27 October 2014-10-27

Joel Edgerton and Tom Wilkinson in Felony

Out in the UK This Week Felony (Solo, cert 15, digital) Like an Australian End of Watch, a detective drama that shows cops as “just guys”, guys who get themselves into trouble by over-relying on the privileges of the job. In this case a brave and decent cop with a few drinks inside him, who knocks a kid off his bike on the way home and believes he can cover it up. But the kid ends up in a coma in hospital, and the cop is eaten up with remorse, guilt and indecision as to whether to fess up. Joel Edgerton plays the cop as a flawed tragic hero, and also wrote this … Read more

The Best Films of 2014

Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin

Of the 350+ films I saw this year, these are the best ones. Some of them were released last year and I’ve been a bit slow getting round to them. Some of them were released even longer ago. The criteria are – I watched them in 2014 and I liked them. That’s it. The Best Computer Chess (2013, dir: Andrew Bujalski) Andrew Bujalski, inventor of mumblecore, proved there’s life in the old beast yet with this retro-verité drama about geeks meeting in the 1980s to pit their programs against a chess-playing computer. Shooting on original video cameras in fuzzy-edged boxellated black and white, Bujalski catches the moment when the let-it-all-hang-out era died and our … Read more