At first glance Park Chan-Wook’s ‘inspired’ by Sarah Waters Victorian set novel Fingersmith (Waters and Chan-Wook agreed on inspired rather and adapted because of the changes in the second half of the film) is an usual choice. Looking more closely at his previous work and it seems a snug fit, what with…
Andrea Arnold returns to the Croisette for the third time in four films with an idiosyncratic slice of ersatz Americana that follows a band of magazine subscription sellers as they crisscross the American Midwest, leaving in their wake a path of material, physical and mental destruction.
Who would called it, but Cannes 2016 is warming up to the year of outrageous comedy, what after Bruno Dumont’s outs himself as the heir apparent to Slap Stick legend status; now it’s the turn of German auteur Maren Ade with her 2h42m uncontrollably laugh out loud comedy of embarrassment that makes Curb Your Enthusiasm seem content and comfortable…
Ken Loach returns to Cannes after being a tad hasty announcing his retirement from feature films after the premiere of his last film to play at Cannes: Jimmy’s Hall. I, Daniel Blake is a story that demands to brought to the attention of the wider world, a tale of injustice, snide cynical bureaucratic manslaughter …
Audiences coming to Alain Guiraudie’s Cannes Competition entry Rester Vertical after his break out hit Stranger By the Lake (which played in the Un Certain Regard sidebar in 2013 and won best film of the section) are likely to be puzzled, perplexed and possibly peeved; long time supporters will likely …
Following the careers of two dancers in the National Cuban Ballet among the presence of the now-blind Alicia Alonso, a legendary Cuban prima ballerina assoluta, Horizons matches its subjects in sheer grace and determination. As a documentary, it exceeds the task of documenting the women it follows, feeling …
After the Coen Brother’s opened the Berlinale in February with Hail, Caesar! A film that gilded the Lilly over 1950 Hollywood and the meandering topics that surrounded that milieu; now it’s Woody Allen’s turn with Café Society, his mediocre tale of love set among the burgeoning Hollywood studio system of the 1930s.
Peterson’s coming-of-age documentary chronicles six years in the life of Zachariah Doomadgee, an aboriginal growing up in Sydney, far away from his peoples land claim and culture. His father teaches him about his people, in an effort to maintain the culture, but Zach feels always split between the…
Goetschel’s fascinating documentary takes viewers behind closed doors and into the past of a secret Soviet city, known as City 40, which was built for the purposes of off-the-grid nuclear testing and armament. Central to City 40 is a Nuclear Plant named Mayak, built in the mid-1940s soon after the…
E J-yong’s latest film addresses quite possibly every other marginalised community/identity and taboo yet pressing social issues that exist in contemporary South Korea. He accesses these identities and issues through a frank portrait of a woman in her mid-sixties, So-yeong, who is a prostitute; the only …