★★★★☆ Dir: Craig Zobel (2012) Craig Zobel‘s nasty little film, works extremely hard to leave it its audience is a cold, dark and confusing place. A thriller (or more accurately a horror film) which deftly uses our own view of authority, morality and privacy to a seriously disturbing end, using little violence, no blood; not even a scream. Compliance … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Danny Boyle (2013) Danny Boyle takes some cues from Alfred Hitchcock obsession with memory and John Frankenheimer‘s 60′s thrillers to craft a ludicrously twisty but undeniably enjoyable memory puzzle. Although it is definitely the director’s least spectacular entry in a while, is certainly never dull. James McAvoy plays Simon, an art dealer who has taken a nasty crack on the … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ Dir. Brad Anderson (2013) Brad Anderson returns with this high concept thriller which is in constant danger of completely buckling under its own far-fetched plot, obvious dialogue and turned up to 11 performances. The director, who hit the big time with The Machinist and Christian Bale‘s painfully skinny body, disregards the taught, slow and smart horrors he’s … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ Dir. Todd Phillips (2013) Todd Phillips’ box office winner The Hangover was a surprise smash back in 2009 with its corrosive humour and a good retracing structure. Three friends try to find a missing groom the day before his wedding day in Las Vegas after a night on the town. It was simple, often shocking … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ Dir: Niels Arden Oplev (2012) Niels Arden Oplev infiltrates the states with this double-edged revenge tale hampered by its own slow ham-fisted scripting and a stagnant performance by Colin Farrell. Reconnecting with Noomi Rapace whom he made a star out of after his version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the director seems affectionately drawn to the … Continue reading »
★★★★★ Dir: Don Hertzfeld (2012) The definition of the word animation in our vocabulary has undoubtably changed of late. Years ago, teams of artists would sit hunched over for days and nights furiously penning away illustrated masterpieces for months and months and months. The “tweening” of frames (a process of filling in the gaps between … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir. Ben Rivers (2012) Ben Rivers revisits Jake Williams from his 2006 short film This Is My Land in this 88 minute near wordless portrait of a man living in the Scottish wilderness. Rivers’ flickering vintage Bolex 16mm simply captures a series of set up sequences with this real life wilderness man in grainy black and white, ranging … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Adam Wingard (2012) Last year’s surprisingly good horror anthology V/H/S gave 5 directors free rein with digital cameras to tie together story concerned with the haunting and creepy quality of a lost medium through tried and tested horror tropes. The result was a genuinely scary short film compilation. The good … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Jukka Kärkkäinen (2012) Pertii Kurikka’s Name Day are a Finnish punk band you may never of heard of. The autistic temperamental lead singer Pertti Kurikka and front man Karl Aalto, and the Down’s syndrome rhythm section of Sami Helle and Toni Välitalo have a little more to rage about than the government and revolt. Their afflictions and their … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Steven Soderbergh (2013) The very public retirement the outspoken, genre bending Steven Soderbergh came with the release of two films; This years Behind the Candelabra (a bio pic of an intense period of the life of composer Liberace) and, true to the directors eclectic stylings Side Effects which is a sort of social commentary laden thriller about the over medication of the … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Eduardo Sánchez (2012) When Ed Sánchez and Dan Myrick blew open the film world in 1999 with the phenomenal The Blair Witch Project nobody could ever have guessed the influence which the film would have and the path which the modern horror film would take in the short 15 years after. A tiny film, shot badly on … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Jonathan Levine (2012) Jonathan Levine has always been an interesting young film maker a blossoming career filled with unique choices and startling left turns. Kicking off with the somewhat underrated slasher All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, the seriously underrated The Wackness and the touching, honest and controversial 50/50, he’s a man of many genre’s. Warm Bodies is partly … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Joe Wright (2012) Joe Wright‘s bold Tolstoy adaptation takes a mammoth novel and distills it into one place; A theatre. As a concept it’s a fierce stroke; with most of the film playing onstage, backstage and in the audience in many of the novel’s high society parties, we are rarely allowed outside at all. “All the world … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ Dir: Baz Luhrmann (2013) Baz Luhrmann‘s glitzy, superficial style could be compared to a cannon full of confetti, exploding squarely in one’s face. Crashing high shots which zoom through cities and dip through windows, painfully over edited conversations, boorish pop songs filling nearly every second of film, campy, wince inducing dance numbers inhabit most of his work; Lets just say, … Continue reading »
