Film Reviews

There is an inescapable sadness that runs to the core of Mountains May Depart, the new film from director Jia Zhang-ke. It’s ambitious in its plotting, with three sequential narratives set in differing time periods. The first, set in 1999, is the most intriguing, with characters Liang (Liang Jingdong) and Jingsheng (Zhang Yi) vying for the affections of central figure, Tao, played by Jia’s long-term collaborator and wife, Zhao Tao. Liang and Tao are already dating, but Jingsheng is trying...

When watching The Dinner, you can imagine the producer shouting during casting, “Get me Richard Gere! Steve Coogan! Laura Linney! The brother from Orange is the New Black!” It is a shame that despite the stellar cast The Dinner possesses, the film completely fails to inject life into a melodrama so overwrought that it falls down on almost every level. It’s is the new film from Israeli-American filmmaker Oren Moverman, and his first since the well-received Time Out of Mind;...

When you think of Brooklyn, images of trendy shops and fashionably dressed residents probably come to mind. Something akin to Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha or While We’re Young. Yet, in the same area there are groups of people living very different lifestyles. The Orthodox Jewish community depicted in Menashe may live next door, but the way they go about their daily lives is worlds apart. The film begins with its title character, Menashe (Menashe Lustig), working in a local supermarket....

It is only fitting that Takashi Miike should begin his 100th feature film by saturating the screen in a shower of blood. The prolific Japanese director behind Ichi the Killer, Audition, and perhaps most significantly here, 13 Assassins, has always had an ebullient fondness for flooding his frame with gore, and certainly in terms of its devotion to spewed innards, Blades of the Immortal is more than likely to satisfy Miike’s dedicated fan base; this is a film with plenty...

By Anna Power James Franco directs, with genuine affection, his take on the much loved cult classic film The Room, revealing the surreal story of its enigmatic oddball director Tommy Wiseau (played by Franco), and his bromance with lead actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) in this dramatic rendering of a behind the scenes - making of “the best worst movie ever made”. Meeting in drama class in San Francisco, where a handsome but cripplingly shy Sestero fumbles his way through...

It has always taken something special for Japanese animations to register with a global audience. Over the years, films like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Spirited Away have captured viewer’s hearts across the world. But even though a large number of animes get produced each year, only a couple ever manage this feat. The challenge then for Lu Over the Wall is to see whether it can transcend the tropes of its genre, and reach out beyond the usual...

It’ll come as no surprise to many of you that this endearingly gentle if excessively whimsical oddity from ‘The Lonely Island’ crew first debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. With its geeky sensibility towards the creative process, and its cloyingly sentimental exploration of a subject matter that arguably demands a far more emotionally incisive consideration, Brigsby Bear very much feels like a film that has been geared towards the crowds who descend upon Park City every January. Written by...

Director David Gordon Green doesn’t shy away from the stark realities that come with being a victim of a terrorist attack in this gritty true-life dramatisation of one man’s journey to recovery following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Rather than opt for a traditionally uplifting portrayal of a resilient man overcoming such a tragedy, Green’s drama, Stronger, is more reflective and sincere. It works, because rehabilitation, in any form, is tough. And Jeff Bauman’s story, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is...

By Anna Power Happy End is certainly far from happy - a heavy hint of the irony to be found in this darkest of satirical tales of familial dysfunction amid the bourgeoisie. Twisted from the outset, this misanthropic tale will make you squirm and laugh and often simultaneously. Haneke’s trade mark style is stamped all over this film from the guilty over-privilege of the wealthy, to the theme of assisted dying, following on from his 2014 Palme D’Or winning Amour,...