The Playmaker has signed with 3Buck Productions to handle international sales for “The G,” written and directed by Karl R. Hearne. “The G” is a dark thriller about a mysterious older woman hellbent to get revenge on the corrupt legal guardian who destroyed her life. Variety debuts the trailer below.
“The G” had its world premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival last year and will have its U.K. premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month. The Playmaker will present “The G” at the European Film Market in Berlin (Feb. 15 – 21), and hold a screening for attending international buyers.
The film mixes dark humor, implicit social commentary and intense genre elements to powerful effect. John Bleasdale of Variety called the film “a gender flipping tale of violent revenge,” and added that it was “an original and entertaining thriller.”
“We are very excited to present ‘The G’ to our...
“The G” had its world premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival last year and will have its U.K. premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival later this month. The Playmaker will present “The G” at the European Film Market in Berlin (Feb. 15 – 21), and hold a screening for attending international buyers.
The film mixes dark humor, implicit social commentary and intense genre elements to powerful effect. John Bleasdale of Variety called the film “a gender flipping tale of violent revenge,” and added that it was “an original and entertaining thriller.”
“We are very excited to present ‘The G’ to our...
- 2/8/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSBreathless.The Mubi Podcast returns on January 25. Titled “Tailor Made,” the fifth season will consider landmark movies that captured major fashions of their times—from Jean Seberg in Breathless to Sofia Coppola’s body of work to date—with insights from leading costume designers, fashion designers, cinematographers, and directors.Alongside the announcement of the Competition and Encounters sections, with the addition of new films by Abderrahmane Sissako, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Ruth Beckermann, and more, we’ve updated our Berlinale lineup post ahead of the festival’s commencement on February 15.June Givanni, a writer on and curator of African and African diasporic cinema and the founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, is to be recognized by BAFTA with an Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema...
- 1/23/2024
- MUBI
The Hollywood Reporter thanks the following 322 members of the global film community — listed alphabetically — for taking the time to cast a ballot to help us determine the 100 greatest film books of all time.
Seth Abramovitch
The Hollywood Reporter journalist/It Happened in Hollywood podcast host
Jo Addy
Soho House group film and entertainment director
Casey Affleck
Oscar-winning actor
Rutanya Alda
Author/actress
Stephanie Allain
Filmmaker
Victoria Alonso
Filmmaker/executive
Tony Angellotti
Publicist
Bonnie Arnold
Filmmaker/executive
Miguel Arteta
Filmmaker
Chris Auer
Filmmaker/film professor
John Badham
Filmmaker/film professor
Amy Baer
Executive
Matt Baer
Filmmaker
Lindsey Bahr
Journalist
Ramin Bahrani
Oscar-nominated filmmaker
Cameron Bailey
Toronto International Film Festival CEO/former film critic
John Bailey
Cinematographer/former Academy president
Bela Bajaria
Executive
Sean Baker
Filmmaker
Alec Baldwin
Oscar-nominated actor/author
Tino Balio
Author/film professor
Jeffrey Barbakow
Executive
Michael Barker
Executive
Mike Barnes
The Hollywood Reporter journalist
Jeanine Basinger
Author/film...
Seth Abramovitch
The Hollywood Reporter journalist/It Happened in Hollywood podcast host
Jo Addy
Soho House group film and entertainment director
Casey Affleck
Oscar-winning actor
Rutanya Alda
Author/actress
Stephanie Allain
Filmmaker
Victoria Alonso
Filmmaker/executive
Tony Angellotti
Publicist
Bonnie Arnold
Filmmaker/executive
Miguel Arteta
Filmmaker
Chris Auer
Filmmaker/film professor
John Badham
Filmmaker/film professor
Amy Baer
Executive
Matt Baer
Filmmaker
Lindsey Bahr
Journalist
Ramin Bahrani
Oscar-nominated filmmaker
Cameron Bailey
Toronto International Film Festival CEO/former film critic
John Bailey
Cinematographer/former Academy president
Bela Bajaria
Executive
Sean Baker
Filmmaker
Alec Baldwin
Oscar-nominated actor/author
Tino Balio
Author/film professor
Jeffrey Barbakow
Executive
Michael Barker
Executive
Mike Barnes
The Hollywood Reporter journalist
Jeanine Basinger
Author/film...
- 10/12/2023
- by Scott Feinberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
International press and critics report being unable to access the Cannes ticketing site this morning.
Ticketing and badge collection problems are causing consternation among attendees at Cannes, the day before the festival officially opens.
Dozens of journalists and other industry professionals have taken to social media to express their frustration with the unavailability of the ticketonline.festival-cannes.com page, through which tickets for both press and public screenings are accessed.
“It’s fair to say the Cannes online ticketing system is a shambles wrapped inside a clusterfuck wrapped inside an enigma,” wrote journalist Martyn Conterio, who later posted an image...
Ticketing and badge collection problems are causing consternation among attendees at Cannes, the day before the festival officially opens.
Dozens of journalists and other industry professionals have taken to social media to express their frustration with the unavailability of the ticketonline.festival-cannes.com page, through which tickets for both press and public screenings are accessed.
“It’s fair to say the Cannes online ticketing system is a shambles wrapped inside a clusterfuck wrapped inside an enigma,” wrote journalist Martyn Conterio, who later posted an image...
- 5/16/2022
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
"There are three kinds of people: the ones above, the ones below, and the ones who fall." On this episode of The First Word podcast we reconnect for a discussion about two small scale, contained sci-fi films now available to watch: Vivarium, directed by Lorcan Finnegan, starring Jesse Eisenberg & Imogen Poots; and also The Platform (aka El Hoyo in Spanish), directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, starring Ivan Massagué & Zorion Eguileor. Both worth watching. Friends Alex Billington (@firstshowing) and Mike Eisenberg (@Eisentower30) team up to bring you a podcast providing in-depth discussion, analysis, and interviews about the latest movies, and some old ones too. For this chat, we're joined by film writer John Bleasdale as our guest (he also joined us for our episode on James Gray's Ad Astra last year). Listen to our discussion. Download or listen to The First Word podcast episode #32 below - hosted by Podbean. Subscribe to...