★☆☆☆☆ Dir: John Moore (2013) 1988′s Die Hard is a classic action film; Simple, fun, excessively violent, loud and confined. It rebranded the action hero as an everyday Joe (or John as it were) and it paved the way for 2 sequels which were adequate in almost every way. Renny Harlin bringing John McClane back to the screen … Continue reading »
★★★★★ Dir: Tobias Lindholm (2013) Tobias Lindholm has already delivered one incredible piece of work this year, helping out Thomas Vinterberg in penning the rather excellent The Hunt. That slow burning film, taught with uncertainty and wonderfully handed by Vinterberg in the directors chair, is now neck and neck with Lindholm’s own brilliant slow burning exercise in tension with the … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Shane Black (2013) Jon Favreau takes a back seat as producer in the third and brilliantly enjoyable Iron Man film, letting Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang scribe and director Shane Black into the chair. It’s a move which pays off pushing the third film to the top of the pile with fantastic … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Park Chan-Wook (2013) Park Chan-Wook‘s English language debut feature is filled with wonderfully tense moments, sublimely edited single sequences and sound design to make even the most strong stomached cinema goer go a big wobbly one but it’s seriousness becomes a crutch in the film’s final third when the Korean director tries to entertain … Continue reading »
★☆☆☆☆ Dir: Nicolás López (2013) Nicolás López, Eli Roth and Guillermo Amoedo‘s horribly misjudged disaster film is nothing short of jaw-dropping in its offensive swaggering idiocy. No doubt a strange excuse for Roth (who stars here as “The Gringo”) and his buddies to go on an extended trip around Chile, Aftershock takes its time too. It’s lengthy “character … Continue reading »
★☆☆☆☆ Dir. Roman Coppola (2013) Roman Coppola‘s atrocious return to the directors chair sees him wasting an opportunity backed by his recent sublime Oscar recognised writing work with Wes Anderson and a cast pilfered from the American style master’s phonebook… and Charlie Sheen. The tiger blood drinking, drug taking, winning Adonis plays a thinly veiled version of his broken … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ Dir: Derek Cianfrance (2013) Derek Cianfrance‘s sprawling triptych of a film is certainly an ambitious follow-up to his heartbreaker par excellence Blue Valentine; This is a finely acted and beautifully shot morality tale which consumes two families over the course of more than fifteen years. Sagging slightly in the middle despite a fantastic performance from Bradley Cooper, the films bookending tales are when The Place … Continue reading »
★★★★★ Dir: Shane Carruth (2013) Nine years after the infuriating and brilliant Primer took home the big prize at Sundance, writer / director / producer / actor / composer / editor / cinematographer / weirdo Shane Carruth has found inspiration in one unlikely place and many recognisable ones Upstream Color, and you may have already read this before, … Continue reading »
★☆☆☆☆ Dir. John Luessenhop (2013) The build up to watching Texas Chainsaw 3D and then actually having to watch Texas Chainsaw 3D is much like the experience of seeing a lake of flaming shit on the horizon from the window of a small aircraft and then attempting to safely land in it. Of course, if you survive your little nosedive into this flaming … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Michel Gondry (2013) Director Michel Gondry channels some early Spike Lee magic with this infectious and offensive bus journey of a film. The french music video auteur drops most of his visual tricks of the trade and instead puts the focus on a dozen teenage Bronx kids, riding the fictitious BX66 bus home … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ Dir. Franck Khalfoun (2013) William Lustieg’s 1980 Argento influenced cult slasher was never a real contender of priority in the slew of remakes currently gracing our screens. Admirably, splat pack member and infant terrible Alexandre Aja delved