Home Entertainment
20 July 2015-07-20
Out This Week Mommy (Metrodome, cert 15) In bad drama people say just what they think; in real life they rarely do. Xavier Dolan, usually referred to as a wunderkind, understands this, and in this grungy new drama he pushes that realisation to the max with a story about Steve, a disruptive ADHD kid and his flaky mother. It’s an urgently brilliant film, that never dips into the well of mawkishness reserved for “social issue” films. And that’s even with an extra “issue” added – the next door neighbour, a former teacher whose nerves are shot to shit, who becomes the friend of this dysfunctional duo. The performances are gritty, the dialogue shocking (“I’m … Read more
11 November 2013-11-11
Out in the UK This Week Pacific Rim (Warner, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD) Guillermo Del Toro, everybody, which raises expectations – Pan’s Labyrinth and Cronos being not too shabby. And Hellboy being a yawn but at least a formidably realised one. Throw a director of that ability at a story about alien creatures rising up out of the Pacific and waging war on humanity – who wage it right back with huge robotic leviathans controlled by human drivers – and the result should be something fairly awesome, shouldn’t it? And Pacific Rim actually is awesome up to a point. We have Charlie Hunnam showing his formidably sculpted abs. We have Idris Elba as the … Read more
3 October 2016-10-03
Out This Week When Marnie Was There (StudioCanal, cert U) Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the guy at Studio Ghibli who isn’t Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, this is Japanese animation studio’s final, so Ghibli say, film. And it’s a typically sweet, anglophile story about a typically bereft child called Anna finding typical solace in the supernatural realm – a ghost, called Marnie, who lives in the big deserted house over the bay from Anna’s aunt and uncle. Adapted from Joan G Robinson’s Norfolk-set classic, it’s slow-moving and less loaded with drama than Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies or Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, but it’s undeniably sweet, and charms with its familiar Ghibli-style animation – 2D, … Read more
25 May 2015-05-25
Out This Week Tusk (Sony, cert 15) After the wobble of Red State, Kevin Smith seems to have got his midlife crisis out of the way and now roars back to form with a brilliant, and brilliantly discomfiting, grotesque comedy that sees shock podcaster Justin Long surgically turned into a human walrus by mad Michael Parks. The fact that Long has it coming is signified by his douchebag cheating on his superhot girlfriend, played by superhot Genesis Rodriguez, but nothing can really prepare us for the sense of pathos that Long conjures when he cries big walrus tears from out of his big brown eyes on realising his old human form has been … Read more
17 August 2015-08-17
Out This Week Dear White People (Signature, cert 15) A sharp, smart and almost breathless satire on race, racism, post-racism and the whole damn thing, set in an American university where an all-black college asks the question that all black people are asked in some way… integrate or segregate? This basic question – hard enough – is further complicated by the people it’s being asked of: the entitled, preppy student president (Brandon P Bell), the chippy mixed race DJ (Tessa Thompson) whose Dear White People radio show offers snarky advice on the state of current racial politics (“Dear white people, the minimum number of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been … Read more
26 August 2013-08-26
Out in the UK this week Something in the Air (Artificial Eye, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) If you’ve got any interest at all in how the revolutionary moment of 1968 spawned the postmodern (ie conservative) era that followed it, Olivier Assayas’s brilliant, period-distilling drama is for you. Following a wannabe artist from the revolutionary barricades of Paris, when it was required that all personal preferences came with political justification, through the long intellectual wrangles, splits, and factionalising of what was once called the Left, we follow a young man and woman on a journey that takes them from letting it all hang out to getting a decent job and knuckling down (or not). Musically … Read more
10 August 2015-08-10
Out This Week The Salvation (Warner, cert 15) Having made his name with austere Dogma films, Kristian Levring makes clear he’s more than a one trick pony with a film that pulls every “big movie” trick available – lighting, cameras, costumes, location and sound are all used to the max in a lavish western that sees Mads Mikkelsen striking Clint Eastwood poses as he tries to gain revenge for the death of his wife and child. One of the best modern westerns thematically, technically, artistically and in terms of pure entertainment, it references the medical violence of Peckinpah, the masculine codes of Aldrich, the operatics of Leone and the spartan ruggedness of John Ford, … Read more
30 June 2014-06-30
Out in the UK This Week Non-Stop (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Though there are pretenders, Liam Neeson is the king of the geri-action stars, a modern Charles Bronson whose attitude to violence is, to paraphrase the mild-mannered Dr Banner, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” This time Neeson starts out angry and hungover, then becomes increasingly vexed at 35,000ft, playing an air marshal no one will listen to, in spite of the fact that there’s a crazy man on board who wants to blow up the plane unless a large amount of money… etc … etc. Other big names include Julianne Moore, Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy and 12 Years a … Read more
23 March 2015-03-23
Out in the UK This Week Winter Sleep (New Wave, cert 15) The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest thing of recalcitrant beauty is three hours long and breaks down neatly into three acts, each about an hour in length. In act one we meet Aydin, a progressive baby-boomer with a bit of money, a local luminary, a former actor, a newspaper columnist, a soft touch. Winter Sleep follows him, much in the way Michael Haneke did with Hidden, as that nice liberal carapace is pressure-tested, in Aydin’s case when the son of one of his tenants breaks his car window with a stone. Tenants? Yes, that’s how come Aydin is so comfortable, … Read more
7 July 2014-07-07
Out in the UK This Week The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fox, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Like a cornier Peter Greenaway, Wes Anderson gives us tableaux, picture-postcard symmetry, exquisite control of his mis-en-scène, in a black forest gateau of a movie, set in Europe between the wars, the last great age of decadence. Its revelation is that Ralph Fiennes can do funny, as the charming but crooked concierge with a finger in every pie (and most of his aged female guests) who is accused of murder when one of his ancient paramours is found dead. Whether he did it or not is immaterial. Anderson has, by the time we get to this point, pretty much … Read more
28 October 2013-10-28
Out in the UK This Week Before Midnight (Sony, cert 15, DVD) After Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), this is round three for cinema’s most romantic couple, as played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. They’re now married with two kids and living in France, but we catch up with them holidaying in Greece where they have the time and space to do what they do best – talk – while we get to watch and wonder. In round one he met her on a train journey through Europe and they fell for each other. The film’s USP was the way Delpy and Hawke’s characters interacted – they talked the … Read more
18 August 2014-08-18
Out in the UK This Week Tracks (E One, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) This adaptation of Robyn Davidson’s book about her 2,000 mile solo trek across the Australian desert almost says more about the camels than it does about the woman who became known as the Camel Lady. Where she came from, what her motivation was (apart from a Garbo-esque wanting to be alone), how she sorted out water, provisions, medicines, almost all the sort of detail you might expect is lacking. It barely matters because director John Curran has settled for a non-aboriginal dreamtime approach – even as I write that phrase I realise it’s cack, since I have no idea what an aborigine … Read more
