Popular Reviews
Turning Red
In Turning Red, a hyperactive 13-year-old Toronto schoolgirl turns into a giant red panda one day – looks like a cat, but panda is what we’re told – and Pixar’s latest animated adventure swings into motion, as do thoughts about what this can all possibly mean. The girl is called Mei, she is the bookish daughter of an immigrant Chinese family and her condition comes on suddenly after Mei has been humiliated by her mother over a crush on a dopey guy who works in a local shop. Mei is becoming an adult. It’s a metaphor for a girl having her first period and becoming a woman, you’d think. Pixar seem to knock that … Read more
Happy Feet
A CGI animation featuring penguins which comes along in the wake of March of the Penguins, so it’s probably pushing at an open door. And unlike a lot of animated films about animals, this one sets its stall out really quickly. Emperor penguins, it seems, all have a special song that they use in courtship. Except for one, the hero of our fable, called Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood), who has “happy feet” instead – he’s got the sort of dance moves you might expect from Sammy Davis Jr. His mum thinks it’s cute, his dad thinks it’s suspect whereas the stern community Elder, Noah (voice: Hugo Weaving), takes the view that it’s Mumble’s … Read more
Beyond Words
The immigrant experience. Be honest, your heart just sank a little. Possibly because you’ve seen a few movies about it and you imagine you know what you’re about to be served when you hear that Beyond Words (Pomiędzy słowami, in the original Polish) is just such a thing. The tale of a sweet and blameless brown person having a hard time in a mostly white country. But that’s not what Urszula Antoniak’s fourth film is about at all. Instead it asks a rarely asked question – what of the not-so-sweet, not-so-blameless white person in another largely white country? Michael looks like a German but he isn’t one. He’s a Pole who immigrated to … Read more
In a Violent Nature
Have you ever wanted to see a man being fed into a log-splitting machine? Yes? Then In a Violent Nature is for you. No? There’s still something for you, if you enjoy (wrong word) well crafted films with an innovative approach to sound and a sharp eye for a visual. Imagine The Texas Chain Saw Massacre entirely from Leatherface’s point of view and that’s more or less what you have here. Except this monster makes Leatherface look like an articulate sophisticate he’s so lumpen, monomaniacal, unstoppable. This update on the Golem is a killing machine who’s been buried underground for at least ten years, but now he’s been reactivated by a bunch of … Read more
