Film Reviews

12 Films of Christmas: Black Christmas

Emma Simmonds Sunday, 16 December 2012

Flanked by the wonderfully weird tagline, “If this picture doesn’t make your skin crawl…it’s on TOO TIGHT”, 1974’s Black Christmas is amongst the first fully formed slasher pics. Based on a series of murders that took place in Quebec, this Canadian contribution to the festive canon is dripping with seasonal cynicism.

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Graham Fuller Saturday, 15 December 2012

Here’s a rancid little hors d’oeuvre for the holiday season. The deliciously loathsome Gothic horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 50 years old and back in cinemas, never ceases to amaze as director Robert Aldrich’s strychnine-laced missive to Hollywood – his second, following 1955’s The Big Knife – and as a psychodrama of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’s unfeigned hatred for each other.

12 Films of Christmas: Rare Exports - A Christmas Tale

Kieron Tyler Saturday, 15 December 2012

The Scandinavian countries can duke it out amongst themselves as to which of them Santa Claus is from, but this Finnish claim for being the whiskery fellow’s true home neither makes you want to enter his grotto or sit on his knee. A bizarre and wonderful fantasy, Rare Exports nods to old northern Europe’s Saint Nicholas, the mythical figure meting out punishment to children rather than doling out presents. This is a Santa Claus to be avoided at all costs.

Neil Young Journeys

Adam Sweeting Friday, 14 December 2012

"There is a town in north Ontario," sang Neil Young in 1970's "Helpless", and in this third collaboration between Young and film-maker Jonathan Demme, we get to go there. It's the little rural outpost of Omemee, where, as Young tells the camera, he used to catch turtles and fish and look after his chickens. Young's casual asides and remembered fragments as he drives from Omemee to Toronto, to play a concert at Massey Hall, form the somewhat flimsy spine of Demme's film.

12 Films of Christmas: It's a Wonderful Life

Karen Krizanovich Friday, 14 December 2012

It’s A Wonderful Life disappointed studio bosses at the box office. Five Oscar chances came to nothing. Gongs and money, however, don’t guarantee a classic and that is what It’s a Wonderful Life is - a film that can restore one's sense of joy within minutes. Set at Christmas (but filmed in the boiling summer of California), this is the film to which audiences return again and again for relief from the woes of life.

12 Films of Christmas: The Muppet Christmas Carol

Veronica Lee Thursday, 13 December 2012

Made in 1992, this was the first Muppets project after the death of creator Jim Henson, and was helmed by his son, Brian. It's been given a 20th-anniversary re-release by Disney, which now owns the Muppet franchise, appropriately enough in the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth.

Dead Europe

Kieron Tyler Thursday, 13 December 2012

“Why do you want to go to Greece?” After watching the numbing Dead Europe and the journey of its protagonist Isaac the question asked might, more pertinently, have been “do you know the Greece you’re going to visit?” This relentlessly dark film paints Greece – in common with the other countries seen – as a place of barely hidden agonies, characterised by shadows. No wonder Isaac’s mother gives him a talisman to ward off the evil eye before he sets off from Australia.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Demetrios Matheou Wednesday, 12 December 2012

JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit has always been the answer to those who rail at the self-consciously epic scale and bombast of The Lord of the Rings; it is the perfect Tolkien primer, an introduction to Middle Earth that is humorous and boisterous, doesn’t take its heroes too seriously, moves along at a good clip and is no less a glorious adventure for its levity.

12 Films of Christmas: The Family Stone

Matt Wolf Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Thank heavens for Christmas, without which where would narrative be? Not that I'm sure Sarah Jessica Parker's uptight, brittle Meredith Morton has much to be thankful for in The Family Stone, as the Manhattan careerist braves her boyfriend's family gathering in New England for what seems destined to be the holiday from hell. Well, until such time as the laws of Tinseltown work their drearily inevitable "magic", and everyone is paired up faster than you can say Manolo Blahnik.

12 Films of Christmas: White Christmas

Karen Krizanovich Tuesday, 11 December 2012

White Christmas is named so you know that gorgeous song is inside it somewhere. Yes, this is the 12-year-younger and lesser remake of Holiday Inn that also stars Bing Crosby and also features the cry-your-guts-out, I-regret-everything holiday tune by Irving Berlin. The big difference is that in White Christmas, Bing sings along to a music box.

12 Films of Christmas: Gremlins

Nick Hasted Monday, 10 December 2012

Joe Dante feeds the idealised small-town America of his producer Spielberg into the mincer of an anarchic Warner Bros. cartoon in this riotous 1984 hit. Chris Walas’s creature designs are crucial to it, as mysterious, lovably big-eyed pet Gizmo spawns scaly-backed lords of impish mayhem the Gremlins.

Smashed

Tom Birchenough Monday, 10 December 2012

“Cringed” is the adjective you want to invent to describe Kate, the dipso heroine of James Ponsoldt’s Smashed who's played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. If there’s one thing that Ponsoldt's script, co-written with Susan Burke, captures - actually, there are many - it’s the excruciating embarrassment of waking up in the morning and dimly recalling what you’ve got up to the drunken night before.

Celeste & Jesse Forever

Jasper Rees Friday, 07 December 2012

The romcom is an oddball. Though an ever-present at the multiplex, of all the genres it remains notoriously reluctant to take wing. The path of true love ne’er did run without all the usual box-ticking plot swerves. Full credit then to Celeste and Jesse Forever, for coming at the problem from a sideways angle. In this reimagining, boy and girl have lost each other before the start of the movie – they’re divorcing – but are still best of friends. In fact, creepily so.

The Man with the Iron Fists

Emma Simmonds Thursday, 06 December 2012

As anyone who saw The Next Three Days, A Good Year, or Proof of Life will know, Russell Crowe has frequently been one to squander his talent in mediocre or plain terrible fare. His latest, The Man with the Iron Fists, is a 1970s-inspired martial arts menagerie which makes LA Confidential feel like a very long time ago. It’s an almost literal assault on the eyes and ears – entertainingly mad and fitfully bad.

I, Anna

Emma Dibdin Tuesday, 04 December 2012

There are very few examples in film history of a son directing his mother, and there’s a distractingly Oedipal vibe at the core of Barnarby Southcombe’s I, Anna that might offer some clue as to why. Charlotte Rampling turns in a brittle, enigmatic performance in her son’s big-screen debut, playing the eponymous divorcee whose attempt to become sexually bold goes violently awry.

Laurence Anyways

Graham Fuller Saturday, 01 December 2012

At 23, Xavier Dolan may not be the new Jean-Luc Godard, but he could be the new Léos Carax. And Laurence Anyways – a tempestuous romantic melodrama spanning the entire 1990s – could be his Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The third feature made by the Québécois enfant terrible dazzlingly demonstrates his prodigious talent as a metteur-en-scène and director of actors, though, at 168 minutes, it’s about 45 too long.