Friday, March 29, 2024

Ultimately rewarding: ****

Film review: The Past (Asghar Farhadi, 2013)

One of the first shots of Asghar Farhadi’s The Past separates two of its characters between a pane of glass where they can see can see but not hear each other.

This image crudely recalls his Oscar-winning drama A Separation (2011) which focuses on the conflict tearing its central couple apart: the husband wants to stay in Iran to look after his father, the wife wants to move abroad to provide improved conditions for her daughter.

Meticulous realism: ****

Film review: Starred Up (David Mackenzie, 2014)

Starred Up emerges from screenwriter Jonathan Asser’s experiences working in the education department at Wandsworth Prison. This knowledge lets us further understand both the meticulous realism of the film and the placing of its central force for good as Oliver (‘O’), the therapist who appears to be the only member of staff who believes in the possibility of rehabilitation for violent protagonist Eric Love (Jack O’Connell).

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.

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

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

Believable and draining: *****

In May 2013, Blue Is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2) won the Palme d’Or, arguably the greatest honour a film can receive, at least within the art cinema world, at the Cannes Film Festival.

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. 

Quiet and explosive: ****

Film review: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014)

Seven years since his second feature, Birth, Jonathan Glazer delivers Under the Skin from the darkness that is the British film industry, avoiding the quagmire that has ended many young careers – a demise resembling the fate of the men Scarlett Johansson seduces in his film.

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.

Appealing, yet unorginal ****

Film Review: The Double (Richard Ayoade, 2014)

‘You’re in my place’ are the first lines spoken in The Double to central character Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) by a man whose is face is obscured by a newspaper.

As this faceless entity orders Simon to surrender his seat in an otherwise empty train carriage, one assumes the film has opened with a dream sequence in which events occur according to dream logic and function to represent Simon’s internal anxieties through metaphor.