End of Animal (2010) is the first film of this year’s Festival that I’ve truly detested. As a devoted fan of Korean cinema, it pains me to admit this. But this incomprehensible mess, written and directed by Sung-Hee Jo, is guilty of a crime far worse than sporting a senseless narrative. Beyond the intrigue created […]
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Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation is one of the finest Iranian dramas of all time. On the surface it appears to be little more than a domestic drama but a range complexities emerge from its increasingly detailed narrative in time. Farhadi’s film is a detailed, humanistic portrait of tortured religious convictions, moral debts and the irreducible
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Welsh teenage Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) has a new obsession. Fellow student Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) is the girl he fantasises about being his first true love. At home Oliver is lumbered with his slightly weird parents marine biologist father Lloyd (a deadpanning Noah Taylor) exudes as little charisma as a doorknob and seems distressingly
A simple, innocent deception exponentially grows in significance as the remarkable Tomboy progresses. Moving into a new town, tall, skinny 10 year old Laure (Zoe Heran) ventures into the streets to make new friends. With her cropped hair and startlingly fresh-faced good looks, she refers to herself as ‘Mikael’ when meeting a local girl, Lisa
On certain days, part of me loves reprehensible garbage like this. How do you measure something like Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) against the rest of the field? One shell ejecting scene at a time, that’s how! You’ll grin stupidly at the mindless, gory excess and cartoonish colouring of director Jason Eisner’s in your face,
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In Braden King’s Here, an American cartographer, Will (Ben Foster), ventures into the mostly barren landscape of Armenia for his latest assignment. A loner who works best when adhering to his own rules, Will has a chance encounter with a photographer, Gadarine (Lubna Azabal) both are drifters, refusing to be tethered to a single location.
As feature length documentaries proliferate in the cinemas, filmmakers have been encouraged to find more innovative ways of telling their stories. Senna is the latest in a slew of recent examples that takes cues from its subject matter to drive home the immediacy of its tale. Director Asif Kapadia’s rabbit in the hat is his
John Madden’s murky thriller, The Debt, is a hodgepodge of dodgy accents, interwoven timelines and political machinations. Based on Asaf Bernstein’s 2007 Israeli film of the same name, it’s not lacking in star power, and though all make solid contributions, no single performance stands out. Beginning in 1997 we first meet the scarred Rachel Singer
It’s impossible to understate the value of simplicity in a certain context for example, a story told with disarming clarity that might even leave you feeling mildly optimistic about the human race. French director Jean Becker is no stranger to the creation of a film in this vein as he ably demonstrated with the wonderfully
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