Thursday, March 28, 2024

Lost in the landscape: ***

Film Review: Tracks (John Curran, 2013)

Mirroring the arduous journey undertaken by Robyn Davidson in 1977, her 1980 book Tracks, which has stagnated in developmental hell for the past thirty years, has finally arrived in 2013 starring Mia Wasikowska as the central heroine.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Welcome to Waseley

Sally Oldaker goes behind the scenes of a local movie hit.