Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) an acclaimed concert cellist who, by chance, meets the lead singer of a rock band, Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) at a party in New York City. They spend a night together and the next morning promise to reunite at a nearby square. But, Lyla’s controlling father and manager, Thomas (William […] Read more »
A re-watch of Wong Kar Wai’s beautiful meditation on martial arts and heroism, shot through with his perennial preoccupations of time, aging and fading memories. Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi steam up the screen as the rivals who struggle to resist the undercurrent of attraction between them. Read my full review here Read more »
After a troubling daliance in stoner comedy, David Gordon Green returns to the more independent, thoughtful material on which he made his name. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play maintenance workers in the burnt-out woodlands of Texas. Based on the Icelandic film, Either Way, this comedic drama employs plenty of improvisation from its two leads […] Read more »
Having recently seen The Godfather on the big screen I was thankful for the chance to see the extraordinary second part of this story in the cinema as well. It’s often said The Godfather Part II is an example of a film where the sequel was better than the original but, the story is a […] Read more »
When her grandfather dies, 15-year-old Wei Wei (Xu Jiao) inherits his circus, particularly their star attraction: a baseball-playing gorilla, Ling Ling. Unfortunately, she also inherits his huge gambling debts and is only able to fend off the gangsters intent on taking over the circus, by signing Ling Ling over to a Korean baseball team. After […] Read more »
Michael Winterbottom’s rose-tinted biopic of Paul Raymond, purveyor of pornography and sleaze in London’s SoHo, creates a wonderfully authentic sense of time and place, and boasts a pair of knockout performances from Steve Coogan and Imogen Poots as his troubled daughter, Debbie. However, the film does run a little long, especially as it becomes increasingly […] Read more »
Excellent folloy up to Take Shelter from director Jeff Nichols, starring Matthew McConaughey as a fugitive hiding out in the bayous of Arkansas, who is discovered by two young lads, each facing their own coming-of-age issues. They befriend the man, known only as Mud, and agree to help him contact his lover (Reece Witherspoon), while […] Read more »
There are some epic displays of sleight of hand in Robert Bresson’s tale of crime through desperation, but it’s not much of a thrill ride. Many great filmmakers of crime cinema reference Pickpocket as a genre classic and an enduring influence, but it struggles to maintain that impact today. Read more »
My first daliance with Douglas Sirk saw me inadvertently stumble onto a classic. Rock Hudson plays an ambitious journalist, who bumbles into the world of daredevil stunt pilots and gatecrashes an already-fractuous love triangle. Beautiful photography, great performances and some wonderfully scripted dialogue made this an absolute delight. The new Masters of Cinema Blu-ray is […] Read more »
Dante Lam follows up his action spectacular The Viral Factor with this far more character focused and melodramatic story of two MMA fighters in Macau. Nick Cheung goes even further to transform himself into a twisted knot of walking muscle while Eddie Peng stakes his claim as the young Chinese hope in the relam of […] Read more »
A true classic and widely regarded as one of the best films of all time, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is a true masterpiece. Seeing the film on the big screen, in a 4k digital restoration, I was reminded of The Godfather’s operatic scope. From the immersive opening act, which occurs in and around a […] Read more »
NO, directed by Pablo Larrain and starring Gael Garcia Bernal, tells the true story of how an advertising executive helped develop an innovative campaign that helped bring an end to General Pinochet’s military rule in Chile. You can read Fernando’s full review here and also take a look at James’ thoughts on the film here. Read more »
NO is the third in Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s series of films set in Chile during the Pinochet years, following on from Tony Manero and Post Mortem. This time, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as René Saavedra, an advertising executive who is hired to develop a campaign for the Chile’s 1988 national plebiscite. Chile had not […] Read more »
Much has been written about Steven Soderbergh’s decision to quit directing films after a career spanning 26 features, including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, The Informant and Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen. Soderbergh has lamented the state of contemporary cinema, while maintaing that he will direct plays and perhaps TV as well, in the […] Read more »
Pasolini’s films are challenging but I like to challenge myself from time to time, and his body of work has become one of my go-to selections when I’m looking to push myself outside of my comfort zone. That said, his adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is probably the most fun and unreservedly entertaining […] Read more »
One of the most eccentric and distinctive voices of the New Hollywood movement, Hal Ashby created some of the most interesting and unique American films of the period. None more so than Harold and Maue, the hilarious, shocking, bizarre yet somehow rather beautiful story of a young disillusioned man’s relationship with an elderly woman clinging […] Read more »
It’s well known that China’s spectacular transformation, from economic stagnation to explosive capitalistic prosperity has brought with it a fair degree of corruption and social tension. In many places government officials and the police have come to be known as corrupt; sometimes on a spectacular scale. This recent history comes to life while watching To […] Read more »
Parkland is the Dallas hospital where President John F. Kennedy was treated and ultimately died after being shot in 1963. It is also, by a cruel twist of fate, the same hospital where his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was taken one day later. “What a shitty place to die,” exclaims one of the President’s secret […] Read more »
Bending The Rules, written and directed by Behnam Behzadi, traces the tense, final preparations of a young, mostly university age theatre group in Iran, as they prepare to travel and present one of their plays at an overseas festival. Most of the group have either lied to their parents about their plans, sometimes concocting elaborate […] Read more »
Looking for something mindless for the flight home I opted for this comedy drama that casts Seth Rogen as the struggling salesman who is cajoled into a cross-country road trip by his insufferable, interfering, incredibly Jewish mother, played by Barbara Streisand. What could have been a painful experience actually turned out to be a pleasant […] Read more »