Reviews & features: Reviews
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Blancanieves
26 Feb 2013
1920s set silent take on the Snow White story, with seven bullfighting dwarves
It’s going to be difficult to get through a review of Blancanieves without mentioning The Artist, so let’s get it out of the way now. Both films are European, black and white, reduced format silent films in romanticised 20th century period settings.
A Late Quartet
26 Feb 2013
Unlikable characters blight this grown-up drama starring Christopher Walken
As befits an unapologetically grown-up and classy film about posh people who have loads of money and play in a string quartet, this drama has some supremely elegant, subtle and well-turned scenes. It also has moments of preciousness choking enough to…
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 2)
26 Feb 2013
Highly entertaining second part of the vibrant Bollywood gangster drama
The second half of Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster epic picks up immediately where its predecessor ended; with the marketplace murder of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) by a gang of masked motorcyclists. Despite his initial reluctance, Sardar’s son Faizal…
Welcome to the Punch
26 Feb 2013
James McAvoy and Andrea Riseborough star in this showy action flick from the director of Shifty
There is something distinctly hypocritical and pernicious about the way this homegrown thriller gestures towards a moral stance on gun violence, only to itself locate firearms as not only an absolutely critical element in effective policing, but also…
The Look of Love
26 Feb 2013
Michael Winterbottom's biopic of soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never finds its tone
Despite juicy subject matter and a promising cast, this biopic of the British strip club and soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never quite finds its tone. In its first half, it deploys a weak end-of-the-pier comic mode which might fit its tasselled, trashy…
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1)
26 Feb 2013
Epic Bollywood gangster saga influenced by The Godfather
Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster saga is a considerable undertaking; split into two parts of over 160 minutes each, it follows the fortunes of a criminal dynasty with exhaustive attention to detail. The model is clearly Francis Ford Coppola’s study of…
Much Ado About Nothing
26 Feb 2013
This lo-fi project from Joss Whedon is an elegant adaptation of the Shakespearean play
It’s not classed as one of Shakespeare's hard-to-categorise 'problem plays', but there’s plenty that’s problematic in this mid-period comedy. The traducement, rejection and humiliation of the innocent Hero, for instance – and her capitulation thereto…
Hi-So
26 Feb 2013
Inert Thai drama about a directionless twenty-something in Bangkok
Form follows content in this tediously inert Thai drama about a young man caught between eastern and western cultures and suffering from emotional paralysis. Emotional paralysis is quite possibly the state writer-director Aditya Assarat’s film will…
Neighbouring Sounds
26 Feb 2013
A clever and original social drama from Brazil directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho
The current resurgence in Brazilian cinema throws up a major work in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds, an allegorical tale of class conflict set in a Recife condominium. From the opening scene, in which young mother Bia (Maeve Jinkings) hides…
Thérèse Desqueyroux
26 Feb 2013
Claude Miller's final film is an adaptation of Francois Mauriac's book starring Audrey Tautou
François Mauriac’s 1927 novel is one of the cornerstones of French literature, but is less familiar to non-Gallic audiences. Casting comely Amelie star Audrey Tautou as the repressed wife who impulsively seeks revenge on her domineering husband suggests…
The Hijacking
26 Feb 2013
Tense Danish thriller about a ship taken over by pirates in the Indian Ocean
Tobias Lindholm’s seafaring thriller explores contrasting claustrophobic environments through the eyes of two protagonists: Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk), the ship’s cook on board a hijacked freighter in the Indian Ocean, and freight firm CEO Peter (Soren…
Sawney: Flesh of Man
26 Feb 2013
The cannibal horror was screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival's 2013 Frightfest strand
There was a sneaky bonus before the screening of Sawney with the world premiere of Spencer Estabrook’s short The Hunt (●●●●), a nicely comedic concise monster movie that begs the question who’s hunting who? Sawney played well to the Scottish crowd.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
