Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2017 i Little White Lies

“EVEN AFTER SHAKING HANDS WITH THE QUEEN, THE PRINCE AND THE PRINCESS, MY PARENTS STILL DIDN’T CHANGE THEIR MINDS ABOUT MY CAREER; IT WAS STILL WRONG, DESPITE MY SUCCESS.” — PAUL VERHOEVEN “I was supposed to become a mathematician, which is what my parents wanted. So I went to university in 1956 and studied mathematics for seven or eight years. They were really counting on me being like my student friends and becoming a professor. They all did become professors, but I decided against it when I went into military service. I got put in the navy so I could make a documentary on the Dutch marines, and that’s what started the film career. My parents hated it. Did they influence me? Yeah. They made me want to continue in…

“My parents are classic Irish working class – they just want me to get a good job in the bank, back when getting a job in a bank wasn’t a totally corrupt idea. You don’t hear that anymore, because everyone thinks they’re just rapacious pricks, which I guess they are. My dad was a labourer and my mum was a cleaner. Me and my brother were lying about the house on the dole going, ‘no, we’re going to become great writers’. But initially I wanted to be a novelist, and being a few years older than Martin, I would’ve been bearing the weight of expectation. I still remember coming back from a job at British Telecom which I quit after a day. I came home and my mum burst into…

“My mum and dad brought me up watching quite weird films and dramas, I think! Playwrights like Dennis Potter, who used to write for television, and Mike Leigh, and David Lynch. So I definitely had a sort of eccentric leaning towards unusual material. But, hilariously, my mum is really horrified that I keep putting violence in my films. She’s really like, ‘Oh no…’ She’s worried that she won’t enjoy it. She’ll enjoy the funny bits, but the darker bits she finds a bit overwhelming. I don’t know… I’m in this position where I had a really nice childhood, and it’s just that I put a lot of my fears into the work that I do. When I write, it’s more fantasy than just horror. I write a lot of surrealism…

Directed by ANG LEE Starring JOE ALWYN GARRETT HEDLUND ARTURO CASTRO Released 10 FEBRUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Ang Lee returns with some heavy artillery. 3 ENJOYMENT. A unique, hyper-real whatsit that should be seen the way it was shot. 3 IN RETROSPECT. Interesting, but not a film for which Lee will be remembered. The most arresting moment in Ang Lee’s Hollywood filmography is the shot of Heath Ledger silhouetted against 4 July fireworks in Brokeback Mountain, a complex tableau of patriotism and masculinity shot from a reverent low-angle perspective. That prodigious image finds an extended rhyme in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, as the eponymous infantryman (Joe Alwyn) stands stock-still on stage at a Dallas football stadium amid a riot of carefully stage-managed red, white and blue pyrotechnics. They are meant as a…

Directed by DENZEL WASHINGTON Starring DENZEL WASHINGTON VIOLA DAVIS MYKELTI WILLIAMSON Released 17 FEBRUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Two powerhouse actors sparring in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. 3 ENJOYMENT. The richness and intensity doesn’t make the jump from stage to screen. 3 IN RETROSPECT. Washington is customarily magnetic, but this is Davis’s film. This is a filmed version of a 1983 play by August Wilson, with Denzel Washington in the lead role and the director’s seat. From its detailed, verbose opening phrases, it’s clear that this is an opportunity to watch great actors going through their expressive motions. Long takes, longer monologues, one central location, very little concession to considering how the tools of cinema might enhance this roistering, anguished text. In fact, it’s the delicate flourishes that dent the illusion of reality which,…

Directed by KENNETH LONERGAN Starring CASEY AFFLECK MICHELLE WILLIAMS KYLE CHANDLER Released 13 JANUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Come in, Manchester by the Sea, we’ve been expecting you. 5 ENJOYMENT. Too much. Just too much. 4 IN RETROSPECT. Kenneth Lonergan – builder and destroyer of worlds. There is too much going on in Manchester by the Sea and still it is among the best films of this or any year. It is too funny, too tragic, and too full of nods to all manner of movie genres. It is an oddcouple buddy movie, a mystery unfolding via flashback, a family melodrama, a naturalistic comedy, an insurmountable tragedy and an elegy for people living with their internal flame extinguished. Miraculously, all these elements are bound together by the brilliantly humane writing of Kenneth Lonergan which…