deep in to the barrel, writing and producing this for P2 director Franck Khalfoun. After all if you’re coming to the plate … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Rob Zombie (2013) Rob Zombie is a bit of an acquired taste. His take on horror is a scuzzy, vintage one. The grime of House of 1,000 Corpses was often enough to make your food start its ascension from your stomach and The Devils Rejects playfully, if rather haughtily played with the backwater kidnap film. They are stinky sordid affairs with their … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ Dir. Lee Toland Krieger (2013) Andy Samberg and Rashida Jones put in a couple of winning performances in a film which doesn’t quite know if it’s out to slander the conventions of the romantic comedy or use them to its own unique means. Celeste and Jesse look like any couple in love; they meet, share their first … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2013) The Governator returns to the screen after a ten-year stint as chief of America’s most powerful state in this fun, western nodding piece of action fluff. Directed by Korean powerhouse Jee-Woon Kim, The Last Stand manages to rise much further above it’s fairly awful script and predictable twists without baring the tiniest resemblance … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ (2012) It’s not hard to see why Guillermo Del Toro hand-picked Argentine Andrés Muschietti to flesh out his 3 minute short film Mama into a gothic suburban horror feature. Loaded with scares and atmosphere but sadly unravelling into a bit of a mess in the film’s second half, it falls victim to many clichés rampant in recent … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) This supremely stupid B-Movie blood fest has just enough gusto to make you forget the world for 90 minutes and revel, unashamedly in the ludicrousness of it all. The concept; A tsunami hits a coastal Australian town and a handful of survivors find themselves trapped inside a flooded supermarket with a couple of pissed off 12ft great white … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) Coming only 18 months after the bewildering, staggering amalgamation of his own thematic tropes, Terrence Malick could have made his only real cinematic failure with the rambling, reaching and near self parodying To The Wonder. If The Tree of Life attempted to unpick the grand questions of life, death and our own place in a vast universe, … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ (2013) SFX wunder-kid Joseph Kosinski’s second Sci-Fi effort is a seriously beautiful looking and sounding failure peppered with rehashed ideas and predictable twists. Elements of Total Recall, Moon, The Matrix and countless other philosophical concept genre powerhouses are pilfered from at random to fashion an empty panoramic world destroyed by and invaded by aliens. Immaculately shot, … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ (2012) Ruben Fleischer’s third feature puts us in a golden age, both in history and for film. The dark alleyways and bright shiny bars of a corrupt 1940′s Los Angeles have always been solid ground for film makers; Rich with story and fraught with dangerous men and dazzling ladies the era has inspired a … Continue reading »
★★★★★ (2012) Thomas Vinterberg’s stunning Festen ushered the Dogme style of film making out into the broad day light. The first effort, a story of a family party which is shattered by an allegation of child abuse, was arguably never bettered within the rule restricted films which would follow around the world, even by the manifesto’s other … Continue reading »
★★★★★ (1967) Jean Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï lives between its chiming major notes. A quietly burning masterpiece of suspense rooted in early American noir and filtered through the early days of French cinema cool, its brilliance as a twisting of a popular theme and as a corner-stone of square-jawed silent style, it remains a flawless experience. It’s … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Ben Wheatley’s third and most very British outing is a markedly lighter affair than his previous kitchen sink killer films Kill List and Down Terrace confidently using sharp humor to counteract its sharp violence. A comedy in blender, borrowing as much from Mike Leigh’s wonderful Nuts in May as Terrance Malick’s Badlands, Sightseers is as black … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) Lee Daniels’ third feature is a sweaty messy lurid little affair, steered by the story of a pair of journalists attempting to get a fair hearing for a recently convicted murderer during a boiling hot 1969 summer in Florida. His Oscar nominated Precious certainly raised some eyebrows with its frank script and unflinching camera capturing every moment of … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) Dave