Thursday, March 28, 2024

Provocative and thoroughly entertaining: ****

Film Review: Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014)

Birdman: The first great film of the year *****

Film Review: Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015)

Perplexing, intriguing and strange: ****

Film Review: Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg, 2014)

A new form of realism *****

Film Review: 20,000 Days on Earth (Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 2014)

In recent weeks I’ve watched a few music films which experimented with the form of documentary. The two most successful and memorable of these were Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One (1968) (released in England as Sympathy for the Devil) and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days of Earth.

An antidote to Twilight ****

Film Review: Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch 2014)

While the vampire genre has proved consistently popular within both cinema and literature, the 21st century has witnessed a staggering rise in the amount of films centred on vampires. From the profoundly beloved Twilight saga (2008-2012) to the obscure Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009) and the upcoming Dracula Untold (Gary Shore, 2014), it would be difficult to hear any filmgoer say that they had not seen one in recent years. 

A triumph: the best this year *****

Film Review: Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2014)

Boasting a fiction filmography of titles such as La Promesse (1996), Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), L’enfant (2005) and The Kid with the Bike (2011), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are two of the most notable and successful filmmakers of recent years.

Squalor in the South: ****

Film Review: Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013)

A masterpiece: *****

Film Review: Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

There is a scene in Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2013) where journalist and central protagonist Jep Gambardella views a photographic exhibition whose author is the son of one of his friends. This exhibition comprises thousands of photographs of the son from a multitude of points in his life.

A five-star animation *****

Film Review: The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)

Like Luxor Jr, the animated lamp that signals the beginning of a Pixar film, the outline of Totoro, the adorable wood spirit from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 My Neighbour Totoro, introduces The Wind Rises as emerging out of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. Not only do the two studios make use of a mascot in order to represent themselves pictorially, but they both enjoy a history of critical and popular successes unrivalled by any other animation studios working at present.

Enjoyable and fairly funny: **

Film Review: Bad Neighbours (Nicholas Stoller, 2014)

Our film reviewer Tom Draper (https://www.draperonfilm.com) gives his verdict on Seth Rogen’s latest outing.