The recent Golden Globe nominations had their fair share of surprises – Quvehzhané Wallis for Annie? Robert Duvall, really? – but perhaps its most interesting raft of nominees is found in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Alongside favourites like Ida and Force Majeure, Israeli drama Gett, the Trial of Viviane Amsalem muscled out serious…
I was ten years old when I produced my first piece of propaganda. The homeroom of my school was named after ex-student and Victoria Cross recipient Robert Grieve. We were dutifully informed of the heroism Captain Grieve demonstrated in defence of our nation, bombing and killing two gun crews in the First World War and…
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…
Non-Stop brackets a thrilling middle sequence between two disappointing – but thankfully brief – acts. Your enjoyment of the film will depend pretty much entirely if you can forgive the silliness of the final act. But make no mistake, this whole film is remarkably silly – that’s the point! It’s simply that the second act’s…
I’m not really that interested in getting too caught up in the Oscars fol-de-rol that consumes the critical community around this time of year. I read a lot about the Academy Awards because, well, it’s people getting passionate about film! People arguing emphatically about which film is better and the industry, about who will win…
“I can’t remember. And it doesn’t matter.” Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) responds with the above when his son, David (Will Forte) asks about his childhood dreams. That kind of no-nonsense refutation of warmed-over romanticism is critical to Nebraska’s appeal, which tells the story of Woody’s journey to Nebraska, fuelled by his delusional conviction that he’s…
Woody Allen’s third feature film, Bananas, finds the famously neurotic comedian playing Fielding Mellish, a hapless product tester who ends up becoming the president of a small Latin American nation … all because he wanted to impress his radical girlfriend. How exactly did he get to that position? Well – who cares? It’s hardly the…
Another couple reviews hosted on other websites, each for a film whose leading ladies are likely to be nominated for Academy Awards soon enough: August: Osage County, a film with a great cast and screenplay that never really come together to create a great film. Philomena, anchored by an excellent performance from Judi Dench but…
Wadjda is deeply influenced by cinematic history. Writer/director Haifaa al-Mansour has stated a significant influence on her film was neorealist cinema, and it’s not hard to see the influence of a film like Bicycle Thieves in this story of a young Saudi girl’s quest to purchase a bicycle, or the way al-Mansour’s camera creates a…
12 Years a Slave takes its name from Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, which recounts the true story of how Solomon, a free black man in antebellum (pre-Civil War) America, was kidnapped and sold into bondage in Louisiana. The title tells a casual moviegoer that this is a film about slavery; but it’s the first two…
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