Grohl’s directorial debut traces the history of the brown carpeted and beer soaked legendary Sound City Studios. A recording space in Van Nuys in Los Angeles known for its crunching drum sounds and analogue Neve 8028 recording desk it has hosted and produced a number of influential records including LPs by Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana and Neil … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Harmony Korine wrote Kids at the ripe old age of 19; A dark and gritty look inside the lives of a group of hedonistic New York teenagers. The film memorably caused a press furor when it premiered and was both embraced for its honesty by teenagers, praised for its bravery by fellow film makers … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ (2012) A near black and white colour palate and an unsettling introduction let you know straight off the bat that Jeremy Regimbal’s debut thriller isn’t going to end well. An archetypical set up which describes a car containing a family with a past winding up some country roads in their 4×4 to a house … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Brandon Cronenberg’s debut feature is an assured jet black first effort. Harnessing his fathers need to deconstruct the inherent fears in our society and mash them together with a hefty dose of flesh piercing and bloodletting this film may be instantly compared to the master of body horror’s early work - Rabid or Shivers perhaps – but there are … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) Unit 7, a group of ambitious narcotics police, are faced with the mammoth task of cleaning up the streets of Seville before the 1992 World Expo in Alberto Rodriguez’ rough and ready thriller. Walking comfortably over a spiked pit of dead destructive copper clichés and a palpable want to actually use character in a … Continue reading »
★★☆☆☆ (2012) Michael Hoffman directs a lazy script by the Coen Brothers in this pretty awful retelling of the 1966 film of the same name. The main problem (aside from the lack of jokes) is that re-imagining cat burglar Harry Dean (played by Colin Firth in a constant Caine impersonation) as a media tycoons brow … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ (2012) Lana and Larry Wachowski and Tom Twyker take on David Mitchell’s epic novel head on in this massively ambitious 173 minute multi layered time hopping would be opus. The trio of directors, marking their allotted stories with their trade mark themes of philosophy, alternate lives and destinies, certainly manage to make the daunting task at hand an entertaining watch … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) In the final days of the second World War a 14-year-old girl named Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) is abandoned by her Nazi parents in the Black Forest of Bavaria. Left to fend for herself and her 4 siblings she must take them on foot to Hamburg, 500 miles through the remnants and memories of the … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining is a film that has been watched and re-watched, poured over and pondered. Its obtuse finale, its destruction of much of Stephen Kings source and its meticulous details and clues, fuelled by the fans knowledge of the directors infamous shot compositing, has paved the way for … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Malik Benjelloul’s remarkable Oscar-winning hunt for Sixto Rodriquez is a sweet and careful rekindling of an unknown fame for a hotly touted and now disappeared 1970s songwriter but it’s also a highlighter for the artistic and social struggles of South Africa. Record store owner Stephen Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, baffled by the obscurity of the man who … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) In a world, much like Lassiter’s Toy Story, the heroes and villains in a games arcade full of classics, both old and new, come alive once the premisses are closed for the night. It’s a simple and obvious jumping off point for any Pixar or Disney film; A secret world behind a very public and popular one. … Continue reading »
★★★★☆ (2012) Pablo Berger’s beautiful and seriously dark adaptation of The Brother’s Grimm fairy tale transports Snow White to 1920′s Spain while also unashamedly and cleverly honouring the silent movie era in which it is set. Though comparisons to the oscar winning The Artist will come thick and fast, Berger’s film is worlds away. After a slew … Continue reading »
★★★☆☆ 2012 The Josh Fox anti fracking documentary Gasland showed just how devastating the process of deep fracturing can be on the small communities it targets. Large amounts of water and air are punched into the fragile natural gas deposits under much of the USA so it may be gotten to the surface and sold. Often with dire … Continue reading »