Directed by PABLO LARRAÍN Starring NATALIE PORTMAN PETER SARSGAARD GRETA GERWIG Released 20 JANUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. Not usually into biopics but this is Pablo Larraín so forget the ‘usual’. 5 ENJOYMENT. Well done everyone. 4 IN RETROSPECT. Clever, beautiful images about a clever, beautiful image-maker. Jackie is not a conventional biopic. Expectations may veer towards a film about the aftermath of JFK’s assassination told from the perspective of his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, to be based around tubthumping emotional climaxes. Instead, Chilean director Pablo Larraín riffs on the First Lady’s poised appearance, showing the will required to keep control in the worst of circumstances. The result is a gorgeous, layered portrait of a woman determined to put public image ahead of private feelings. The goal of communicating different layers of Jackie’s character…

Directed by MIKE MILLS Starring ANNETTE BENING LUCAS ZUMANN GRETA GERWIG Released 20 JANUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. We liked Beginners. We love Bening and Gerwig. 3 ENJOYMENT. Patchy, but when it’s good it’s a consummate delight. 4 IN RETROSPECT. Mills’ perspective on formative relationships is absorbing, and he seems like a great guy. This a film best understood as writer/director Mike Mills’ attempt to capture his childhood through a fictionalised shaggy-dog comedy drama. Describing it as anchored by reality doesn’t convey the freedom given over to a gifted ensemble and the resulting sparks of spontaneity that occasionally burst into a deliriously off-kilter form of humour. The setting is sunny Southern California in 1979 and 16-year-old Jamie (Lucas Zumann) is surrounded by women. There’s his mother Dorothea (Annette Bening), his best friend and long-term…

Directed by ALICE LOWE Starring ALICE LOWE, KATE DICKIE, JO HARTLEY Released 10 FEBRUARY However much you might try to cooly downplay it with gift showers, hopeful smiles and ‘Baby on Board’ badges, pregnancy is an allconsuming state of physical and psychological mutation. A lifetime spent looking out for number one no longer applies, as a woman, for around nine months, literally exists as two bodies. She has to account for the tiny needs of the person growing inside. Like a contemporary, darkly comic riff on Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, writer/director and star Alice Lowe channels the copious anxieties that come with childbirth into a quaint urban slasher yarn. She is exceptional as Ruth, an enigmatic mother-to-be who is driven to murder by a squeaky, sweary voice emanating from her swelling baby bump. She returns…

Directed by ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY Starring BRONTIS JODOROWKSY ADAN JODOROWSKY PAMELA FLORES Released 6 JANUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Jodorowsky is our main man! 3 ENJOYMENT. Some fine touches of madness, but haven’t we seen this before? 3 IN RETROSPECT. An artist’s rite of passage, familial but also familiar. “I thought you had changed, but you’re still the same man,” complains Sara (Pamela Flores), near the beginning of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Endless Poetry, to her unloving, bullying husband Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky). On one level Sara’s words serve as a reflexive joke. For, like every single film in Jodorowsky’s oeuvre (since he debuted in 1968 with Fando y Lis), this latest feature concerns the individual quest for identity, meaning and transcendence in a world of vanity and illusion. After decades of experimenting in a variety of…

Directed by OLIVIER ASSAYAS Starring KRISTEN STEWART LARS EIDINGER SIGRID BOUAZIZ Released 17 MARCH 4 ANTICIPATION. Kristen Stewart leads Olivier Assayas’ strangely titled new film. Promising. 4 ENJOYMENT. Occasionally creepy, sometimes ridiculous but always surprising 4 IN RETROSPECT. The film’s strangeness will stay with you and push you to keep on interrogating it. When it comes to projecting anguish and ambiguity, there is no-one better than Kristen Stewart. In Personal Shopper, she offers a refined version of her Twilight saga performance, which oscillates between discreet twitchiness and vocal outbursts, as if emotions had to fight against in order to be felt. Olivier Assayas employs this anxiety-based persona with great precision. He also takes it as a foundation on which to build a complete, multi-faceted character, one that pushes Stewart to further…

