Film Reviews

Gravity

Karen Krizanovich Wednesday, 06 November 2013

As a director, Alfonso Cuarón is a stickler. In his renowned Children of Men, he sought to dismantle cinema, to break down the glass wall between audience and content by making the film more like a live event. To a great extent, he succeeded, opening with a 17 minute continuous take and, later, using the expertise of Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski (known as Chivo), he would fashion takes of stunning length and complexity.

Love Tomorrow

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 05 November 2013

Feature films about ballet are rarities - are the memorable ones those that are realistic about their strenuous world or are they the expressionistic shockers that let rip with the red eyes and OTT fantasies? Black Swan became an instant world hit on the strength of its purple take on showbiz (never mind it was packaged in a ballet scenario, this was more a riproaring horror story). Love Tomorrow is altogether something else.

Seduced and Abandoned

Katherine McLaughlin Monday, 04 November 2013

The 65^th Cannes film festival acts as the backdrop for this compelling, if somewhat misguided documentary from James Toback. Accompanied by Alec Baldwin, Toback sets out to shame Hollywood for its decision to continually churn out megabuck franchises and mediocrity rather than investing in risky, original cinema as the pair try to get funding for their own film project.

Philomena

Matt Wolf Friday, 01 November 2013

In 1998, Judi Dench slayed audiences on the London stage in Filumena, playing a former prostitute who learns belatedly to cry. The tears come more quickly - both for Britain's best-loved acting Dame and her public - in the comparably titled Philomena, the Stephen Frears film that tells an otherwise entirely dissimilar story about a doughty Irishwoman determined to locate the son...

Drinking Buddies

Nick Hasted Thursday, 31 October 2013

Orgasms aside, it was When Harry Met Sally’s edict that sex always gets in the way of male-female friendships that hit home. Drinking Buddies comes to more nuanced conclusions, as we watch Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) steadily drink and comfortably banter during and after work at a Chicago micro-brewery, and wonder just when they’re going to leave their straitlaced partners, Chris (Ron Livingston) and Jill (Anna Kendrick), pictured below.

Child's Pose

Kieron Tyler Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Cornelia is 60 and increasingly frustrated with her 34-year-old son, Barbu. He doesn’t communicate with her, she doesn’t approve of his girlfriend and the way he leads his life. Convinced she has to take command of her immature son, she’s suddenly presented with an opportunity to exert control.

Short Term 12

Tom Birchenough Tuesday, 29 October 2013

A film of contrasts, Short Term 12 manages to be simultaneously dark and humorous, casual yet intense. The relationships between staff and patients in the group home for troubled teenagers where it’s set – the facility is meant to be a place of refuge for up to a year, hence the title, though many stay longer – are both thick and thin, and as in the wedding vow must endure through difficult times.

Gloria

Kieron Tyler Monday, 28 October 2013

Gloria is 58. Divorced 12 years earlier, she’s intent on living life. Her two children are grown up, she works in a characterless office and is open to almost anything. She’ll try cannabis, attends a class where instruction is given on releasing laughter and tackles yoga for the first time. Beyond keeping in touch with her son and daughter, her greatest efforts are directed towards her nightlife. On her own, Gloria goes to ballrooms, bars and nightclubs where she hopes to make a connection...

The Selfish Giant

Emma Simmonds Friday, 25 October 2013

Former video artist Clio Barnard's second feature - which took Cannes 2013 by storm with its stark and striking humanity - takes inspiration and its title from the Oscar Wilde fairytale. However that's not the film's only, or most significant, influence: The Selfish Giant is, by its director's own admission, a response to the continuing, corrosive impact of Thatcherism, an ideology that put selfishness ahead of societal needs and pushed millions to the margins.

Closed Circuit

Nick Hasted Thursday, 24 October 2013

We have plenty to be paranoid about in the most surveilled country in the world. British contributions to the conspiracy thrillers that bloomed so fruitfully in the US around Watergate have, though, stayed slim. Maybe that’s one reason Closed Circuit’s extreme Secret Service behaviour in the aftermath of a bomb atrocity at London’s Borough market feels so fake.

CIA agents snuffing out inconvenient people on city streets is cinematic second nature. MI5 hunting Eric Bana and...

A Magnificent Haunting

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 23 October 2013

With a hero who’s an aspiring actor and an ensemble of theatrical types trapped outside time as supporting cast, the staginess of Ferzan Ozpetek’s A Magnificent Haunting comes as little surprise. It makes for sometimes nicely camp overplaying, though the comedy that made the Turkish-born director’s latest film a hit in his adopted Italy doesn’t travel easily beyond borders.

Muscle Shoals

Kieron Tyler Tuesday, 22 October 2013

“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969.

LFF 2013: Saving Mr Banks

Karen Krizanovich Monday, 21 October 2013

It's dueling stars when Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson go quite delightfully toe-to-toe as Walt Disney vs P L Travers, author of Mary Poppins, in Saving Mr Banks, the closing film of the London Film Festival 2013. The title suggests the Russian doll-like nature of the story – a story within a story wrapped in an enigma, with seriously fabulous hair and make-up turning both Hanks and Thompson into characters you can almost completely believe in.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Kieron Tyler Monday, 21 October 2013

Common sense indicates it’s a rare film which retains the impact it had on first exposure. Films can often reveal new depths and fresh detail with repeated viewing, but that initial effect is tough to duplicate. This new release of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens actually captures the thrill of the first-time experience. Partly, that’s due to the extraordinary restoration.

LFF 2013: 12 Years A Slave

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 19 October 2013

One of this year’s Oscar contenders, Lincoln, covered the ending of the American Civil War as it played out in the comfortable confines of the Capitol. 12 Years a Slave, an exceptional film that will surely be in the running next year, reveals the “fearful ill” that set the country alight in the first place.

LFF 2013: Only Lovers Left Alive

Demetrios Matheou Saturday, 19 October 2013

Jim Jarmusch's characters have always been ineffably cool, whether the slackers of Stranger than Paradise, the accountant lost in the Wild West of Dead Man, or the hit man with samurai pretensions of Ghost Dog. It goes without saying that if he makes a film about vampires, they’ll be dripping with style.