family relationships
Emma Dibdin
Stream-of-consciousness is a tough thing to pull off in the movies. Voice-over narration has now fallen so far out of favour that no internal monologue survives the journey from page to screen even remotely intact, and having your lead character slavishly deliver chunks of a novel seldom recreates the odd magic of reading those same words in one’s own head.But with his deft adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s bruising memoir Wild, Nick Hornby has pulled off an unusually close approximation of the literary stream-of-consciousness. Blending hazy voice-over and staccato flashbacks alongside a near- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The worlds of marital abuse and artistic fraud collide to eye-opening if also frustrating effect in Big Eyes, Tim Burton's film about the unmasking of an elaborate deception that ruptures a family along the way. The film has would-be Oscar contender written all over it, not least in pairing five-time nominee Amy Adams alongside two-time winner Christoph Waltz, but for all that fascinates about the real-life story on view, its walk to the podium is likely to remain as much a fantasy as the claims of the central character, Walter Keane, to having been a great artist. In fact, the Nebraska Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Some of the best films this year have been the longest. The one most likely to be remembered is Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, at a modest enough 165 minutes, followed soon after by Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Turkish masterpiece Winter Sleep, at a weightier 196. Now, close to year end, along comes Lisa Cholodenko’s Olive Kitteridge, bringing with it a considerable tinge of regret that outside a single theatrical outing at this year’s Venice Film Festival, this HBO miniseries is coming to us only on the small screen. At 232 minutes, no less.That’s because Cholodenko’s film is a masterpiece of often Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The single spacious room that is the central location of Tena Štivičić’s 3 Winters has seen plenty of ghosts. It’s part of an old Zagreb mansion, and through the course of the play witnesses the diverse events of Croatian history of the last 70-odd years played out in miniature. Three overlapping time-schemes chart the full rotations of surrounding society: from the war-end move towards Communism in 1945, through 1990 eve-of-break-up Yugoslavia, and on to 2011, not long before EU accession. We may not literally see anything on either side of these three eras, but the action is implicitly Read more ...
Matt Wolf
God love Bill Murray. Just when you think you can't take yet another film about the cross-generational divide that finds crotchety older person transformed by the company of youth (and vice-versa), along comes Murray's latest star vehicle, St Vincent, to inject new life into a more than time-honored conceit in a movie that feels quietly revelatory in all sorts of small ways, as well. (Example: Melissa McCarthy for once isn't reduced to a screaming banshee and visual sight gag.) In synopsis, writer-director Ted Melfi's narrative might seem like one where you can foretell every turn when the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An Off Broadway play that largely passed without notice in 2002 is now a movie poised to suffer the same fate, notwithstanding the fact that this starry three-hander marks the film directing debut of the prolific American dramatist Israel Horovitz, at the age of 75. So it's no surprise that the older generation gets championed in a script (adapted by Horovitz from his stage play) that finds Maggie Smith playing a nonagenarian who, she tells us, is too old for subtlety. In which case, someone should have bitten the bullet and told Horovitz that his film is a talky, contrived and a highly Read more ...
Naima Khan
Meet Len (Graham O'Mara), a man-child stuck in a world where "gaytard", "bender" and "spastic" are (to him, anyway) harmless insults. He throws them lovingly at niece Jen (Jennifer Clement) to help cheer her up as she struggles to deal with the suicide of her father, who also happens to have been Len's more widely-known brother. As you might imagine, Len's counselling tactics strike a dull note with his 19-year-old niece, but nothing that a couple of cans of cider, Stuart Slade's gently witty writing and some fine performances can't put right. Slade handles grief with a wry smile and a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Normally in Hollywood films, adult siblings being forced to spend time together is Thanksgiving-related, but in Shawn Levy's latest it's their father's death that brings the four grown Altman children together. Their dad, Mort, although an atheist, had a dying a wish to have his Jewish heritage honoured by his family sitting shiva (seven days of mourning).Shades of The Big Chill then in the comedy drama, as Judd (Jason Bateman), Wendy (Tina Fey), Phillip (Adam Driver) and Paul (Corey Stoll) gather in their sprawling suburban childhood home, where mother Hilary (Jane Fonda) - a writer of Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Sometimes a film has you swooning from the very first frame, and Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's fifth narrative feature is one such film. The story of a nun's self-discovery is captured in delicate monochrome by cinematographers Ryszard Lenczewski (Margaret) and Lukasz Zal, who render the often austere surroundings with great, gob-stopping imagination in a film whose beauty is enough to make you bow down and praise Jesus, whatever your religious proclivities.Agata Trzebuchowska (mesmerising in her acting debut) is Anna, a novice nun in early 1960s Poland preparing to take her vows. She's Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
By the time that In the Club reached its final episode, fans of Kay Mellor’s pregnancy-pals drama were probably ready for a happy-ever-after. Across six eventful hours we had seen car crashes, assaults, social workers, a bank robbery and Jill Halfpenny giving birth in a car park. We’d also witnessed the usually glacial Hermione Norris living off wine and pizza in a student flat for weeks before popping out one of the healthiest babies of the series - although by that stage it was hardly the least realistic plot development.But to concentrate on the drama - and boy, was there drama - was, I Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Calcutta director Satyajit Ray was a colossus of cinema whose work often bridged the gap between his native Indian – specifically, Bengali – culture and that of Europe. He wrote that his 1964 film Charulata (alternatively titled in English “The Lonely Wife”) was his favourite, saying “it was the one film I would make the same way if I had to do it again”. Ray’s script is based on a novella, “The Broken Nest”, by one of the most profound cultural influences on the director, Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore.Charulata is a film of intimate concentration, as well as an immaculate recreation of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Director David Mackenzie tells us in this disc’s extras that Starred Up is his first genre film, and Fox’s low-rent sleeve art suggests that this could be another dreary, thuggish Britflick. The prison drama clichés come thick and fast, from the hard-nosed governor to the attack in the shower block. There’s a well-meaning outsider helping prisoners deal with anger issues, copious, bloody violence and a sweaty gym scene.So it's good to report that Starred Up is a remarkable film, superbly acted and cannily scripted by Jonathan Asser, basing the screenplay on his own stint teaching prisoners. Read more ...