Directed by KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV Starring PYOTR SKVORTSOV, VIKTORIYA ISAKOVA, ALEKSANDRA REVENKO Released 28 FEBRUARY Going through puberty is a rough time for any adolescent. For Veniamin (Pyotr Skvortsov), the star of Kirill Serebrennikov’s The Student, teenage angst manifests itself as a religious tirade. His violent dedication to Christianity is treated as something new – a reflection of Vladimir Putin’s 2013 enforcement of religious teachings in schools. If you’re feeling out of touch with scripture, then this film will replenish any lost knowledge. It includes live annotations of Bible passages which appear every time our unlikable leading lad makes a quotation. The text is integrated into the scene, whether it’s inscribed on a chalkboard or the walls of a gymnasium. There’s a big contradiction within the Russian school system that Serebrennikov’s film…

Directed by JOHN CARPENTER Starring NATASHA HENSTRIDGE ICE CUBE CLEA DUVALL 2001 Released 23 JAN Blu-ray At time of writing, Ghosts of Mars remains the penultimate feature to bare the hallowed legend: ‘A John Carpenter Film’. The cut-price genre maestro made a rather tawdry asylum-set chiller in 2010, named The Ward, but otherwise, all his been quiet. This one can be chalked up as a rough-hewn treat for the Carpenterati, but first timers might find it a little rocky going. Set in a future where Mars is in the process of being terraformed by displaced humans, it details a supernatural hiccup which crops up close to the end of this massive colonising endeavour. Highkicking bombshell Natasha Henstridge is posted to a mining outpost to collect and transport the highly dangerous escaped criminal madman,…

Directed by RICHARD KELLY Starring JAKE GYLLENHAAL JENA MALONE MARY MCDONNELL 2001 Released 9 JAN Blu-ray Lord knows what the history books will eventually have to say about the American director Richard Kelly, if anything at all. No, that’s unfair. There will be a paragraph on the beautiful mad folly that is his 2001 debut feature Donnie Darko, a film that seemingly emanated from a random fissure in time and, to this day, exists as a romantic, morose outlier, much like its eponymous hero. We celebrated its 10th anniversary, so now it’s time to celebrate the big one-five, as a slick new 4K restoration of the film is wheeled out just in time for the party. In this package comes both the theatrical and director’s cut, the latter probably for pure curiosity value…

Directed by LUIS VALDEZ Starring LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS ESAI MORALES ROSANNA DESOTO 1987 Released 9 JAN Blu-ray It’s interesting to see that, nearly 30 years ago, filmmakers were making biographies of rock musicians in exactly the same way they do now. In the case of Chicano rocker, Ritchie Valens, the circle of his life had closed some time ago, as he was was a passenger on the downed plane that also killed Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper on that fateful night of 3 February, 1959. And so with hindsight, the clues and inferences can be parlayed into drama, such as the moment in his childhood when he witnessed a fighter jet explode over head and falling debris crush his best friend, leading to a life-long fear of flying. Yet hokey portent aside,…

- RELEASED – 1981 Do you know what Escape to Victory is? Chances are that it’s a 50/50 split between twerking phablet skidmarks who don’t know a tweet from a twot, and those of an uncertain age who quote from it daily, screen it every bank holiday afternoon and find more meaning, motivation and mileage in it than in God’s own bible. Between those who question the mechanics of its title – how exactly does one escape to victory? – and those for whom it is an irradicable fractal of shared cultural heritage. For some it is – to quote Muhammad Ali – bigger than Evel Knievel and the Kentucky Derby on the same day. Half of you won’t know what an Evel Knievel is. That’s okay. A recent poll…

(EL) ELENA LAZIC (ML) MANUELA LAZIC (MT) MATT THRIFT (AW) ADAM WOODWARD (DJ) DAVID JENKINS (SMK) SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN DAVID LOWERY Bursting on to the scene in 2013 with Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, David Lowery’s follow up is the lyrical live-action remake of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, which is available on DVD and VOD in the UK now. “I can’t remember when I told my parents I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I can remember when I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was seven and my mother had checked out some books from the library about how to make movies. I had expressed an interest in how Star Wars was made, so she found this book about it and took it…

