Film Reviews
Film: FarewellSaturday, 26 September 2009The trailer for Farewell - released in Paris this week - was so dull I nearly didn't bother to go and see the film. The problem with selling Cold War thrillers to the masses is that realistic spy movies have little truck with trailer-friendly stunts, explosions and one-liners. But as any reader of Le Carré knows, the world of espionage is a world of smoke and mirrors, where no-one is who they appear to be, and where cynicism and expediency rub shoulders with slow-burning paranoia. In... Read more... |
Rage, BFI SouthbankFriday, 25 September 2009
Mobile phones aren't usually allowed at film previews. Usually, hard-working hacks trying to earn a crust are relieved of such items at the cinema door lest they record the movie and pirate it on the Internet. But at last night's British premiere of Rage, Sally Potter's satirical thriller about the fashion industry, Blackberries and laptops were positively welcomed. Especially if they were switched on. Read more... |
Three Miles North of MolkomFriday, 18 September 2009Nigel Tufnel is alive and well and living three miles north of Molkom. That’s not strictly true, of course – the guitarist with the legendary rock band Spinal Tap is on an endless global tour promoting the album “Smell the Glove” and still seeking an explanation for the death of the group’s first drummer, who perished in a “bizarre gardening accident”. However, the mumbo-jumbo spirit of the man who famously declared that the dials on his amplifiers “all go up to 11” certainly hangs over this... Read more... |
Army of Crime, Cambridge Film FestivalThursday, 17 September 2009A thorny dilemma looms for Robert Guédiguian's French Resistance drama, the British premiere of which opens the Cambridge Film Festival tonight in the presence of its director (it was released in France yesterday and opens wide in the UK on October 2). Namely: are such fearless freedom fighters in reality the good guys? Or are they, on the other hand, terrorists and murderers? Read more... |
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3DWednesday, 16 September 2009
Chances are you have either read the 1978 illustrated children’s book this film was based on, or have read it to your offspring, in which case you will know it’s a charming story told with frequently absurdist humour and visual invention - perfect inspiration for an animated film in 3D. |
Film: BirdwatchersWednesday, 16 September 2009The tourist cruise boat chugging up the Amazon pauses for another photo opportunity. A dozen or so tribesman with clay-daubed faces and loincloths are discovered posed like a tableau: a colourful addition to the rainforest fauna. The boat marks time for a beat till the natives, glowering resentfully, fire off a stream of half-hearted arrows. Then it quickly revs up and motors on. But wait: a reverse angle shot shows the action from another perspective. The rubberneckers barely out of sight, the... Read more... |
Fish TankFriday, 11 September 2009
It is, as the best cinema should be, always all about the image. Andrea Arnold's films are born, she says, with just this: a visual imprint - strong, unsettling, inexplicable. The stories then slowly unfurl in her mind from that starting point. On paper, they sound grim: the director goes for terse, no-nonsense titles, and her working-class world seems at first unforgiving. Read more... |
Dorian GrayWednesday, 09 September 2009
Oscar Wilde was once bossing a high-society drawing-room with swishes of his rapier wit when someone else had the temerity to mint an aphorism. “I wish I’d said that,” intoned the great man. Back came the devastating retort: “You will, Oscar, you will.” Read more... |
Film: AdventurelandWednesday, 09 September 2009
Superbad was a modern-day coming-of-age comedy with inexplicable 1970s trimmings (the title, groovy credits sequence, Richard Pryor references and so on). Now its director, Greg Mottola, has made a period piece proper in the form of Adventureland, set in the mid-1980s in a cheesy, dilapidated Pittsburgh theme park where the rides make you throw up, and the stalls are rigged against any customer hoping to win more than a dying goldfish. |
9Tuesday, 08 September 2009
Another year, another animated film which plonks us down into the ruins of civilisation. After WALL-E , it's the turn of 9, but this time the causes of the apocalypse are not ecological; it's the fault of big bad machines which, like the ones in The Terminator and The Matrix franchises, have turned against us and reduced our cities to rubble. Read more... |
Julie & JuliaTuesday, 08 September 2009
If you tried to cross chefs, romantic comedy and cyberspace, you might end up with a YouTube video of Nigella Lawson recreating the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally. As much fun as that would be, it would hardly justify two hours of screen time. That’s where Julie & Julia comes in. Read more... |
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