The Childhood of a Leader

This contemplation on the roots of fascism based on an original short story by Jean Paul Satre is the debut feature from Brady Corbet. It is a challenging and unusual film which proceeds slowly through 5 chapters charting the development of Prescott (a very impressive performance from English newcomer Tom Sweet). He’s an introverted 10…

Life on the Road

A film which has provoked wildly mixed reviews but which I found disappointingly timid. Given the abrasive persona Ricky Gervais has cultivated in his recent work stateside, the end was surprisingly sentimental. That said I did laugh out loud a few times and there’s probably enough here to please aficionados of the Office. I guess…

Chevalier

Greek cinema has had some conspicuous successes lately, so I approached Athina Rachel Tsangari’s latest work with raised expectations. Unfortunately it seems the bubble may have burst because I found this a dreary and infuriating mess. Indeed I’ll go further and suggest that this was quite an offensive piece of work. Imagine if a male…

The Commune

Thomas Vinterburg’s story of the establishment and operation of a Danish commune in the 1970s, was a film which promised much but IMHO ultimately failed to deliver. I think that there were two main reasons for this. First the central relationship between Anna (Trina Dyrholm) and Eric (Ulrich Thomsen) seemed to me confused and inconsistant.…

Summertime

A relaxed and confident piece of filmmaking by French director Catherine Corsini who presents an old fashioned love story in a wholly realistic way. Set in provincial France in the early 1970s Summertime tells the story of Delphine (Izia Higelin) a farmer’s daughter who likes a roll in the hay but prefers to do it…

The Neon Demon

Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives) is at it again here with a stylish account of female commodification which comes very close to commodifying women itself. It’s an ArtHouse mash up which is gorgeous to look at but may just be as empty as catwalk model’s stomach. The tone is somewhere between the shining,…

The Meddler

I wish I was called Randy Zipper. Here, as played by by JT Simmons, was a man, like myself, of a certain age with two daughters. One close. One estranged. We also seem to share an interest in facial hair and motorbikes, tho’ in his case the Freddie Mercury tribute tache and Harley Davison were…

The BFG 3D

Bland. Forgettable. Gormless. Anyone expecting a rerun of the magic of ET, Spielberg’s last collaboration with screen writer Melissa Mathison will be sadly disappointed. It’s not that the motion capture action isn’t done competently (although I did notice a couple of occasions when eye lines were out of kilter) or that the delivery of some…

Jason Bourne

It used to be a friendship defining question. Do you prefer Bond or Bourne? I was always firmly in the Bourne camp. It seems to me that in addition to Bond’s questionable sexual politics, xenophobia and toe curling attempts at humour, he was unquestionably a member of the establishment and a privileged one to boot.…