“When I was very young I used to write science fiction stories starting in about fifth-grade. I used to show my mother everything that I wrote. She used to correct my spelling, occasionally my grammar, and occasionally the content. Once she told me that there were too many explosions and shootings and ray guns and killings for her in one of the stories that I wrote. So I tried to put a more peaceful chapter in. But overall they were very supportive. I never had to overcome parental opposition, just some concrete financial worries that eventually went away. “Both of my parents had to learn the etiquette of the theatre, which was that you don’t come to opening night and criticise the actors in the play. You save that for…

“I didn’t know what a filmmaker was when I was growing up. I’m still not entirely sure to be honest. But I loved going to the movies. It was a precious space for all the usual reasons, but also because it was something that my father and I shared in particular. My mother has always worked in the arts, so I think probably while they saw early on that I was going to end up doing something creative, I imagine they were concerned with the precarious lifestyle it offers. Having said that, they are incredibly supportive of me in many different ways and that means everything. It makes it possible. In terms of influencing my work, I can’t deny that my films tend to be about families so even though…

“I come from a very working class background, so there was no, sort of, cultural education. My dad liked John Wayne films and my mum loved Doris Day films. So they loved industrial, you could say ‘escapist’ cinema. A kind of utopian cinema, and I think I was influenced by that in that I have a sense of the joy that cinema can deliver. However, when I started to develop my own taste, it didn’t come from my parents at all, because they were, I would say, anti-art, which is fine. So that meant that my discovery of cinema felt personal. It wasn’t forced on me by my parents, nor was it even particularly encouraged. They thought it was a kind of silly hobby which would go away – this…

Directed by MARTIN SCORSESE Starring ANDREW GARFIELD ADAM DRIVER LIAM NEESON Released 1 JANUARY 5 ANTICIPATION.- Scorsese’s dream project, so this time it’s personal – a late masterpiece? 4 ENJOYMENT. A 159-minute slow burn which will probably resonate more deeply with the Catholic faithful. 4 IN RETROSPECT. That a film this daringly austere exists in the marketplace is almost miraculous in itself. A 1966 novel by Japanese Catholic writer Shusako Endo has obsessed Martin Scorsese for so long that Silence ends a three-decade slog to bring it to the screen. Scorsese’s reputation has long been assured, and while the past decade has brought the likes of The Aviator, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street winning new audiences and sustaining his commercial viability, none of them have seemed wrenched from his…

Directed by GARTH DAVIS Starring SUNNY PAWAR DEV PATEL NICOLE KIDMAN Released 20 JANUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. Since its festival debut, Lion has been talked up as an awards contender. 3 ENJOYMENT. An impressive first half, a depressive second. 2 IN RETROSPECT. Robustly made, but very little to gnaw on. You don’t find out why this film is called Lion until right at the very end. But, during the two hours you’re left guessing, you might hazard that it was referring to some kind of Google Chrome extension. Everyone’s favourite billion dollar search engine assumes one of the lead roles in this tearjerking true tale of a displaced Indian street urchin whose late night Google Earth jags help him to reconnect with his roots. A series of unfortunate events leads knee-high cutiepie Saroo…

Directed by JOHN MADDEN Starring JESSICA CHASTAIN GUGU MBATHA-RAW JOHN LITHGOW Released 24 FEBRUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. An under-the-radar awards contender? 2 ENJOYMENT. Jessica Chastain is as great as ever, but… 2 IN RETROSPECT. …that ending, jeez. “When I take the stand, you’ll see nothing but a granite wall,” says Jessica Chastain’s eponymous DC power player to her concerned lawyer, a few minutes into Miss Sloane. He’s schooling her in the necessary specifics of pleading the Fifth Amendment when she’s hauled in front of a special committee, set up to take her to task on ethical infringements in her role as a high-flying “conviction lobbyist.” As the rules of drama dictate, it’s not long before cracks begin to appear, fissures formed when personal assumptions threaten a manicured and ferociously guarded professional veneer. To…