- 4/7/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
"I'm steady, calm. I slept well, no bad dreams. I am active and engaged..." On this episode of The First Word podcast we sit down for a full-on discussion about the meditative sci-fi thriller Ad Astra, directed by James Gray and starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut on a secret mission. This premiered at the Venice Film Festival (my review) and finally opened in theaters in September. Friends Alex Billington (@firstshowing) and Mike Eisenberg (@Eisentower30) team up to bring you a podcast providing in-depth discussion, analysis, and interviews about the latest movies, and some old ones too. For this episode, we're joined by film writer John Bleasdale as our guest for a discussion about Ad Astra - critiquing and examining it in an attempt to figure out what it all means. What does Brad Pitt find out there? Nothing? Something? Listen in. Download or listen to The First Word podcast...
- 10/29/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Arguably one of 2018’s best films was “The Favourite,” a period comedy-drama written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It reaped 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, making it the most nominated film alongside Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma.” But will the love for the movie translate into a Best Picture win?
Set in early 18th century England, “The Favourite” chronicles Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and her distant cousin Abigail Hill’s (Emma Stone) tantalizing power games to one-up each other to be the chief adviser to the temperamental Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).
What could have easily been your conventional stuffy period drama ended up being a juicy, refreshing take on power dynamics, gender roles and social hierarchy in 18th century Britain. Lanthimos’ directorial choices, as well as Davis and McNamara’s script, which blurs the lines between comedy and drama seamlessly with its witty, razor-sharp dialogue,...
Set in early 18th century England, “The Favourite” chronicles Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and her distant cousin Abigail Hill’s (Emma Stone) tantalizing power games to one-up each other to be the chief adviser to the temperamental Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).
What could have easily been your conventional stuffy period drama ended up being a juicy, refreshing take on power dynamics, gender roles and social hierarchy in 18th century Britain. Lanthimos’ directorial choices, as well as Davis and McNamara’s script, which blurs the lines between comedy and drama seamlessly with its witty, razor-sharp dialogue,...
- 2/16/2019
- by Luca Giliberti
- Gold Derby
Alongside Alfonso Cuaron‘s “Roma,” Thursday’s other must-see premiere at the Venice film festival was “The Favourite,” an 18th-century royal farce from off-beat Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Olivia Colman plays England’s sickly Queen Anne (a distant relation to the current monarch who she will portray in “The Crown”). Oscar winner Rachel Weisz is the ruler’s manipulative favorite, Lady Marlborough. Another Oscar champ, Emma Stone, is Weisz’s noblewoman cousin, Abigail, who has fallen on hard times.
SEECheck out this gallery of fashions worn by stars at the Venice film fest
“Think ‘Mean Girls’ written by Jonathan Swift,” declared Cinevie’s John Bleasdale, who positively swooned over the palace intrigue and praised all the three actresses: “The plotting is of the conniving “Dangerous Liaisons”–style, with everyone after their own agenda: all smiles and tears are fake and the innocent, the most deadly of the species. Lanthimos gives...
SEECheck out this gallery of fashions worn by stars at the Venice film fest
“Think ‘Mean Girls’ written by Jonathan Swift,” declared Cinevie’s John Bleasdale, who positively swooned over the palace intrigue and praised all the three actresses: “The plotting is of the conniving “Dangerous Liaisons”–style, with everyone after their own agenda: all smiles and tears are fake and the innocent, the most deadly of the species. Lanthimos gives...
- 8/30/2018
- by Susan Wloszczyna
- Gold Derby
Annemarie Jacir’s father-son story ‘Wajib’ is Palestine’s official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It has already picked up a slew of awards including four awards at Argentina’s Mar Del Plata International Film Festival including the Golden Astor for Best Feature Film in the International Competition, Best Actor for Mohammad Bakri, the Argentine Film Critics Association’s Best Feature Film Award and the Best Feature Film Signis Award.
Wajib also won the Best Film at the Dubai International Film Festival as well as Best Actor which was awarded to the two leading actors Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri. The film also won Best Film at the International Film Festival of Kerala, Grand Prize (Golden Unicorn) as well as the Audience Award at the Amiens International Film Festival. Awards were received from MedFilm (Rome) where Wajib took the Jury Prize, and Montpellier Cinemed’s Youth Jury Award.
Wajib also won the Best Film at the Dubai International Film Festival as well as Best Actor which was awarded to the two leading actors Mohammad Bakri and Saleh Bakri. The film also won Best Film at the International Film Festival of Kerala, Grand Prize (Golden Unicorn) as well as the Audience Award at the Amiens International Film Festival. Awards were received from MedFilm (Rome) where Wajib took the Jury Prize, and Montpellier Cinemed’s Youth Jury Award.
- 12/7/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
With his slow-burning revenge noir Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier debuted as a startlingly original and bold young director, someone to be watched. Premiering at last year's Cannes film festival, his difficult second album is the highly impressive grunge horror of Green Room, telling the tale of a punk band trapped backstage at a murderous Neo-Nazi nightclub. CineVue's John Bleasdale caught up with the director to discuss.
- 5/11/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ With Maidan (2014), Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa made a stunning document of recent events, giving the sensation that history was being freshly minted and world-changing events taking place amidst the stink of burning tires and the febrile excitement of new hope. Although The Event (2015) is set in Russia and relates to a moment almost a quarter of a century in the past, the relationship between the two films speaks all the louder for not being spoken. The film is a mirror held up to the Russian people as if to say "You had your Maidan, now let us have ours". The event of the title was the failed coup d'état that took place in August 1991.
Shocked by the pace of President Gorbachev's reforms and seizing on the opportunity presented by the Premier's untimely summer holiday, Communist hardliners staged a Putsch. Gorbachev was detained, the TV and radio was seized and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake blared out.
Shocked by the pace of President Gorbachev's reforms and seizing on the opportunity presented by the Premier's untimely summer holiday, Communist hardliners staged a Putsch. Gorbachev was detained, the TV and radio was seized and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake blared out.
