Miss Hokusai (2015)
Miss Hokusai is the anime equivalent of Mr Turner, offering a roundabout biopic of its nation’s most recognised artist.
Mr Holmes (2015)
The framing of Bill Condon’s Mr Holmes is, on the face of it, rather peculiar. Adapted from Mitch Cullin’s “A Slight Trick of the Mind”, it tells a fictional tale about a fictional character – Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) – yet it’s presented as though it were a biopic about the final years of a…
Mr Turner (2014)
Biopics are a much maligned category of film … with good reason. Despite the preponderance of such films – only, ultimately, connected by being about ‘someone dead and famous’ – there are surprisingly few great biographical films. There are a lot of ‘entirely fine’ ones, but I can only think of handful that could be…
British Film Festival 2014
November last year introduced the inaugural British Film Festival, a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale slate of nation-centric film festivals. It’s not that I don’t have a lot of respect for local festivals like the Italian, Israeli, French etc festivals – I only saw one of my favourite films of the year…
Secrets & Lies (1996)
The observational mode of Mike Leigh’s storytelling in Secrets & Lies did not initially impress me. Leigh tends to stand back from his characters; his camera maintains a close proximity to working-class mother Cynthia (Oscar-nominated Brenda Blethyn), her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) and Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the daughter Cynthia gave away decades ago …but generally…