Directed by ADAM SMITH Starring MICHAEL FASSBENDER BRENDAN GLEESON LYNDSEY MARSHAL Released 3 MARCH 4 ANTICIPATION. Two of Ireland’s acting heavyweights go toe-to-toe. 3 ENJOYMENT. They don’t let us down. The film around them sometimes does. 3 IN RETROSPECT. It’s alright, mush. “Nobody is going to tell me that I come from the ass of an ape, or your granddaddy was a fish.” So says Colby (Brendan Gleeson) in Trespass Against Us, and while you might take issue with this point of view, Colby is not a man you’d want to tangle with over matters as trivial as the origin of the species. Colby is the patriarch of the Cutler clan, a family of travellers that has made its home on a rubbishstrewn corner of Gloucestershire’s green fields. Clad in a…

Directed by CHRISTOPHE LOURDELET GARTH JENNINGS Starring MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY REESE WITHERSPOON SETH MACFARLANE Released 27 JANUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. An animated singing competition? At least it’s directed by the great Garth Jennings. 4 ENJOYMENT. Unabashed fun, but with a subtle, human message underneath all the wailing. 3 IN RETROSPECT. A modest family feature that offers more than empty flash. When it comes to modern cinemagoing, feature animation is now part of the furniture, with studios like Pixar in particular finding huge audiences with their emotional, cross-generational crowd pleasers. Other production houses are attempting to surf this wave with alternative, even parodic versions of family-oriented movies. In the midst of this meta mess is a film whose modesty belies how clever and engaging it is. Garth Jennings and Christophe Lourdelet’s Sing is that film, and…

Directed by ANNA ROSE HOLMER Starring ROYALTY HIGHTOWER ALEXIS NEBLETT LAUREN GIBSON Released FEBRUARY TBC 3 ANTICIPATION. Such a literal title leaves little to the imagination. 4 ENJOYMENT. Female hysteria revisited from a fresh angle. 4 IN RETROSPECT. A striking oddity that lingers like a dream. Punches are swapped for pirouettes and the side effects of hysteria in Anna Rose Holmer’s debut feature film, about a young tomboy who joins an all-girl dance troupe. Ten year old Toni (Royalty Hightower) is training to be a boxer – one who stands in the centre of the ring, steely faced, administering powerful and precise punches. Inspired by her older brother Jermaine (Da’Sean Minor), she begins to watch the dance troupe that practice next door with growing fascination. A seed of curiosity blossoms within her.…

Directed by XAVIER DOLAN Starring GASPARD ULLIEL, VINCENT CASSEL, MARION COTILLARD Released 24 FEBRUARY We all have off days. Those moments where, as hard as you might try, nothing seems to come out right. Xavier Dolan’s fifth feature, an adaptation of a 1990 stage play by the late Jean-Luc Lagarce, is by some margin his least successful directorial effort, and that’s putting it lightly. The experience of watching this film equates to being tiedup and ball-gagged in the middle of an unsupervised children’s party at which all attendees have consumed dangerous quantities of bright, Tartrazine-based fluid. Shrill isn’t the world. Tungsten-plated ear muffs are needed to get through this one. Willowy fop Gaspard Ulliel is a prodigal son who makes a rare return to the family nest. He has news. Gathered…

Directed by MICK JACKSON Starring RACHEL WEISZ TIMOTHY SPALL TOM WILKINSON Released 27 JANUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. Prestigious cast and Holocaust theme point to awards bait, but it is written by David Hare. 3 ENJOYMENT. At its best in court, where the cast can get their teeth into the dialogue. 3 IN RETROSPECT. The gnarly subject matter brings its own rewards, but gestures towards accessibility prove counter-productive. If this wasn’t based on an actual court case from 1996, it might sound like the sort of script that gets written in search of awards silverware. Here, the legal team defending a heroic academic against the Nazi-apologist rival who says she libelled him, have to prove that the Holocaust really existed in order that truth and justice prevail. Such are the caprices of English…

Directed by WARREN BEATTY Starring ALDEN EHRENREICH LILY COLLINS WARREN BEATTY Released 27 JANUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Beatty’s first directorial effort in nearly two decades. 3 ENJOYMENT. One of history’s true mad men hijacks a classic romantic comedy. 4 IN RETROSPECT. An experimental, breathless, and messy passion project demanding of repeat viewings. What happens when a perfectly lovely romantic comedy gets hijacked by a madman? Rules Don’t Apply suggests that all sense of direction, emotion, formal structure and expectation are sent spinning, like a compass needle driven mad by a magnetic field. This is exactly what happens about midway through Warren Beatty’s nutty directorial effort about two young lovebirds orbiting the lavish world of billionaire mogul Howard Hughes in 1950s Hollywood. Driver Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich) is instantly attracted to aspiring actress…

