It’s a well-worn observation that the book is better than the movie. But what about the graphic novel? It seems reasonable to expect the transition from one predominantly visual medium to another to be smoother. It was pleasing to see Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis gain wider attention through the animated film adaptation she directed in 2007 [...]
The feature debut of director Tomáš Lunák, Alois Nebel (2011) is an animated film based on a trilogy of graphic novels by Jaromír99 and Jaroslav Rudiš. The film’s black-and-white images sometimes look like a graphic novel come to life. At other times, they possess the stark enchantment of woodblock prints. Through the use of rotoscope [...]
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) was a highlight of last year’s BFI London Film Festival. This year’s highlight looks set to be The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011), a film similar in many ways. At the dramatic centre of The Kids Are All Right was the desire of a lesbian couple’s two kids [...]
Have you ever wondered what it was like for spectators watching their first sound film? Michel Haznavicius’ latest feature brings home just how strange it would have been. For the most part, The Artist (2011) is a close imitation of silent film from the late 1920s: black and white, the only sound a piano or [...]
Making a comedy about cancer is risky business. Making a comedy about a young, attractive person with cancer is self-sabotage. People don’t go to mainstream movies to be bummed out, or to be offended by the trivializing of something that should bum them out. Director Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness”) has a simple solution to this [...]
October 23, 2011 | Published in
Comedy,
Drama,
Film Reviews |
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After making her feature debut as an actress in Bosta (2005), a film about a travelling dance troupe and their eponymous bus, Nadine Labaki went on to direct her own films, in which she also stars, always as a seductive but independent-minded character. She began 4 years ago with Caramel (Sukkar banat), a romantic comedy [...]
The Exchange (Hahithalfut, 2011) is the latest feature from Eran Kolirin, who made a crowd-pleasing debut with his 2007 comedy The Band’s Visit. His new film is also intended as a comedy, but contains very few laughs. It concerns Oded, a PhD student in physics, who lives in quiet contentment with his wife Tami, a recently-graduated architect [...]
“Drive” romanticizes a lot of things that shouldn’t be romanticized: The myth of redemptive violence, dangerous and illegal driving, robbery, evading police and, most egregiously, Members Only jackets. But one thing Nicolas Winding Refn’s 80s-themed, stone-cold badass tale gets right, is the sheer power of cinematic style. The director of other style-over-substance masterpieces such as [...]
This year’s London Film Festival launched with a damp squib in the form of 360, Fernando Meirelles’ latest feature. How far Merielles seems now from City of God (2002). Set in Rio’s slums which force children to grow up fast, City of God was urgent, both socially and stylistically. Children taken from the street played [...]
The 55th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) starts tomorrow, October 12th, and runs until the 22nd. This year the festival will screen 204 features and 110 shorts from 55 different countries. A selection of films will compete for the festival’s 4 main prizes: the Best Film Award, The Grierson Award for [...]
