Features

Alone is a documentary depicting the lives of three young girls, Fen (4), Zhen (6) and Ying (10) in rural, south west China. These young children have been doubly left- first by their mother (for reasons which remain largely unknown) and subsequently by their father, whose flight from the family home is undertaken in order to find work in the city and send money home. Visually, the film’s landscape scenes are so vivid and plush it’s easy to forget that its very barrenness and their lack of (…)

Alain Guiraudie’s erotic gay thriller is located in rural France and takes place over ten summer days. Set on the shores of a vast inviting lake, a small group of men spend the day building up all-over tans in between swimming and cruising around the adjoining forest. We quickly fall into the world of the film and Guiraudie presents with ease the rituals that these gay men enjoy as they escape the confines of heterosexual society. However, we quickly feel that all is not well in ‘Gay (…)

The only thing wrong with Jim Jarmusch’s sumptuous film Only Lovers Left Alive is the title. It baffles me why so many directors, or whoever picks the titles, insist on choosing such confusing ones. I like my film titles to tell me what I’m in for. Like Trainspotting, Million Dollar Baby and Salmon Fishing in The Yemen. The film should of course be called THE Only Lovers Left Alive. See? Just the addition of the definite article and all becomes clear. Now it’s obvious that the lovers, Adam (…)

REVIEW: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET By James Skipp @JamesSkipp There was one thought that kept gnawing at my brain during a recent trip to see Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street: was it possible to cook a three-course meal inside Leonardo DiCaprio’s cheeks? It was a question I resolved to answer as soon as I returned to my flagship restaurant in Maidstone, Kent. With the assistance of my good friends Donald Chegwin (the poet) and Charlton Bloom (the critically-acclaimed film critic), I (…)

podcast

Tony Hickson’s review of Lego: The Movie

"Jack et la mécanique du coeur", film de Mathias Malzieu et Stéphane Berla, avec entre autres Jean Rochefort, Olivia Ruiz et Grand Corps Malade, nous emmène à la rencontre de la Musique, de Georges Méliès, de l’Amour, de Paris, de l’Aventure, de Don Quichotte, de l’Imprudence... car "quand à 14 ans on décide de traverser l’Europe pour retrouver une fille, c’est qu’on a le gène de l’imprudence assez développé, pas vrai ?!"

Review of Taiwanese film GF* BF.

Hi-So by Aditya Assarat opens in London with UK premiere at Curzon Renoir, released by Day for Night. The second film from award-winning Bangkok based Thai-American director Aditya Assarat (Wonderful Town) HI-SO had its world premiere at Busan International Film Festival and European premiere at Berlinale (Forum). HI-SO premieres in the UK on 1 March 2013 at Curzon Renoir. Set against the backdrop of a post-tsunami Thailand, HI-SO features Thai film star Ananda Everingham in a (…)

In Ruby Sparks, Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is a lonely novelist who hasn’t written a book in ten years, since he was 19. In a Stranger Than Fiction-like fiasco, the words he begins to write start to materialise into real life happenings. In a Weird Science-like fiasco, those words result in Calvin conjuring the woman of his dreams, Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan), as he’s named her. The two go on to embark on a relationship fit for a... well, film. Until things start to go awry and Calvin must (…)