Directed by PETER BERG Starring MARK WAHLBERG, MELISSA BENOIST, MICHELLE MONAGHAN Released 24 FEBRUARY Peter Berg’s idea of patriotism finds its clearest, most convincing articulation in Patriots Day, a new film which recreates the 2013 Boston marathon bombing and the manhunt that followed. The film shows the incident from all sides, intertwining the stories of victims, police and the bombers themselves with remarkable narrative clarity and a low-key style. But despite its matter-of-fact approach towards senseless terror, there emerges not a sense of defeat but rather the overwhelming feeling of solidarity amongst Bostonians. More interestingly, this version of patriotism is also realised in the film’s form. Far from being an insensitive abuse of real tragedy for the purpose of entertainment, Patriots Day’s large scale re-enactment does some justice to the pain…

Directed by WES ANDERSON Starring GENE HACKMAN GWYNETH PALTROW BEN STILLER 2001 Released OUT NOW Blu-ray If you look back at the reviews of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums upon its release in 2001, they mostly concur on a similar sentiment: why isn’t this funnier? It’s never nice to read a critique that chides a film for what it isn’t rather than what it is, but one thing is true – this film isn’t very funny. It has funny moments, and there are two comic titans (Bill Murray and Owen Wilson) both operating at the very peak of their game (“Wildcat! Wild… cat!”), but Anderson is aiming for something darker, something more emotional and sincere. It’s a film which explores the interplay between parents and their children. It doesn’t just say that only…

Directed by HOWARD HAWKS Starring ROSALIND RUSSELL CARY GRANT RALPH BELLAMY 1940 Released 16 JAN Blu-ray When you see a film described as ‘screwball’, it means that its about people who converse at an ungodly speed. Sometimes to the point where the answer to a question is delivered before the question is fully posed. Howard Hawks’ 1940 comedy, His Girl Friday, is often considered the screwball lodestone, with characters speaking so quickly that the words begin to sound like abstract blurts of white noise. Cary Grant’s silver-tongued, eyebrow-popping newspaper editor Walter Burns is a scheming rotter, intent on preventing his ex-wife and hotshot reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) from ditching the thrill of the front page to up sticks with Ralph Bellamy’s dullard heel. Though the film is deemed to be one of…

While Donald Trump spoke of building a wall between the US and Mexico during his toxic election campaign, the organisers of the Los Cabos International Film Festival, situated at the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula, were busy breaking down barriers. In light of recent events, ‘Come and see what the neighbours are doing’ now feels like a somewhat unfortunate strapline for a festival which prides itself on the accessibility and inclusivity of its line-up. But it’s encouraging to witness first hand the festival’s ongoing commitment to strengthening the relationship between the North and Central American film industries. It’s not just an exotically-located networking event though, there’s great films on offer too. This year’s hot ticket was undoubtedly Kenneth Lonergan’s awards-tipped Manchester by the Sea, which screened alongside a…

“I grew up in an environment where theatrical attendance was forbidden. A church environment. I didn’t see movies and I didn’t know anybody who did. So I didn’t know I was missing anything. One of the things that first attracted me to films was the fact that they were forbidden. I went to some and they weren’t very interesting, but then the European cinema of the ‘60s came along when I was in college. My parents never came around to it. When my father died, I was surprised to find that he had purchased all my films on VHS. They were all in their original wrapping, unopened. He wanted people to know he was proud of his son, but he wouldn’t watch them. He had no real interest in my…

“I think it is evident that a Barbarian [an American] couldn’t have made the films that I’ve made. And that’s a problem because my parents – I never know how to say this, because my mother is still alive but my father is dead. She’s very, very old so I’ll say ‘were’. They were very lovely people, but very modest. They were not very literate, but regarding cinema I do owe them something: when I was 13 years old, I had only ever seen ‘bougeants’ [a translation of ‘movies’ with the French verb ‘bouger’, meaning ‘to move’]. I had only seen Barbarian bougeants, and to me they’re not really cinema. I mean, as a child I enjoyed cartoons and such, but when I was 13, I don’t know why, my…