- 9/14/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★☆☆☆☆ Daniel Alfredson's appallingly bland backwoods drama Go With Me (2015) stars Anthony Hopkins as ex-logger Lester, who comes to the aid of harassed waitress Lillian (Julia Stiles). While Lester spends his evenings making garden ornaments in memory of his dead wife, Lillian is redecorating her dead mother's house. Trouble lurks in the hedgerows via stalker Blackway (Ray Liotta), who has already assaulted Lillian outside of her restaurant and decapitated her cat. The sheriff (Dale Wilson) proves worse than useless and suggests she go to find local Whizzer and ask for the help of his friend Scotty. Like a sneaky taxi driver the script takes us around the houses, rather than anywhere we want to go.
Whizzer (Hal Holbrook) doesn't know where his pal Scotty (Aaron Pearl) is but Lester, on an apparent whim, decides he will take up the mantle of Lillian's guardian angel. Not exactly moving with the lightning speed of an avenger,...
Whizzer (Hal Holbrook) doesn't know where his pal Scotty (Aaron Pearl) is but Lester, on an apparent whim, decides he will take up the mantle of Lillian's guardian angel. Not exactly moving with the lightning speed of an avenger,...
- 9/13/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The red carpet has been walked upon, the Spritz has been supped and the lion has roared. This year's Golden Lion selection is yet another surprise choice, the perfectly serviceable but by no means extraordinary Venezuelan-set drama From Afar, which follows the unlikely relationship between a maker of false teeth and a Caracas street tough. Lorenzo Vigas' film is an assured debut with two fine performances, especially from Alfredo Castro, familiar to world cinema-inclined audiences as Pablo Larraín's muse in Tony Manero and Post Mortem. Head of the Jury Alfonso Cuarón perhaps shows his generosity to another Latin American filmmaker in awarding the Silver Lion to Pablo Trapero for his Martin Scorsese-inspired true crime thriller The Clan.
The runner-up award in the Grand Jury was awarded to Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson for their superb R-rated stop motion masterpiece Anomalisa, for me the best film of the competition.
The runner-up award in the Grand Jury was awarded to Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson for their superb R-rated stop motion masterpiece Anomalisa, for me the best film of the competition.
- 9/13/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ This has been the year of the tragic music star documentary. Brett Morgen's Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015) might have underwhelmed but Asif Kapadia's Amy (2015), which premièred at Cannes, was a powerful demonstration of how the form could reveal previously unsuspected depths of emotion behind the tabloid headlines. Tragic chanteuse Janis Joplin has many parallels with Amy Winehouse - they both made their names as white women singing like black women and both died at 27 - but Joplin has had a longer wait to stir Hollywood interest, with various proposed biopics stumbling at the development stage, including the most recent Amy Adams-led Janis Joplin: Get It While You Can.
Into the breach comes Amy Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015). In contrast to Kapadia's elegantly original technique, Berg tells her story in a largely conventional away through a series of talking head interviews of friends, family and band...
Into the breach comes Amy Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015). In contrast to Kapadia's elegantly original technique, Berg tells her story in a largely conventional away through a series of talking head interviews of friends, family and band...
- 9/12/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ Following a Malickian break between films - his debut Round the Moons Between Earth and Sea was released in 1997 - Giuseppe M. Gaudino tells with For Your Love (2015), the final entry to compete for the Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, a tale of ordinary madness told in an extraordinary but often scattergun way. The woman on the verge of as nervous breakdown is Anna Ruotolo Scaglione, played by Italian actor and director Valeria Golino. A long musical introduction Neapolitan dialect introduces us to Anna as a "capascaqua" or "featherbrain" as the subtitles would have it. However, right from the start Gaudino suggests that Anna is suffering from a quite severe mental illness.
Anna's general unhappiness is already evident from her face, but as if that wasn't enough For Your Love is mostly played out in an ill-conceived monochrome palette reminiscent of those adverts for Calvin Klein's Obsession.
Anna's general unhappiness is already evident from her face, but as if that wasn't enough For Your Love is mostly played out in an ill-conceived monochrome palette reminiscent of those adverts for Calvin Klein's Obsession.
- 9/12/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
"Lorenzo Vigas's debut film From Afar is a tightly controlled tale of quiet desperation and alienation set in present day Venezuela," writes CineVue's John Bleasdale, reviewing the film that's just won the Golden Lion in Venice and now heads to Toronto. The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney makes note of the producing team: "Guillermo Arriaga, who also collaborated on the story, helped put Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on the map with his screenplays for Amores Perros and 21 Grams, while Michel Franco's stark dramas, After Lucia and Chronic, have earned him admiration at Cannes in recent editions. Breakout star Edgar Ramirez (Carlos) and third-generation filmmaker Gabriel Ripstein are executive producers." We've got more reviews, the trailer and a few clips. » - David Hudson...
- 9/12/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
"Lorenzo Vigas's debut film From Afar is a tightly controlled tale of quiet desperation and alienation set in present day Venezuela," writes CineVue's John Bleasdale, reviewing the film that's just won the Golden Lion in Venice and now heads to Toronto. The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney makes note of the producing team: "Guillermo Arriaga, who also collaborated on the story, helped put Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on the map with his screenplays for Amores Perros and 21 Grams, while Michel Franco's stark dramas, After Lucia and Chronic, have earned him admiration at Cannes in recent editions. Breakout star Edgar Ramirez (Carlos) and third-generation filmmaker Gabriel Ripstein are executive producers." We've got more reviews, the trailer and a few clips. » - David Hudson...
- 9/12/2015
- Keyframe
★★★★☆ Debuting in the Orizzonti sidebar at this year's 72nd Venice Film Festival, August Winds (2014) director Gabriel Mascaro's Neon Bull (2015) tells a bizarre and sensuous story of a team of bull handlers in a remote corner of Brazil. They go from town to town in a large Hgv with the bulls which they supply for a strange rodeo event. A bull is released and the horse riders, ride alongside the bulls and try to pull them to the ground by their tails. A film featuring such an exotic and dangerous, albeit decidedly cruel, sport might be expected to focus on the riders who risk their lives as lead characters. However, these guys hardly get more than a line.
Mascaro prefers to follow those who have to look after the bulls, sand their tails (so they're easy to grip) and shovel the shit. One such vaqueiro is Iremar (Juliano Cazarre), an...
Mascaro prefers to follow those who have to look after the bulls, sand their tails (so they're easy to grip) and shovel the shit. One such vaqueiro is Iremar (Juliano Cazarre), an...