25 Feb 2013
Unsatisfying horror, comedy and action combo starring Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the dunderheaded English-language debut of Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola (best known for highly entertaining Nazi zom-com Dead Snow). Despite a promisingly (and characteristically) daft concept it's a film that lacks…
Sleep Tight (Mientras Duermes)
22 Feb 2013
Dark Spanish thriller featuring a wonderful, creepy central performance from Luis Tosar
Over the last few years horror fans have been turning to Europe, and in particular Spain, for fresh innovative cinema. And while Sleep Tight is more a dark thriller than a straight horror it inhabits some pretty creepy, twisted territory, and is…
The Gatekeepers
22 Feb 2013
Oscar-nominated documentary about the heads of internal Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet
Shin Bet is the name of Israel's internal anti-terrorist intelligence agency, the identities of its personnel are all top-secret, with the exception of the man in charge. In this remarkable, vital documentary Israeli director Dror Moreh interviews the…
Spring Breakers
22 Feb 2013
Harmony Korine's ludicrously bad drama about four girls gone wild on spring break
Incoherent, brash and self-consciously 'arthouse' in execution, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is an intriguing cinematic spectacle: an awful film that seems aware – nay, aggressively boastful – of its own awfulness. It follows a quartet of…
The History of Future Folk
22 Feb 2013
Charming but slight sci-fi music comedy in the vein of Flight of the Conchords
Cosmic-folk twosome Future Folk started life on the underground New York music scene, playing acoustic guitar-and-banjo tunes with sci-fi lyrics to crowds of bemused punters. The gentle whimsy and a focus on music rather than jokes puts their foot…
White Elephant
22 Feb 2013
Contemplative Argentinian drama about a team of Catholic priests working in Buenos Aires' slums
In this unique and impressive drama Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Trapero (Carancho) invites us into the lives of a team of dedicated Catholic priests, led by Father Julian (Ricardo Darin), who work with and live amongst gang members, drug addicts and…
How to Survive a Plague
22 Feb 2013
Moving, Oscar-nominated documentary about the early days of AIDS campaign group ACT UP
Founded by playwright Larry Kramer and a group of fellow activists in March 1987, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a grassroots group dedicated to influencing US AIDS policy and research. David France’s documentary charts the group’s…
Before Dawn
21 Feb 2013
Uneven low-budget zombie drama with unexpected final act
The public’s interest in all things connected with zombies shows little signs of passing away quietly, with micro-budget feature Before Dawn arriving on the heels of the somewhat higher profile Warm Bodies. The common ground is that both attempt to…
Crawl
20 Feb 2013
Australian thriller that borrows a little too heavily from the Coen brothers
Bucking the recent trend in Australian thrillers and chillers for grittily and gratuitously realistic lurid documentary-style dramas based on real events (see Wolf Creek et al), Crawl is a pointedly cinematic and resolutely fictional old school…
Living Apart Together
20 Feb 2013
Restored 80s lost drama about a Glaswegian pop star starring singer-songwriter BA Robertson
Made for fledgling network-broadcaster Channel 4 in 1982, writer/director Charlie Gormley’s film might seem like an odd choice for restoration; this clearly isn’t a masterpiece in disrepair, but a humble homegrown proposition. Yet after several decades…
John Dies at the End
20 Feb 2013
Self-conciously bizarre cult comedy offering from director Don Coscarelli
Penned by Senior Editor at Cracked.com David Wong (real name Jason Pargin), the 2009 novel John Dies at the End was a comedy-horror tornado of cultural references, paranormality and winking self-awareness. Cult filmmaker Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba…
Citadel
20 Feb 2013
Bleak and morally dubious ‘hoodie horror’ set in Glasgow high rises
The ‘hoodie horror’ subgenre can be neatly summed up as the Daily Mail’s favourite nightmare: good, honest (almost invariably white) folks terrorized by gangs of feral (almost invariably multi-racial) urban youths. 2008 horror Eden Lake and the Michael…
Vinyl
19 Feb 2013
Clunky Welsh comedy starring Keith Allen and Phil Daniels as ageing punk rockers
This clunky punk rock comedy from Welsh filmmaker Sara Sugarman has its heart in the right place, but despite a decent ‘inspired by real events’ premise and some solid performances, it’s crippled by a half-baked script and a reliance upon…
