Film Reviews

iLL Manors

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 06 June 2012

There was a strange sense of ghosts, or rather absent presences, in the screening room where I saw Ben Drew’s iLL Manors (that orthography reflects the chosen spelling of the film’s title, and Drew is also as well known as Plan B, from his rapper music career).

Under African Skies

Adam Sweeting Monday, 04 June 2012

The world is awash with rock docs, most of them not very good, but it's best to think of Under African Skies as merely a superb piece of film-making.

The Turin Horse

Graham Fuller Sunday, 03 June 2012

The Turin Horse begins with a prologue in which a novelistic male narrator, talking over a black screen, describes the probably apocryphal incident that caused Friedrich Nietzsche to suffer a terminal mental breakdown (the more likely reason being syphilis). In a Turin plaza on 3 January 1889, the German philosopher supposedly saw a horse being whipped by a coachman and, sobbing, threw his arms around its neck.

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Prometheus

Adam Sweeting Friday, 01 June 2012

The main problem with making a prequel to Alien is that the 1979 original was so shockingly successful. Even now, countless generations of CGI and special effects later, Ridley Scott's unstoppable monstrosity is surely the most hideous intergalactic threat ever burned onto celluloid.

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The Angels' Share

Emma Simmonds Friday, 01 June 2012

“The angels' share” refers to the two percent of whisky that evaporates each year during its maturation process - which the romantically or religiously inclined would have us believe is siphoned off by cheeky celestial beings.

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Snow White and the Huntsman

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 30 May 2012

There’s no particular reason, beyond the herd instinct of producers, why films should enter the multiplex two by two. But such is the case with twin reimaginings of Snow White within a couple of months. First Mirror Mirror went all out for post-modern irony with Julia Roberts camping it up as the Wicked Queen. Now Snow White and the Huntsman imparts a heavy dose of post-feminist top spin with Charlize Theron vamping it up as the etc etc. The reboot is on the other...

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Top Cat: The Movie

Lisa-Marie Ferla Wednesday, 30 May 2012

The last time racial stereotyping (or at least, its cross-species equivalent) could be passed off as shorthand for a certain kind of slapstick humour was probably back in 1962 - coincidentally, the year that the last of Hanna-Barbera’s 30 episodes of the original Top Cat cartoon ran. And yet you don’t have to be eight years old to laugh out loud at the spectacle of a red-eyed gorilla beating its chest and screaming for bananas.

Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Artangel at Hornsey Town Hall

Steven Gambardella Monday, 28 May 2012

In the cool, dim, municipal modernist interior of Hornsey Town Hall you’re confronted with a neon sign: And Europe Will be Stunned. It's the title of the trilogy of films at the heart of this Artangel-commissioned show by Israel-born Yael Bartana. The films are split in location around the building in an exhibition which includes neon slogans and posters which can be taken away, bearing manifestos in different languages.

Personal Best

Jasper Rees Friday, 25 May 2012

Of the rash of Olympic-themed films lining up on the startline, there is a double entry from Chariots of Fire, digitally remastered on film and freshly rebooted for the stage, as well as a forthcoming feelgood drama about young women in a relay squad – a sort of Round the Bend with Beckham – called Fast Girls.

Men in Black 3

Matt Wolf Thursday, 24 May 2012

J + K = zzzzzzz in this snooze-inducing latest instalment of the once-fun Men in Black franchise, which finds Tommy Lee Jones looking as pained as Will Smith does fretful, and who can blame them? Long in the making but limited in terms of rewards, Barry Sonnenfeld's film doesn't display much conviction for the story it wants to tell (and certainly has no reason to go the all-too-ubiquitous 3D route).

Moonrise Kingdom

Emma Simmonds Wednesday, 23 May 2012

With its precocious youngsters, enchanting title, wonderful wit and delight in hand-crafted detail, Moonrise Kingdom is every inch a Wes Anderson film. This year’s Cannes opener is steeped in The Royal Tenenbaums’ director’s faux-naïf, frivolous worldview, with nearly every one of its magical frames carrying his signature.

Iron Sky

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 22 May 2012

This much-rumoured independent movie has been in the works since 2006, and is improbably billed as a Finnish-German-Australian co-production. It's also unusual for being a project that grew out of the online self-supporting film-making community, Wreck-a-Movie.

She Monkeys

Kieron Tyler Friday, 18 May 2012

She Monkeys comes with a “note of intent” from its Swedish director Lisa Aschan. “She Monkeys plays with rules that surround human behaviour. I want to explore society’s contradictions by allowing young women to perform brutal actions. To show these taboos in contrast to the innocent and what seems to be naïve. The story’s focus is a power play between two teenage girls and the world around them. They’re in constant competition.”

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Graham Fuller Friday, 18 May 2012

It’s impossible to think of a contemporary British director or writer-director team making six consecutive masterpieces as did Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger when they followed The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) with A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948).

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Even the Rain

Jasper Rees Friday, 18 May 2012

Perhaps it’s not a strange coincidence that this week brings two films about the precious commodity that is water. (The other is The Source.) More than oil, more than land, certainly more than ideology, one day the thing mankind will fight over is access to the element without which life is unsustainable.

The Source

Tom Birchenough Thursday, 17 May 2012

Aridity and comedy are not words you expect to read, or write, in the same sentence. Yet they capture some of the many attractions of Radu Mihaileanu’s new film The Source. The director came to considerable public attention two years ago with his Russian-themed burlesque The Concert. This time he has journeyed to the Arab world, and the results are considerably deeper, and more emotionally engaging.