- 9/9/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ Heart of a Dog (2015) is the second film in competition at Venice that is essentially an illustrated director's monologue. Whereas Aleksandr Sokurov's Francofonia (2015) had an ambitious if indulgent breadth, artist and musician Laurie Anderson focuses her film on her rat-terrier Lolabelle and offers a work of such ephemeral whimsy that it should come with a warning that 'excessive eye-rolling might cause damage'. We start with a roughly animated Anderson narrating a dream during which she gives birth to her dog. First of all the dog has to be sewn up into her belly and it isn't a puppy either, so the operation is not easy. However, the birth is successful and she has the bitch passed to her in swaddling.
We follow the pair as Anderson tries to experience the world through her dog's eyes - blues and greens - as she roams the neighbourhood. We see the store...
We follow the pair as Anderson tries to experience the world through her dog's eyes - blues and greens - as she roams the neighbourhood. We see the store...
- 9/9/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's unpretentious documentary De Palma (2015) reveals a clear-sighted and fascinating director, who often seems as bemused by the vagaries and inconsistencies in his own career as everyone else. Brian De Palma was initially seen as the most talented of the Young Turks who came to prominence in the seventies. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg all deferred to him and his fierce intelligence. However, De Palma was to be left struggling in their wake as they all went on to accrue massive commercial and critical success while his own career, despite the occasional peak, suffered from troughs of ever-deeper despond.
The directors eschews the conventional prologue to such 'Extended Features' fare that would involve a chorus of praise from De Palma's peers, perhaps to forestall those obvious comparisons. It's consistent with his no-frills approach, which has De Palma sitting down...
The directors eschews the conventional prologue to such 'Extended Features' fare that would involve a chorus of praise from De Palma's peers, perhaps to forestall those obvious comparisons. It's consistent with his no-frills approach, which has De Palma sitting down...
- 9/9/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 4 November 1992 shocked the world. Showing in competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, Amos Gitai's Rabin, The Last Day (2015) is an earnest, forensic examination into the slaying of the Israeli Prime Minister. It was a moment when political murder struck at the heart of a country which still proudly contends that it is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. Following an opening interview with then Defence Minister Shimon Perez, Gitai moves from stock footage of the peace demonstration, called to shore up support for the unpopular Oslo peace accords, to a moment of dramatic reconstruction as the shots are fired.
Pure panic is the first response as security guards bundle the wounded Pm into his car and tear off to the hospital. Following this kinetic scene, Gitai calms everything down to the pace of due process as an inquest is called...
Pure panic is the first response as security guards bundle the wounded Pm into his car and tear off to the hospital. Following this kinetic scene, Gitai calms everything down to the pace of due process as an inquest is called...
- 9/9/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ In Emin Alper's sophomore film Frenzy (2015), two brothers look to survive the paranoia, terror and repression of a frantically unstable Turkey. Mehmet Ozgur plays Kadir, a lumbering giant of a man with a constant expression of docile worry. He is released on parole in return for becoming as an informer to the Turkish intelligence service. He goes back to his old shanty neighbourhood near Istanbul to reunite with his brother Ahmet (Berkay Ates) and settle down to life as an almost free man. Working as a garbage collector, Kadir is to report on his neighbours and has been trained by his handlers to recognise the smell of suspicious chemicals that might be used to make bombs.
Turkey has changed while he has been inside. "This country is weird. We all live in holes and do secret things," he complains when he and his brother's friend Ali (Ozan Akbaba) visit an illegal tavern.
Turkey has changed while he has been inside. "This country is weird. We all live in holes and do secret things," he complains when he and his brother's friend Ali (Ozan Akbaba) visit an illegal tavern.
- 9/8/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ Following his Oscar-winning turn as Stephen Hawking in James Marsh's The Theory of Everything (2014), British actor Eddie Redmayne makes his bow on the Venice Lido in Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl (2015), complete with another transformative portrayal - this time of a Danish painter who slowly realises his true identity as a woman. It's the 1920s and Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is a moderately successful landscape painter who obsessively paints the same vista from his childhood time and again: a bog, a line of trees, the mountains beyond. His wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) is a thoroughly modern type who paints portraits and smokes cigarettes in her cigarette holder.
Gerda is generally supportive of her husband but longs for her own breakthrough as well as a child. They live in their spacious artist's garret and seem happily in love, lustily enjoying each other with healthy regularity. However, Einar hides a secret.
Gerda is generally supportive of her husband but longs for her own breakthrough as well as a child. They live in their spacious artist's garret and seem happily in love, lustily enjoying each other with healthy regularity. However, Einar hides a secret.
- 9/7/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ The indefinite article is an important element to consider in the cinema of Danish writer and director Tobias Lindholm. Three years ago he was in Venice with A Hijacking (2012), the film Captain Phillips might have been if Paul Greengrass' Seal team cavalry hadn't been called in. Now entering the Orizzonti sidebar competition comes the second part in a proposed trilogy, A War (2015). This isn't 'The War' but rather an ordinary singular one, undistinguished from other such things. Thankfully, Lindholm's filmmaking prowess imbues it with compelling power. We find ourselves in Afghanistan as a company of Danish soldiers head out on patrol. An Ied explodes and one of the men is killed.
The unit commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) decides to lead the subsequent patrols as a way of persuading the men on the necessity of their mission and his own willingness to lead from the front. Meanwhile, at...
The unit commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) decides to lead the subsequent patrols as a way of persuading the men on the necessity of their mission and his own willingness to lead from the front. Meanwhile, at...
- 9/7/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ Some linguistic determinism is at work in Oliver Hermanus' The Endless River (2015), a leaden-paced South African melodrama about the repercussions of a horrific crime. Percy (Clayton Evertson) has just been released from prison after serving four years for armed robbery. He is met by his loyal wife Tiny (Crystal-Donna Roberts), a waitress at a gas station diner. They live with her fiery Aunt Mona (Denise Newman) who is frankly sceptical of Percy's stated intention to reform and become a good husband. Meanwhile, Gilles (Claire Denis regular Nicolas Duvauchelle), a Frenchman arrived in South Africa with his young family, strikes up a friendship with Tiny at the restaurant where he goes to eat.
At home with his children and wife, there is an air of tension at the dinner table, and in the light of this, it is apparent that the flirting with Tiny is indicative of some dissatisfaction at home.
