Film Reviews

With a brazenly cocksure attitude, cult Belgian filmmaker Bavo Defurne’s disappointingly innocuous sophomore feature, Souvenir, begins with a credits sequence that plays against a lively backdrop of sparkling effervescence. Coupled with the starry-eyed score, composed by American pianist Thomas Lauderdale’s ‘Pink Martini’ music group, it’s a film that promises its audience plenty of fizz and flavour, but instead offers them something that’s flat and tasteless. A strong, seasoned performance from Isabelle Huppert is just about enough to make it all...

By Michael McNulty There’s nothing forgettable about In the Mood for Love, but and be honest, when was the last time you thought about whacking it on the DVD player and settling in to watch it on a Friday night? Released in 2000, Wong Kar Wai’s film was fifteen months in the making and a largely unscripted and improvised affair. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and although it didn’t snag the festival’s top prize, it picked...

By Linda Marric To have a film based on Winston Churchill is one thing, to have it based on particularly dark episode in the mans’s life is another thing altogether. In Churchill Jonathan Teplitzky offers a historical biopic like no other. Spanning, not years, but rather a few days in the legendary figure’s life, the film attempts to reconcile its audience with a story which shows the man in, perhaps, not the most positive of lights. Basing the story during...

By Linda Marric J.K Simmons, Eddie Izzard and Luke Wilson stars in Ash Brannon’s new animation feature about a Tibetan mastiff dog who dreams of becoming a rock star. This cute and thoroughly likeable movie does a good job in keeping you entertained, but is sadly let down by a less than accomplished screenplay. Dealing with themes of teenage awakening and adventure away from home, Rock Dog manages to be fun as well as moralising without ever resorting to cheap...

By Michael McNulty Ed Mosberg opens Destination Unknown slowly dressing into his perfectly preserved concentration camp uniform. Its thick black stripes serve as a morbid metaphor for his continued emotional imprisonment, for although Ed and the 12 others who feature in this documentary are survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust, they are not truly free. They’re experiences in the Nazi concentration camps and on the death marches will always be with them. Producer, Llion Roberts, having collected over 14...

By Linda Marric In Whitney Can I Be Me, renowned British documentarian Nick Broomfield lift the lid on the life of one of the most famous pop stars of our time, and does his best to discover the secret behind her untimely demise at the age of 48. Broomfield uses extensive “never seen before” footage and numerous interviews with those closest to the singer to tell a truly distressing story of how the once squeaky clean princess of black pop,...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP John Berger, the author of many a book I have picked up in a bookshop only to put down again, has always looked like an intriguing and interesting figure, if albeit from afar. The highly regarded author, critic, and artist – who died earlier this year – has always seemed like a charismatic and thoughtful character more than worthy of an affectionate documentary like the one that has been produced. Consisting of four short films about...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP It is hard not to admire stand-up comedians who night after night seemingly achieve the impossible and manage to hold audiences in wonder as they stand on stage and tell jokes. At the same time there are films and television programs that despite their large budgets and vast crews struggle to keep people’s attention half as effectively. It can be amazing that comedians can achieve so much with seemingly so little. Dying Laughing keeps things very...

By Michael McNulty Mark Cousins’ Stockholm My Love is an exercise in patience. A frustratingly dull film with the pretentions of a film school graduate, who has gorged on likes of filmmakers such as Terrence Malick, then picked up a camera and disappeared down a rabbit hole of contemplation, exploring themes of urbanism, love, loss and the human spirit. Alva (Neneh Cheery), an architect, has been struggling to come to terms with accidently hitting and killing an elderly man with...