The Babadook

Shot mainly in a sprawling purpose-built “Victorian” house in a suburb of Adelaide, Jennifer Kent’s debut feature pays homage to a whole host of classic horror films, but manages to come up with something which felt quite original with interesting things to say about parental paranoia, infant grief and family loss. There are elements of…

The Imitation Game

A bit of a curiosity this, tho’ one which was enjoyable once you accepted a few rather strange ground rules. A bit like Alan Turing himself then. The story is very well known now following a glut of TV plays, documentaries, books and previous films. It centres on the autistic mathematical genius who set out…

Interstellar

There’s a geeky charm to Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster, which is imaginative but rather heavy handed. It has the feel of a breathlessly sincere teenager attempting to explain and justify his latest adolescent insight. But for all the earnest exposition and interminable scientific theory the project runs aground on its fatal mismatch of one dimensional…

Maps to the Stars

David Cronenburg here delivers such a venomous take down of Tinsel Town that it’s hard to image him being invited to a Hollywood party ever again. At its centre is the mega dysfunctional Weiss family. Father, Stafford (John Cussak) is trading on the success of a hit self help book, but following a shadowy family…

Effie Gray

A remorselessly downbeat costume drama which half worked. The costumes were ok but where oh where was the drama. This was so pedestrian and reverential that it almost forgot to breathe. It’s 1848 and 38 year old John Ruskin (an impressively convincing Greg Wise) marries 19 year old Effie Gray (a hopelessly miscast Dakota Fanning)…

Mr Turner

So much better than watching paint dry. How refreshing to have a period drama which isn’t about sodding royals, or vainglorious imperial episodes. Mike Leigh’s affectionate portrait of the last 25 years of JMW Turner’s life was at times rumbustious, such as when he turned up at the Royal Academy like a tornado, dashing through…

Ida

After the disappointment of his last film (Women of the Fifth) Pawel Pawlikowski has returned to his native Poland for a story which mines the rich seam of history around how the Poles behaved towards the Jews in WWII. The film is set in the 1960s and centres on a novice nun Anna (Agata Trzbuchowska)…