Tag: Movie Review
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Short Film Reviews: Lone & The First Step.
Lone. (2013) Dir. Mark Pellington Lone elegantly combines experimental film and music in an almost hour long experience that is rich in ideas, textures and visuals. Its sound is layered and complex, developing and transforming as the film continues. It has elements of Terence Malick, David Lynch, Andrea Arnold and Harmony Korine. It is at…
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Maleficent.
Maleficent has been a long time coming. After numerous re-shoots and re-workings of the script, the re-imagining of one of Disney’s most iconic fairy-tale adaptations always seemed, to an extent, doomed from the start. With Oz the Great and Powerful receiving terrible reviews there seemed little hope for a film like Maleficent that was evidently following in its footsteps. Since…
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Calvary.
There is something eerie and claustrophobic about setting films in small communities; perhaps Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man is a good example. Such settings have always been ideal for murder mysteries and “whodunit” thrillers. John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary takes advantage of such a setting but uses it in a very unique way. The film begins when Father James Lavelle…
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Fading Gigolo.
I hardly need to mention what a huge Woody Allen fan I am. Equally, I admire John Turturro and his body of work which is so often at its best when he works alongside Joel and Ethan Coen. With their on-screen nihilistic traits and their off-screen New York backgrounds, it makes perfect sense for Allen…
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Blue Ruin.
Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin is a story about revenge; pure, aggressive and passionate revenge. The need for revenge runs deep throughout this intense drama that focusses on very little else. Revenge remains the film’s only theme and focus, because that’s all it needs. We first meet the film’s protagonist, Dwight, whilst he takes a bath – a…
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Frank.
There are just too many things that have inspired and influenced Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank so I won’t even begin to go into them. But I will say this: this is not the biography of either Frank Sidebottom or Chris Sievey, although both have had an impact on the film in different ways. When Jon, a slave to…
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The Wind Rises.
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film is hard to review fairly because of our awareness that it is his last – or so he says. For decades, Miyazaki has been animating, directing and writing for cinema and is responsible for some of contemporary cinema’s most moving and philosophical animated films. A master of his specific style of…
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Short Film Reviews: Jeremiah Kipp.
It is a rare and joyous delight when I am contacted and asked to review a director’s work. Today, it is director Jeremiah Kipp’s work that I will be discussing. Jeremiah Kipp is based in New York and has been making short films and commercials for over a decade. The three films he has asked me to…
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The Man Who Knew Too Much. (1934)
Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier work is sometimes sadly overlooked. He is known by many for his American films, and too right; Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho and Rope are just some of his exceptional later films. Still, Alfred Hitchcock was an Essex boy. He began work in silent cinema with respected films such as The Lodger. Hitchcock’s work in the 1930s remains quintessentially British. The…
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Lolita. (1997)
Lolita is the story of a British professor, Humbert, and his infatuation with his teenage step-daughter. We watch their love affair begin and quickly unravel around them as Humbert desperately tries to keep them together. Stanley Kubrick had major issues with censorship when he adapted Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, to the screen. On reflection, the director stated that if…
Hannah McHaffie 