in January 1962. After seeing Jack Clayton’s intense adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw more than 50 years on, the impression left now isn’t so much of an attractively presented chronicle of a breakdown, but a film which paints little of its substance in so clear-cut a fashion.

Fill the Void

Tom Birchenough Monday, 09 December 2013

It’s usually documentary cinema that takes us inside societies of which we know little, revealing their structures and rituals. Occasionally feature films achieve something similar, and Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void is one such, telling its story from inside the world of Israel’s Orthodox Hasidic community, specifically the Haredim.

Cinema Paradiso

Jasper Rees Monday, 09 December 2013

Cinema Paradiso is having a third outing 25 years on. A commercial flop in 1988, Giuseppe Tornatore’s homage to the big screen as an escape route into other worlds excited love on a global scale only after it was re-released as winner of the best foreign film Oscar the following year.

Klown

Kieron Tyler Saturday, 07 December 2013

Lest anyone think that the measured performances in Borgen, The Bridge and The Killing or the personal cinema of, say, Susanne Bier, Pernille Fischer Christensen, Lars von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg define Danish drama, along comes the British release of Klown, a film which – despite a few local touches – plays to the familiar: the uncomfortable comedy of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the gross-out, road-trip fare of The...

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Big Bad Wolves

Nick Hasted Friday, 06 December 2013

Tarantino calls Big Bad Wolves “the best film of the year”. With its Reservoir Dogs-style scenes of mutilation that are never quite as awful as you fear, a thick streak of brutal black comedy, and a twisting plot in a confined setting, Israeli writer-directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado could almost have designed their second feature to appeal to Quentin...

Kill Your Darlings

Jasper Rees Thursday, 05 December 2013

Allen Ginsberg was once approached by two young acolytes eager to discuss literature. The bearded eminence of the Beats was the soul of generosity, giving up no small allowance of time to share his vast knowledge and experience. How they must have basked in the glow as a great poet treated them as equals. At a certain point, having put in sufficient effort, Ginsberg deemed it a good moment to change the subject. “So,” he said, “either of you guys suck cock?”