At home with his children and wife, there is an air of tension at the dinner table, and in the light of this, it is apparent that the flirting with Tiny is indicative of some dissatisfaction at home.
- 9/7/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ When General Leopoldo Galtieri launched Operation Rosario its failure, including defeat and humiliation in the Falklands (or Malvinas) in 1982, would lead to the end of his dictatorship and the tentative return of democracy to Argentina. It's in this period of uncertainty that Pablo Trapero's new crime thriller The Clan (2015), which screened today at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, is set. Young rugby player Alex Puccio (Peter Lanzani) seems a million miles away from the problems of politics. He's famed for his speed, enjoys playing the game and also going out with his teammates in order to bathe in public adulation. He lives in a traditional middle-class household in a nice suburb of Buenos Aires.
Sisters help each other with their homework; his young brother Guillermo (Franco Masini) obviously adores him; his mother Epifanía (Lili Popovich) teaches at the local school and the gentle patriarch is Arquímedes (Guillermo Francella), a...
Sisters help each other with their homework; his young brother Guillermo (Franco Masini) obviously adores him; his mother Epifanía (Lili Popovich) teaches at the local school and the gentle patriarch is Arquímedes (Guillermo Francella), a...
- 9/7/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★★ Part of the Orizzonti sidebar at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, actor Brady Corbet's debut feature The Childhood of a Leader (2015) combines an Ibsen-like austere family drama with a cinematic verve that's been sadly lacking on the Lido this year. A pounding orchestral overture (courtesy of the legendary Scott Walker) sets the scene as The Great War draws to a bloody, muddy and exhausted conclusion. It's 1919 and as President Wilson convenes European leaders in Paris to draw up a treaty of reparations and carve once more at the map of Europe, in a small house in the French countryside a seven-year-old boy, Prescott (Tom Sweet), collects stones to sling at parishioners leaving a local church.
It's the first of three tantrums which will divide the film into chapters. The child flees into the darkness, hurts himself and is carried back to his mother (Bérénice Bejo). They return to the...
It's the first of three tantrums which will divide the film into chapters. The child flees into the darkness, hurts himself and is carried back to his mother (Bérénice Bejo). They return to the...
- 9/6/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ Playing out of competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, Spotlight (2015) is a gripping drama able to stand alongside Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men and a welcome return to form for director Tom McCarthy following the abhorrence that was The Cobbler (2014). Set in The Boston Globe newsrooms, it's a meticulously built journalistic procedural and a timely reminder of the need for newspapers and journalists everywhere to go after those entrenched in power. When experienced reporter and editor Walter 'Robby' Robinson (Michael Keaton) is asked to sit down with newsroom chief editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), he's expecting to hear about more cuts and staff lay-offs.
It turns out that Marty has a bit of a vision. He wants Robby and his investigative Spotlight team to follow-up on a story about the possible cover-up of a child abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church. Eager beaver reporter Michael Rezendes...
It turns out that Marty has a bit of a vision. He wants Robby and his investigative Spotlight team to follow-up on a story about the possible cover-up of a child abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church. Eager beaver reporter Michael Rezendes...
- 9/5/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ Cut-up family tragicomedy Looking for Grace (2015) is Sue Brooks' fifth feature film and premièred in competition at the Venice Film Festival today. Odessa Young plays Grace, a young girl who for motives unknown has decided to go walkabout with her friends Sapph (Kenya Pearson). Travelling across West Australia on a bus, they meet up with a young chap Jamie (Harry Richardson), who takes a shine to Grace, much to the chagrin of Sapph who decides to head back home. Things don't quite work out the way Grace was hoping and she is left without money in the outback, but just when things look to be heading a familiarly depressing route, mum and dad turn up in the family car.
This anticlimax is only the beginning as the film divides up achronologically into distinct chapters which each follow a separate character, often revisiting scenes from new perspectives. Such narrative play feels a bit thin,...
This anticlimax is only the beginning as the film divides up achronologically into distinct chapters which each follow a separate character, often revisiting scenes from new perspectives. Such narrative play feels a bit thin,...
- 9/5/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ After his portrayal of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009), Johnny Depp returns to the criminal underworld with his take on James 'Whitey' Bulger in Scott Cooper's glossy, competent yet strangely unengaging Black Mass (2015). Adapted from the book by Dick Leher, Cooper's film tells the story of the South Boston criminal leader who, through his connections with the FBI, rose from a small time thug to an out and out king pin. The film begins with local boy Bulger up to nothing much but no good. It's 1975 and Bulger has been back from a stint in Alcatraz. He has a bar and hands out beatings as he controls petty crime on his own turf.
Local thug Kevin (Jesse Plemons) introduces us to him and at first the film looks like it might take his point of view - a young man's rise under the...
Local thug Kevin (Jesse Plemons) introduces us to him and at first the film looks like it might take his point of view - a young man's rise under the...
- 9/4/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Reviews coming out of Venice are mixed for Mohsen Makhmakbaf’s The President. "Absorbing and gripping," finds the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who calls the film "a gutsy drama and a vivid parable." But for Variety's Jay Weissberg, this allegory inspired by the Arab Spring "unfortunately offers a simplified and simplistic reduction, akin to an ancient morality tale without the ancients’ brevity—rather than sophistication cloaked in innocence, the pic feels like didacticism submerged in naivete." Four out of five stars from John Bleasdale at CineVue, though. More from Time Out and The Hollywood Reporter. » - David Hudson...
- 8/28/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Reviews coming out of Venice are mixed for Mohsen Makhmakbaf’s The President. "Absorbing and gripping," finds the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who calls the film "a gutsy drama and a vivid parable." But for Variety's Jay Weissberg, this allegory inspired by the Arab Spring "unfortunately offers a simplified and simplistic reduction, akin to an ancient morality tale without the ancients’ brevity—rather than sophistication cloaked in innocence, the pic feels like didacticism submerged in naivete." Four out of five stars from John Bleasdale at CineVue, though. More from Time Out and The Hollywood Reporter. » - David Hudson...
