The Eternal Daughter [2022] – ★★1/2 “A good story can save poor [visuals], whereas good visuals cannot save a poor story.” That is what Japanese master animator Osamu Tezuka once said, and no matter how different the style of Joanna Hogg’s film is from any animation, this quote is equally applicable here. The Eternal Daughter…
Category: Drama
“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” Review
The Last Black Man in San Francisco [2019] – ★★★1/2 “There is no place like home”. Housing is an important but often overlooked topic in films (see my discussion of two notable films about housing here). The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, tells…
“Rabbit Hole” Review
Rabbit Hole [2010] – ★★★★1/2 Based on a Pulitzer-winning play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire, Rabbit Hole is a film about a husband and wife pair, Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman), who live in suburban America and face a very difficult period in their life: they have lost their small child…
“I, Daniel Blake” Review
I, Daniel Blake [2016] – ★★★★★ Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake is a kind of film whose theme of the individual vs. the system, brutal honesty and underlying power make it a compulsory watch for everyone. The story centres on Daniel Blake (Dave Johns), a…
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” Review
I’m Thinking of Ending Things [2020] – ★★1/2 Charlie Kaufman’s newest film is a psychological drama with elements of “magical realism”. In the story, one young woman (Jessie Buckley) travels in a snowstorm with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents in their farmhouse. She is one eccentric and “artsy” person who is unsure…
“25th Hour” Review
25th Hour [2002] – ★★★★1/2 Today (11th September) marks 18 years since the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City, and I thought I would review a film that incorporates the post-9/11 atmosphere – Spike Lee’s film 25th Hour – as a tribute so that we never forget what happened and what it meant. Spike…
“Housing” Films: “99 Homes” & “House of Sand and Fog”
99 Homes [2014] – ★★★★ This film is set in the background of the 2008 housing crisis in the US when many Americans lost their homes. Andrew Garfield (Silence (2016)) is Dennis Nash, a single father, who loses his home to the bank and has a chance to get it back if he starts working…
“The Wife” Review
The Wife [2018] – ★★★★ There is a saying that behind every successful man there is a woman, and The Wife exemplifies this saying like no other film. More often than not, society concerns itself with appearances, and people often only see what the façade presents – be it in relation to a relationship or…
“The Little Stranger” Review
The Little Stranger [2018] – ★★★ In this story, adapted from Sarah Waters’s novel of the same name, Dr Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) tries to reacquaint himself with one stately house (Hundreds Hall) he used to admire in his childhood. This is the house belonging to the Ayres family who now find themselves in a pitiful…
“The Children Act” Review
The Children Act [2018] – ★★★1/2 “It was a logical extension of his fantasy of a long sea voyage with her, of their talking all day as they paced the rolling deck. Logical and insane. And innocent. The silence wound itself around them and bound them” (Ian McEwan, The Children Act). The Children Act is…
Films that “grapple” with Faith: “First Reformed” (2018) and “Novitiate” (2017)
First Reformed [2018] – ★★★★★ First Reformed comes from director Paul Schrader, who co-wrote the scripts to such films as Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), and who also directed American Gigolo (1980) and Affliction (1997). Clearly inspired by Robert Bresson’s classic film Diary of a Country Priest (1951), First Reformed tells of Reverend…
“Youth” Review
Youth [2015] – ★★★★ Directed by the eminent Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty (2013)), Youth is about Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), a retired music composer who reminisces on his life while luxuriating at a health resort in the Swiss Alps. His old friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), an American film director, keeps him…
“The Florida Project” Review
The Florida Project [2017] – ★★★★1/2 Sean Baker (Tangerine (2015)) has produced something special – a powerful, unforgettable film about the innocence, joys, freedoms and wonders of childhood played out in the context of social and economic exclusion in Florida, US. The Florida Project has been very unjustly ignored by the Academy in the forthcoming…
“The Shape of Water” Review
The Shape of Water [2017] – ★★★★1/2 “Words lie, but looks don’t…When you fall in love, you fall in love, absolutely, all at once, all-in. It’s a miracle” (Guillermo del Toro). “Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles…
“Ingrid Goes West” Review
Ingrid Goes West [2017] – ★★★ In this film by Matt Spicer, the dangers of the social media usage are laid bare when a troubled girl Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) starts to stalk online a successful Los Angeles photographer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). With the inheritance that her mother left her, Ingrid moves to LA…
“Still Alice” Review
Still Alice [2014] – ★★★★1/2 Still Alice is a film based on Lisa Genova’s 2007 best-selling novel of the same name and starring Julianne Moore in the role which landed her an Academy Award for the best performance of the year. However, Still Alice is so much more than simply a demonstration of an interesting…
“Wakefield” Review
Wakefield [2016] – ★★★★ Based on a short story by E.L. Doctorow (which, in turn, is a re-telling of the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne) and shot over just twenty days, Wakefield is a film about Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston (Drive (2011), The Infiltrator (2016)), a busy city lawyer, who is silently enduring a personal crisis….
“Christine” Review
Christine [2016] – ★★★★ Christine is a drama by Antonio Campos, based on the real life of Christine Chubbuck, a TV reporter in the 1970s in the US, whose troubled professional/personal life leads her to commit one of the most chilling and gruesome acts on live television. In this film, the lead character is played…
“Flight” Review
Flight [2012] – ★★★★ After years of animation production, Robert Zemeckis returned with an action film titled Flight in 2012, depicting an alcoholic pilot of a passenger plane whose crash sets a chain of events forcing the pilot to confront his addiction. After the crash, Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) befriends another drug-addict, Nicole (Kelly Reilly),…
“Margaret” Review
Margaret [2011] – ★★★1/2 Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) is a somewhat spoiled and opinionated seventeen-year-old girl living with her mom, Joan (J. Smith-Cameron), an actress and her little brother in New York City. After witnessing a bus accident, in which she believes herself and a driver (Mark Ruffalo) to be guilty, Lisa’s views on life…
Spotlight on Film 