The Brutalist [2024] – ★★★1/2 If The Pianist (2002) was Paris’s Notre-Dame de Paris, a soulful meditation on human struggle and condition, then The Brutalist is London’s Barbican Centre – empty in everything but performance and concrete image. It is an audacious construction of a film that, like much of modern architecture, is soulless. Directed by Brady…
Category: Historical drama
“The Promised Land” Review: “A Man’s Reach Should Exceed His Grasp…”?
The Promised Land is…an inspiring, relentlessly gritty tale of one undying determination, an indomitable will to achieve the impossible against all odds.
“Godland” Review
Godland [2022] – ★★★★ “To get back up to the shining world from there/My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel,/And Following its path we took no care/To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far/, through a round aperture I saw appear/Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears/, Where we came forth, and…
“The Widow of Saint-Pierre” Review
Patrice Leconte (1947-) is a French director and writer known for such films as The Girl on the Bridge (1999) and Man on the Train (2002). Much underrated, he is also the one who directed a historical drama-comedy and Academy Award-nominee Ridicule (1996), as well as an outrageous, black humour-suffused animation The Suicide Shop (2012)….
“The Return of Martin Guerre” Review
Daniel Vigne’s film, based on a 1941 novella, is…a handsome one, re-telling the famous case of possible impersonation with much skill and consideration, while also showcasing the talent of its leading (of that time) French stars – Gerard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye.
The “Home Sweet Home” Blogathon: Nowhere in Africa (2001)
Nowhere in Africa [2001] – ★★★★1/2 When I heard about The Home Sweet Home Blogathon, I knew I had to participate. Homes and families have always been such an important theme in films, and it is one of my favourite topics. I previously talked about the meaning of homes in my post “Housing Films: 99…
“Letters From Iwo Jima” Review
Being Clint Eastwood’s glorious achievement, Letters From Iwo Jima is as topical now as ever, underlining the futility of all wars.
“The Bookshop” Review
The Bookshop [2018] – ★★ Leo Tolstoy once said that all literature can be divided into two types of stories: a man goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. The Bookshop falls into the latter category. The film first caught my attention when it won a number of Spanish Goya Awards, including…
“The Lost City of Z” Review
The Lost City of Z [2016] – ★★★ “There is very little doubt that the forests cover traces of a lost civilisation of a most unsuspected and surprising character” (from a letter of Fawcett to the Royal Geographical Society, December 1921, Grann (2009) at 55). Based on a great book by David Grann titled The…
“The Mercy” Review
The Mercy [2018] – ★★1/2 There is a method in his madness. This is the way some were able to characterise Donald Crowhurst’s insane desire and, ultimately, attempt to finish a single-handed, non-stop round-the world trip or the Golden Glove (Yacht) Race sponsored by Sunday Times in 1968. Completely amateur, Crowhurst, nevertheless, entered the race,…
“The Founder” Review
The Founder [2016] – ★★★★ “It’s not just the system, Dick. It’s the name. That glorious name, McDonald’s. It could be anything you want it to be…it’s limitless, it’s wide open…it sounds like…America” (Ray Kroc). The McDonald brothers’ success was to the 1950s what the social network’s success was to the 2000s. The story of…
“Hacksaw Ridge” Review
Hacksaw Ridge [2016] – ★★★★1/2 An inspiring story about an unconventional hero? A graphic tale of the brutality of a war? A touching and believable love story? Mel Gibson can do it all, and brilliantly. His latest film Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a kind, deeply-religious young man who…
“Silence”: Book Comparison & Character Study
“This is not the sort of film you “like” or “don’t like”. It’s a film that you experience – and then live with” (Matt Zoller Seitz).
“Indignation” Review
Indignation [2016] – ★★★★ Indignation is a directional debut of screen-writer and producer James Schamus, known for adapting the script of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and being producer of Brokeback Mountain (2005). Adapting a book by Philip Roth, in Indignation, Schamus presents the life of Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a bright lad who, while…
“Florence Foster Jenkins” Review
Florence Foster Jenkins [2016] – ★★★★1/2 Directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen (2006) & Dangerous Liaisons (1988)), Florence Foster Jenkins is a comedy based on a true story[1] of Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep), a New York socialite whose desire to be a well-known opera singer greatly surpassed her natural abilities.[2] Unaware that she has a poor…
“12 Years a Slave” Review
12 Years a Slave [2013] – ★★★★★ Coming from Steve McQueen (director of Shame (2011)), 12 Years a Slave can now be comfortably described as this year’s cinematic sensation. The film, based on a self-autobiographical novel by Solomon Northup, tells the story of a black free man, who lives a happy family life in Saratoga, New York…
“The Quiet American” Review
The Quiet American [2002] – ★★★★1/2 Directed by Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games (1992)), The Quiet American (2002) is a marvellous adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic novel of the same name. This book-to-film adaptation is so good, it arguably suppresses the majority of previous Graham Greene novel adaptations, and the film is certainly better than the…
“The Year of Living Dangerously” Review
The Year of Living Dangerously [1982] – ★★★★ 💥 Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt, is an underrated romantic drama and adventure film set amidst Indonesia’s political unrest of the mid-1960s when the country was making its transition to the so-called “New Order”. The film, based on…
“The Painted Veil” Review
The Painted Veil [2006] – ★★★★1/2 “Lift not the painted veil which those who liveCall Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,And it but mimic all we would believeWith colours idly spread….” (Percy Bysshe Shelley) The Painted Veil is a moving romantic drama set in China in 1925, and based on Somerset Maugham’s critically acclaimed…
Spotlight on Film 