- 8/28/2014
- Keyframe
The first reviews are out for "Birdman," Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film starring Michael Keaton as a washed up movie star who achieved his greatest fame playing a superhero and is now trying to mount a vanity project on Broadway. The single take film just had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival where reviews have been gushing. Here's just a sample:
"A quarter-century after 'Batman' ushered in the era of Hollywood mega-tentpoles - hollow comicbook pictures manufactured to enthrall teens and hustle merch - a penitent Michael Keaton returns with the comeback of the century, 'Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),' a blisteringly hot-blooded, defiantly anti-formulaic look at a has-been movie star’s attempts to resuscitate his career by mounting a vanity project on Broadway. In a year overloaded with self-aware showbiz satires, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s fifth and best feature provides the delirious coup...
"A quarter-century after 'Batman' ushered in the era of Hollywood mega-tentpoles - hollow comicbook pictures manufactured to enthrall teens and hustle merch - a penitent Michael Keaton returns with the comeback of the century, 'Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),' a blisteringly hot-blooded, defiantly anti-formulaic look at a has-been movie star’s attempts to resuscitate his career by mounting a vanity project on Broadway. In a year overloaded with self-aware showbiz satires, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s fifth and best feature provides the delirious coup...
- 8/27/2014
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
The finishing touches are now underway on the world famous Croisette and the Palais du Cinema in preparation for the 67th Cannes Film Festival, which opens tomorrow (14 April) with Nicole Kidman's geographically apposite Grace Kelly biopic, Grace of Monaco. Co-starring Frank Langella, Robert Lindsay and Tim Roth, and directed by French director Olivier Dahan (best-known for 2007's La Vie en Rose), the drama looks a far more spiky and assured affair than that other recent real-life princess picture we're all desperately trying to forget. However, once the competition proper kicks off the day after, what else stands out in this year's programme? Here, our regular Cannes correspondent John Bleasdale offers his picks from the four themes running through the festival. What are your highlights?...
- 5/18/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ Documentarian David Bond is the worried father of two young children. Like many kids raised in the city, his kids spend most of their day indoors and an inordinate amount of time in front of screens of one type or another. Inspired by a growing trepidation, the filmmaker appoints himself the 'Managing Director of Nature' and decides to market what the outdoors has to offer. The result is Project Wild Thing (2013), a kind of prog-doc both raising awareness of an issue and to some extent trying to solve it. Imagine a small-scale version of 2006's An Inconvenient Truth riffed upon by an English, middle-class Morgan Spurlock.
Bond seeks the advice of professionals in marketing as well as experts in psychology and social welfare. He quizzes school children, trying to encourage them to see something positive in going outside and communes with nature via an owl named 'Merlin'. Finally, we see...
Bond seeks the advice of professionals in marketing as well as experts in psychology and social welfare. He quizzes school children, trying to encourage them to see something positive in going outside and communes with nature via an owl named 'Merlin'. Finally, we see...
- 10/24/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★★ Welshman Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a site manager for a major building project; a family man with two young sons who're waiting for their father to return home to watch the big game. On the way back, Locke turns right instead of left and heads off the motorway. Having made a decision that will change his life forever and armed only with his mobile, our protagonist tries to rectify the mess he's made of things. Dirty Pretty Things screenwriter Steven Knight's second feature, Locke (2013) has the kind of appealing, stripped-back premise (like Rodrigo Cortés' 2010 offering Buried) which is almost a technical challenge.
Knight's latest endeavour is ostensibly ninety minutes (more or less) of one hypnotic actor in a car, driving through the night and speaking to a number of people. But Hardy and his director - who also wrote the screenplay - pull it off magnificently, creating...
Knight's latest endeavour is ostensibly ninety minutes (more or less) of one hypnotic actor in a car, driving through the night and speaking to a number of people. But Hardy and his director - who also wrote the screenplay - pull it off magnificently, creating...
- 10/20/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ Heli (Armando Espitia), the protagonist of Amat Escalante's 2013 Palme d'Or nominee of the same name, is a young Mexican who lives with his father, his son, his young wife (Linda Gonzalez) and 12-year-old sister, Estella (Andrea Vergara). He's prone to bad luck, keen on his naps and, when a census taker comes to the house, hesitates about how many people live there with him. However, when 17-year-old army cadet Beto (Juan Eduardo Palacios) falls in love with Estella and makes plans for the two of them to run away together, Heli's cataclysmic knee-jerk reaction will plunge the family into pitiless and brutal violence.
Narrative films concerned with roving drug gangs, political corruption and barbaric acts of extreme and horrendous violence are depressingly common nowadays and have formed the backdrop for several high profile Hollywood movies in recent years, including Oliver Stone's Savages (2012) and Mexico's own Miss Bala (2011). However,...
Narrative films concerned with roving drug gangs, political corruption and barbaric acts of extreme and horrendous violence are depressingly common nowadays and have formed the backdrop for several high profile Hollywood movies in recent years, including Oliver Stone's Savages (2012) and Mexico's own Miss Bala (2011). However,...
- 10/20/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ The Queen director Stephen Frears' latest offering Philomena (2013), one of a plethora of Oscar hopefuls at this year's BFI London Film Festival, is a heartfelt and nicely poised dramatisation following the true story of Philomena Lee. Its further bolstered by two classy performances from the ever-reliable, but utterly brilliant Judi Dench as the titular heroine, and an effectively restrained turn from Steve Coogan as former BBC reporter Martin Sixsmith. In 1952, Philomena was sent to a Rosecrea convent after falling pregnant. Here, she would give birth to her son, Anthony, who was cared for by the nuns while she worked off her debts.
The convent's nuns subsequently gave away the child to an American couple, whilst Philomena would keep her son's existence a secret for fifty years. The story finally came out when Sixsmith, a disgraced spin doctor, took up the slack and published his 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.
The convent's nuns subsequently gave away the child to an American couple, whilst Philomena would keep her son's existence a secret for fifty years. The story finally came out when Sixsmith, a disgraced spin doctor, took up the slack and published his 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.
- 10/15/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★☆☆☆☆ Italian director Gianni Amelio returns to the fray with the hugely disappointing L'intrepido (A Lonely Hero, 2013), a hopelessly drab character study and alleged social satire. Celebrated comic actor Antonio Albanese plays Antonio, a Milanese Jack of all trades who subs for other workers when they need a few hours (or, indeed, a day off). One morning he can be found driving a tram, the next working the fish market, or in construction, or in a machine shop He's a fast learner and his gouty Mafioso fixer keeps the work rolling in - though he isn't quite as quick with paying Antonio his wages.
