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 [...]
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 [...]
It’s Guy Fawkes Night, and the South London sky is pulsing with brilliant explosions. In the midst of the celebration, Sam (Jodie Whittaker) is mugged at knife-point by a gang of teen hoodlums. Before they get away with their meager take, however, a flaming object smashes into a nearby car. Moses (John Boyega), the gang’s leader, [...]
In Potiche, Catherine Deneuve plays Suzanne Pujol, the titular ‘trophy wife’ who thinks that jogging, housekeeping and writing light verse are enough to keep her happy. But deep down, she feels useless: her children have grown up, her husband Robert scoffs at her ideas and opinions, and the maid does all the real work in [...]
Cold Fish (Japan, 2010) is the story of serial killer, Murata, who owns a tropical fish shop, and the way in which he forces Shamoto, a mild-mannered family man, to become his accomplice. To read a simple description of the events that take place in this film, you might expect something similar to Park Chan-Wook’s [...]
Gianni Di Gregorio’s newest film, Salt of Life (Gianni e le donne, 2011) was screened at a special preview at London’s Curzon Mayfair cinema last Thursday (21 July). Following the screening, the director was present for an entertaining Q&A filled with affable anecdotes. Salt of Life is a story of late middle-age and revolves [...]
Blink and you’d have missed it: the Barbican’s New Zealand Film Festival 2011 took place over just 3 days in London last weekend. Although it is a nice idea for every country, however small, to have its own festival, it might have been a better to hold one combined festival for Australia and New Zealand, [...]
I watched “Delhi Belly” twice. The first time in the original English/Hindi format and the second time in the dubbed Hindi. It was a different experience each time and frankly, this is an English language film through and through, never mind the litany of Hindi profanities punctuating it. The celluloid-burning cussing is the USP of [...]
DIFF 2012 Reviews: ‘Cinema Six,’ ‘Compliance,’ ‘Faith, Love and Whiskey’
Things I Don’t Understand (2011)
Jiří Trnka: Animation Retrospective
Lowlights of Cinélatino
Brevity Pays Off
‘A Secret World’ at Cinélatino
‘Future Lasts Forever’ at Sofia
Two Treatments of Italy’s Fascist Past
‘The Leopard’: novel, opera, but above all, film
We’ll always have ‘Casablanca’
