Four Christmases and Changeling

3:01pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

Rumours of an on-set feud between lead stars Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn hardly echo the tidings of comfort and joy espoused by Seth Gordon’s romantic comedy Four Christmases. "We've just got to get through these four Christmases as quickly and painlessly as possible,” grimaces Witherspoon's plucky heroine as she stares down the barrel of back-to-back celebrations with her divorced parents and the in-laws. By the end of the first act, we realise with mounting horror that director Gordon and his four screenwriters have no intention of granting her (and therefore us) that wish.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Before the Rains, Año uña and The Silence of Lorna

3:00pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

Having impressed with The Terrorist (1999) and Asoka the Great (2001), cinematographer-turned-director Santosh Sivan makes his English-language debut with Before the Rains. Set in Kerala in southern India in 1937, the action centres on spice baron Linus Roache, as he tries to secure from banker John Standing the funding for a road that will enable him to expand his business. A committed colonialist, Roache plans to share his wealth with factotum Rahul Bose. But the project is endangered when Roache is spotted with his housemaid mistress Nandita Das and Bose has to devise an elaborate cover-up to maintain appearances with the locals and prevent memsahib Jennifer Ehle from learning the truth.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Waltz With Bashir

3:31pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

The Japanese have been making grown-up cartoons for decades. But the emphasis of so much anime has been on sci-fi and fantasy and it's only recently that animators have begun to tackle weightier topics in the graphic novel style of, say, Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Conversations with My Gardener and Belle Toujours

3:30pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

Two superb films about ageing are released this week and it’s wonderful to see that cinema is still being made somewhere in the world whose main constituency isn’t adolescent males.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

10:09am Thursday 13th November 2008

Almost 20 years ago, Rob Reiner's seminal romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally posed the age-old question: can men and women truly be friends without sex getting in the way? For Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, carnal desires wrecked their characters' friendship, reducing a previously rock solid relationship to a morass of anger, regret and razor-sharp one-liners.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

'Go Where he Will, the wise man is at home' Frederick Wiseman documentaries at the Ultimate Picture Palace

10:06am Thursday 13th November 2008

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Oliver Stone's W

10:51am Thursday 6th November 2008

Oliver Stone has cultivated a reputation as the bruiser of modern cinema. He highlighted the moralcomplexities of Vietnam (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven & Earth), savaged his fellow Americans's relentless pursuit of wealth (Wall Street), satirised the glamorisation of violence (Natural Born Killers) and remembered one of the US’s darkest days (World Trade Center).

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Of Time and the City, OSS 17 Cairo, Nest of Spies. L:et's Talk About the Rain and IN Prison My Whole Life

10:50am Thursday 6th November 2008

Occasionally, a film makes such an impression that it's impossible to view it objectively. For a Liverpudlian who will have been in Oxford for 30 years next October, Terence Davies's Of Time and the City is such a film. Having looked forward to this hometown essay-cum-elegy seemingly as long as for Liverpool's next championship win, it was difficult to contain the disappointment on watching what felt like a betrayal of the city and its people. Only on the fourth viewing was it possible to concede that Davies was entitled to say what he likes about Merseyside – after all, that's what auteur visions are for – and to accept with envy the detachment of a London critical corps who could only see a masterwork of audiovisual acuity and integrity.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

The Times BFI London Film Festival;

2:23pm Thursday 30th October 2008

The Times BFI London Film Festival always excels itself where foreign-language cinema is concerned and the French Revolutions strand at the 52nd edition is particularly strong. Agnes Jaoui's impeccable comedy of political, domestic and cinematic manners, Let's Talk About the Rain, is the standout. But Laurent Cantet's Palme d'or winner, The Class, and Arnaud Desplechin's sophisticated family soap, A Christmas Tale, are also exceptional, and while there's much to enjoy in Marc Fitoussi's backstage romp, La Vie d'artiste, it's impossible not to be moved by the plight of the farmers going to the wall in Raymond Depardon's Modern Life.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Young@Heart, Afro Saxons, Tue£day and Sisterhood

10:28am Wednesday 15th October 2008

There are so many reality talent shows that it's not always easy to get enthusiastic about documentaries about singing. Stephen Walker's Young@Heart starts off pretty predictably, as it focuses on maverick conductor Bob Cilman trying to teach a senior citizen choir in Northampton, Massachusetts, such quirky numbers as Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia, The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go and James Brown's I Feel Good. Even though the ensemble has toured the world, Walker derives some gentle amusement from watching the geriatric amateurs struggling to stay in tune or stumbling over complicated lines. But he then decides to concentrate on a handful of compelling characters and the fondly deristory tone gives way to a deeply moving analysis of coping with age and loss.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Gomorrah, Bigga Than Ben: The Russians' Guide to Ripping Off London, Good Dick, Gunnin' For That #1 Spot and Heavy Load

3:16pm Wednesday 8th October 2008

Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah is a messy, sprawling and often devastating insight into the operation of the underworld organisation Camorra in the rundown tenements of Naples. The speed and complexity of this adaptation of Roberto Saviano's bestseller is mesmerising. But the film's power and compulsion comes from the deft way in which Garrone gets into the corrupted souls of the principal characters — young Salvatore Abruzzese who sells out the woman whose shopping he used to collect after becoming a bag handler for a drugs baron; reckless teenagers Marco Macor and Ciro Petrone, who steal guns belonging to complacent hood Carlo del Sorbo and try to move on to his patch; ageing tailor Salvatore Cantalupo, whose desire to make it in haute couture lures him into a dangerous deal with a Chinese sweatshop; shady businessman Toni Servillo who tutors novice Carmine Paternoster in the sinister art of dumping toxic waste; and 'submarine' Gianfelice Imparato, who tries to help debtor families manage their pay.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Fear (s) of the Dark and Import/Export

9:08am Thursday 2nd October 2008

Back in the 1960s, famous European directors regularly clubbed together to produce collections of themed shorts that became known as 'portmanteau pictures'. Recent examples, like the 2002 Ten Minutes Older twosome, The Trumpet and The Cello, have come close to recapturing such joyous exercises in idiosyncratic collaboration. However, the majority of shorts selections are little more than cinematic equivalents of the Now That's What I Call Music albums, even though they can be as admirable as the new DVD anthology, Adventures in Short Film, Vol 1, which includes such excellent efforts as Gaelle Denis's City Paradise, John Harden's La Vie d'un Chien, James Thraves's I Want You to Kiss Me and Marc Craste's Jojo in the Stars.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Angel and Sakuran

3:24pm Wednesday 27th August 2008

Two spirited women attempting to breach the conventions of their times dominate this week's minor releases. But neither François Ozon nor Mika Ninagawa wholly succeeds in making us warm to their unconventional heroines.

More »