Antonio is divorced from his wife but has a loving son, Ivo (Gabriele Rendina), a saxophonist who's struggling with his musical career between the conservatory and nightclub gigs. Antonio also connects with a young woman, Lucia (Livia Rossi) - whom he meets in an exam and then...
Antonio is divorced from his wife but has a loving son, Ivo (Gabriele Rendina), a saxophonist who's struggling with his musical career between the conservatory and nightclub gigs. Antonio also connects with a young woman, Lucia (Livia Rossi) - whom he meets in an exam and then...
- 10/15/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ One of several African efforts to screen at this year's London Film Festival, Merzak Allouache's The Rooftops (2013) presents a day in the life of Algiers as seen through the lives of a wide cast of characters and from a distinctly privileged perspective. Playing like an Algerian Short Cuts, the drama recounts the various lives of the people who use and live on the rooftops. Some do so out of necessity, squatting in makeshift shacks, or colonising the wash room and charging people to use the rooftop. In a number terraces spread throughout different quarters of the city - from the Casbah to Bab El Oued - the rooftops are crammed with life.
There's a boxer working out with his punch bag; a band rehearsing, watched on by an admirer; a gangster and his thugs torture a building contractor and a documentary film crew search for a panorama of the city.
There's a boxer working out with his punch bag; a band rehearsing, watched on by an admirer; a gangster and his thugs torture a building contractor and a documentary film crew search for a panorama of the city.
- 10/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ A follow-up to his own fascinating 2005 documentary Into the Silence, Philip Gröning's Lff offering The Police Officer's Wife (2013) is a demanding, stylistically eccentric and often gruelling exploration of the insidious cost of domestic violence, told in a series of 59 short chapters. A jigsaw puzzle is spotted in the kitchen early on, and we too are expected to piece a narrative together which seems hell-bent on confounding and delaying information. Uwe (David Zimmerschied) is the police officer and Christine (Alexandra Finder) is the eponymous wife, whilst their young daughter Clara is played by twins.
Uwe works late and is often tired, but his and Christine's life seems a happy one. Gradually, however, we suspect that things are not entirely rosy. We spot bruises on Christine's arm. Perhaps it's nothing; after all, they are a couple who indulge in occasional bouts of horseplay and the like. Yet, following an inexplicable burst of temper on Uwe's behalf,...
Uwe works late and is often tired, but his and Christine's life seems a happy one. Gradually, however, we suspect that things are not entirely rosy. We spot bruises on Christine's arm. Perhaps it's nothing; after all, they are a couple who indulge in occasional bouts of horseplay and the like. Yet, following an inexplicable burst of temper on Uwe's behalf,...
- 10/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ In 1975, Robyn Davidson arrived in a remote Australian town with a crazy ambition to cross the desert to the ocean using wild camels - which she planned to capture and tame - to carry her supplies, accompanied by her faithful dog Diggity. Inspired as much by a dislike of people as a love for the wilderness, Davidson faced adversity and opposition from many, but having secured the sponsorship of National Geographic she was able to begin and complete her adventure. Showing in competition at the London Film Festival, Tracks (2013) is John Curran's retelling of Davidson's own account of events.
Though she arguably seems a shade young for the central role - Davidson was twenty-five at the beginning of her adventure - Stoker star Mia Wasikowska's lead performance is finely balanced and thoroughly convincing. It certainly needs to be, as she basically carries the film, appearing in each and every scene.
Though she arguably seems a shade young for the central role - Davidson was twenty-five at the beginning of her adventure - Stoker star Mia Wasikowska's lead performance is finely balanced and thoroughly convincing. It certainly needs to be, as she basically carries the film, appearing in each and every scene.
- 10/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's latest feature, Grigris (2013), recounts a tale of hope against despair in the director's native country of Chad. It tells the story of the titular Grigris (played by Souleymane Deme), a young man whose ambition is to be a dancer despite having a paralysed leg. He's a generous and positive young man who helps out his uncle (Marius Yelolo), is a budding photographer and prays when his mother pesters him into doing so. However, his real passion is for dance. At the local disco he's something of a sensation, strutting his stuff and earning some money by passing a hat around afterwards.
Things seem to be looking up when Mimi (Anaïs Monory), a beautiful local girl, comes by to have some modelling shots taken. Grigris is clearly smitten. However, his Uncle Ajoub suddenly falls ill and the hospital bills mount to impossible levels. Desperate for a solution, Grigris...
Things seem to be looking up when Mimi (Anaïs Monory), a beautiful local girl, comes by to have some modelling shots taken. Grigris is clearly smitten. However, his Uncle Ajoub suddenly falls ill and the hospital bills mount to impossible levels. Desperate for a solution, Grigris...
- 10/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★★
The Coen brothers return to the London Film Festival this year with the barnstorming Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a picaresque odyssey following the close-calls and mishaps of an also-ran folk songster within the New York Greenwich Village scene. It's the early sixties, well before Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary, and folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, who also recorded his own tracks for the film) is waiting for his big break. It's winter in New York and his adventures are both comically trivial - he loses a friend's cat - and potentially dramatic - as he's just got his friend's wife, Jean (Carey Mulligan), pregnant.
Staring at the big success-shaped hole called failure, Llewyn snatches at the opportunity of a trip to Chicago where he may be able to persuade some big-time impresario to back him after the loss of the other half of his duo. Davis...
The Coen brothers return to the London Film Festival this year with the barnstorming Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a picaresque odyssey following the close-calls and mishaps of an also-ran folk songster within the New York Greenwich Village scene. It's the early sixties, well before Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary, and folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, who also recorded his own tracks for the film) is waiting for his big break. It's winter in New York and his adventures are both comically trivial - he loses a friend's cat - and potentially dramatic - as he's just got his friend's wife, Jean (Carey Mulligan), pregnant.
Staring at the big success-shaped hole called failure, Llewyn snatches at the opportunity of a trip to Chicago where he may be able to persuade some big-time impresario to back him after the loss of the other half of his duo. Davis...
