In his debut as a director, the actor Daniel Brühl delivers a more than halfway effective psychological thriller: that is to say at around the forty-five-minute mark the carefully built-up tension and dark comedy suddenly dissipates into something more familiar in movie terms and consequently less involving.
On top of Kacey Rohl’s mesmerising Katie, the performances are all realistic and well-judged and the technical credits impressive in WHITE LIE.
Peter Mackie Burns has succeeded in getting strong performances from all his actors in RIALTO. Andrew Nickolds reviews.
Grimur Hakonarson and his DP Mart Taniel make full use of the Icelandic climate and landscape at their disposal along with other, subtler and often more comic ideas. Andrew Nickolds reviews.
BLOOD ON HER NAME deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Jeremy Saulnier’s BLUE RUIN and indeed Jordan Peele’s GET OUT as a bloody melodrama made by a new director expertly flexing his movie muscles. Andrew Nickolds reviews.
LUCY IN THE SKY, with music sonorously in the background, goes off the rails and grows alien-like into an ugly and uncontrollable soap opera, a messy version of I, TONYA without the latter’s poignancy.
Frank Borzage won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Director in 1927 for 7TH HEAVEN and it’s not hard to see why. A full-blooded romantic melodrama, it gave the ripest of plum parts to Janet Gaynor.
Elena Trappe conjures impeccable performances from her cast in the touching and funny DISTANCES.
Cantet’s compassion for his young characters is never far from the surface – hard though they may be to stomach for some of the time.
There’s no denying this raucous road movie has its moments, with effective comic interplay between the slatternly Olga (Kierston Wareing) and her equally feckless and foul-mouthed son Ron (Tommy French, both of them EastEnders alumni). During one of the film’s many slap-fights while Olga and Ron are on a late-night hunt for cheese, the car … Continue reading I Love My Mum
