Film Reviews

By Leslie Byron Pitt @Afrofilmviewer He Named Me Malala details the life of Pakistani female activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. The film juxtaposes Yousafzai’s strong family bonds and elevated celebrity status, with the tragic events which left her permanently wounded by Taliban gunmen and led her on the path to her current activism. Both humorous and humane with its observations, this polished documentary may serve to be a neat historical footnote for liberal head-nodders who agree with...

By Adam Turner @AdamTurnerPR Good People is a Danish director's befuddled idea of a British action/gangster thriller featuring James Franco and Kate Hudson (The Wrights). The Wrights are a cash-strapped American couple who've moved to London for a fresh start and are in the process of renovating a house, inherited from a deceased relative, when they're thrown a financial lifeline. A huge wad of money almost literally drops on their doorstep and they're faced with the 'tough' decision of whether...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Craig Roberts was not even 20 when the lead role in Richard Ayoade’s Submarine (2010) thrust him into a very indie kind of fame. It’s that same film that runs through the spine of Just Jim, a dark coming-of-age comedy that serves as a credible, if patchy directing and writing debut for the still only 24 year old. After a sojourn in Hollywood - minor roles in 2014 comedies Bad Neighbours and 22 Jump Street -...

By Leslie Pitt @Afrofilmviewer Nanni Moretti’s latest feature certainly feels like a personal feature. The film deals with an overworked political filmmaker (Margherita Buy), who struggles to cope with balancing her working life while the trauma of a dying matriarch lingers over both herself and her brother (Moretti). The personal elements of the film creep through not only in the film within a film aspect (which hints at the directors left leaning sensibilities in on a surface level), but with...

By Michael McNulty From the minute Pierce Brosnan’s face appears in medium close up in the first scene and he utters the words “I’m sorry, truly, because I fucked up” it almost feels like he could be apologising to the viewer for what they are about to endure. This scene and the rest of Lessons in Love is as about as convincing as Pierce Brosnan was playing James Bond. It’s a mishmash of poorly written, averagely filmed, unconvincing scenes that...

By Leslie Byron Pitt @Afrofilmviewer Wim Winders Oscar nominated feature The Salt of the Earth is a remarkably timely feature, which highlights the work of social photographer Sebastiao Salgado. The film details Salgado's powerful imagery of refugees from all over the world from the sands of Sudan to the Gold Mines of Serra Pelada. The film is light on many elements within his photography, with much of Salgado's footage is of dead or dying persons, and the film only scratching...

By Adam Turner @AdamTurnerPR July Jung's dark drama, A Girl at My Door, explores the troubled lives of two forlorn souls living in a sleepy fishing village in South Korea. Young-nam (Doona Bae) is a dejected police academy officer who has been transferred from Seoul to Yeosu after an unexplained 'police misconduct'. Much to her surprise, she becomes a knight in shining armour to Dohee's (Kim Sae Ron), a local teenager whose life is riddled with torment and misery. In...

By Ben New @squareleg A man wakes up, his alarm didn’t go off. He moves to the kitchen, the taps aren’t working. A glance out the window to a neighboring block reveals someone banging at a window, calling for help. We try to leave and the door is glued shut then comes the sledgehammer whacks from one of the neighbor‘s wall, the whole time accompanied from insistent shouting from the elderly neighbor from the other. This is the very intriguing...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada How to Change the World looks back on the early days of Greenpeace, when the organisation was a small, motley crew of environmental activists from Vancouver. With a keen eye for opportunities to generate media attention, they brought a common cause to the emerging environmental movement: thousands of people joined the call to “save the whales”. But the original group itself fell apart to give way to what would become the global organisation that Greenpeace is...