- 10/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ Making her debut appearance at the London Film Festival, noted theatre director, screenwriter and actress Emma Dante presents Sicilian-based drama A Street in Palermo (2013), a big screen adaptation of her own acclaimed novel of the same name. Widower Samira (Elena Cotta) cleans the tomb of her daughter before going to pick up her son-in-law Saro (Renato Malfatti) and his family from the beach. Once seated, she drives them through the streets of Palermo towards home. Meanwhile, lesbian couple Rosa (Dante) and Clara (Alba Rohrwacher) search for a wedding reception only one of them wants to attend.
The two cars meet head-to-head in the middle of a narrow street, and with neither of the stubborn women willing to reverse and let the other one pass, a showdown commences between the old and the new; traditionalism and liberalism. Horns sound, neighbours look out of windows and a traffic jam inevitably starts to form.
The two cars meet head-to-head in the middle of a narrow street, and with neither of the stubborn women willing to reverse and let the other one pass, a showdown commences between the old and the new; traditionalism and liberalism. Horns sound, neighbours look out of windows and a traffic jam inevitably starts to form.
- 10/13/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★★ Last year, it was a tale of time-tested amour which ultimately went on to pick up the Palme d'Or. This year, Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) - a tale of young love and the intensity/agony it entails - was the word-of-mouth hit that walked away with Cannes' top prize. Based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh, the film stars Adèle Exarchopoulos as Adèle, a young girl growing up in Lille. The first shot we see of Adèle shows her rushing down the street to catch a bus to school. Here she has to deal with the usual stuff most teenagers must face on a daily basis; boys, biology and suffocating peer pressure.
Yet, Adèle's life appears remarkably angst-free; her friends are seen as supportive, she's engaged in her school work, likes her teachers and has a happy home life with her family. We see our protagonist's first sexual adventure,...
Yet, Adèle's life appears remarkably angst-free; her friends are seen as supportive, she's engaged in her school work, likes her teachers and has a happy home life with her family. We see our protagonist's first sexual adventure,...
- 10/13/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ American director Alexander Payne (Election) returns to the Lff this year with his black and white, geriatric comedy Nebraska (2013), which stars veteran screen legend Bruce Dern as world-weary protagonist Woody Grant. We first spy upon Woody on the open road, plodding resolutely - if unsteadily - towards the camera, before the police bring him home to his nagging, belligerent wife (June Squibb). His sons, David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk), are thus called in to deal with him. It turns out that their father has received a flier informing him that he's won $1 million, to be collected from Lincoln, Nebraska.
Unable to convince Woody that this is a simple scam ("My father believes things people tell him"), David decides to drive him down to Lincoln and thereby rid him of the delusion. Payne's latest is a sharp, subtle and brilliantly-observed dramedy which, despite the novelty of its monochrome cinematography,...
Unable to convince Woody that this is a simple scam ("My father believes things people tell him"), David decides to drive him down to Lincoln and thereby rid him of the delusion. Payne's latest is a sharp, subtle and brilliantly-observed dramedy which, despite the novelty of its monochrome cinematography,...
- 10/12/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ "We bring light to people's homes" says Gilles (Olivier Gourmet), a middle-aged foreman in Rebecca Zlotowski's Grand Central (2013). The protagonists of her latest film are young, unskilled French workers who, at the end of their tether, gladly jump at the chance to work in the dangerously radioactive areas of France's fifty-nine nuclear power stations. Following a brief training period, Gary (Tahar Rahim, in his second film of the London Film Festival) takes to the work with a sense of adventure. At first it's simply an easy way to make money, with the paternal Gilles continually watching out for him.
The inference is that it seems, for once, that this graduate from the school of hard knocks has finally caught a lucky break. Gary is fascinated by the work and, being a quick-learner, prides himself on beating his colleagues. In the caravan park that serves as a worker's camp a sense of community thrives,...
The inference is that it seems, for once, that this graduate from the school of hard knocks has finally caught a lucky break. Gary is fascinated by the work and, being a quick-learner, prides himself on beating his colleagues. In the caravan park that serves as a worker's camp a sense of community thrives,...
- 10/11/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ Director Jia Zhangke returns to Lff this year with A Touch of Sin (2013), a powerful portrait of contemporary China told through the stories of four different provincial characters. Dahai (Jiang Wu) is a disappointed village, exasperated by the corruption around him and specifically the sale of a local mine to private interests. He grouses about it to anyone who will hear him until his exasperation boils over into fury. Zhousan (Wang Baoqiang) is an itinerant worker who returns to his wife and home for a short break. The stern-faced type, he sends his wife money but his only true enjoyment comes from firearms.
Elsewhere, Xiaoyu (Zhao Tao) is a receptionist at a massage parlour having an unhappy affair with a rich business man, and making up the quartet is Xiaohui (Luo Lanshan, in his first film), a careless young man who travels from job to job trying to get ahead in the world,...
Elsewhere, Xiaoyu (Zhao Tao) is a receptionist at a massage parlour having an unhappy affair with a rich business man, and making up the quartet is Xiaohui (Luo Lanshan, in his first film), a careless young man who travels from job to job trying to get ahead in the world,...
- 10/11/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ One of numerous films to make its way to London from the Cannes, Alex van Warmerdam's Borgman (2013) is the darkest of dark horses: an obsidian black comedy with a surreal and genuinely vicious 'eat the rich' ethic that might just pinch a prize. The film opens with a beautifully ludicrous scene as three characters - including a Roman Catholic priest - get tooled up and attempt to capture and possibly kill what seems like a group of homeless people who are living in a Stig of the Dump-style underground hideaway. Their bearded leader, Borgman (Jan Bijovet), makes good his escape and searches for sanctuary.
Borgman's direct approach with a particularly wealthy family living in a large, gated compound leads only to a beating, handed out by Richard (Jeroen Perceval). His artist-wife Marina (Hadewych Minis), shocked by his violence, takes pity on the tramp, allowing him his bath and seeing to his injuries,...
Borgman's direct approach with a particularly wealthy family living in a large, gated compound leads only to a beating, handed out by Richard (Jeroen Perceval). His artist-wife Marina (Hadewych Minis), shocked by his violence, takes pity on the tramp, allowing him his bath and seeing to his injuries,...
- 10/10/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
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