Directed by ALMA HAR’EL Released 10 FEBRUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. An effervescent essay looking at love through a kaleidoscope. 3 ENJOYMENT. High on its own supply of blurred (non)fiction lines. 3 IN RETROSPECT. Better suited to Vimeo Staff Picks than brick + mortar cinemas. “I wish we could make a movie only about good things,” laments Will Hunt (code name: Coconut Willie). A lovelorn surfer and single father, he’s one of three characters – it’s fair to call them that – in this hybrid documentary by Bombay Beach director Alma Har’el. Traversing the notion of love in all its colours, shades and shapes, LoveTrue is less of an essay film and more like a painted poem. With its opening riff on a passage from Corinthians lilting over wistful imagery, it’s clear from…

Directed by BARRY JENKINS Starring TREVANTE RHODES ALEX HIBBERT MAHERSHALA ALI Released 24 FEBRUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. One little-seen feature to his name – Jenkins has a lot to prove. 5 ENJOYMENT. A disarming and tender triptych, fluent in the language of wordless emotion. 5 IN RETROSPECT. A lost lover worth carrying a torch for. Unspoken, unspeakable intimacy is the dominant mode of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, a personal/political triptych which offers keen perspectives on masculinity, queer sexuality, racial identity, and the odd angles at which they intersect. In adapting the story of a closed-off boy trembling before love (first unrecognisable, then unrequited) from the play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’, Jenkins presents his treatise on the many trials of black life in America. At once an aching romance worthy of comparison to…

Directed by KIRSTEN JOHNSON Released 27 JANUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. A crowdpleaser at Sundance and SXSW, and the Grand Jury prize winner at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016. 4 ENJOYMENT. A life lived; a craft mastered; a world observed. 4 IN RETROSPECT. An essential film about how documentaries are made and watched. There’s a tendency to trivialise documentary craft. It’s either impartial, fly-on-the-wall observation or the opposite, which is hard politically motivated manipulation. Traversing time and terrain, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson reveals the shades in between, where passive and active mix. We hear (off-camera) Johnson’s joy at tailing a grinning Bosnian shepherd. Later, there’s an awestruck gasp as a flash of lightning illuminates a landscape. We see Johnson film her mother, mosques and Michael Moore. The latter remains an icon of documentary subjectivity, and he…

Directed by DAMIEN CHAZELLE Starring RYAN GOSLING EMMA STONE AMIÉE CONN Released 13 JANUARY 3 ANTICIPATION. Gosling and Stone are a strong draw, but the trailers all looked terribly twee. 4 ENJOYMENT. You’ll be reluctantly wooed and fall head over heels. 4 IN RETROSPECT. Open-hearted gushy romanticism in CinemaScope. What’s not to love? Twenty-first century movie musicals tend to be met with audience skepticism. For every success story (Pitch Perfect), there has been an unmitigated disaster (Nine, Rock of Ages). As large, expensive, resource-heavy productions, they tend to be a risky proposition when it comes to the finance department. So when the word ‘ambitious’ is trotted out to describe the contemporary musical, it has cautionary overtones. In La La Land, writer/director Damien Chazelle not only fulfills that ambition, but tackles the idea…

Directed by MEL GIBSON Starring ANDREW GARFIELD VINCE VAUGHN HUGO WEAVING Released 27 JANUARY 2 ANTICIPATION. Is this the time we forgive and forget Mel’s various atrocities? 4 ENJOYMENT. Well no, but he’s back with a sizzling, heartfelt piece of misty-eyed Americana. 4 IN RETROSPECT. A stirling modern war picture with an intriguing moral twist. It’s true, Mel Gibson does love to make movies about men who bare an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ. Hell, 2004’s pseudo-snuff aria The Passion of the Christ is directly about our lord and saviour, specifically how the horrific suffering he purportedly endured resembled an extreme French horror movie from the ’90s. It transpires, though, that Gibson’s fervent religiosity does not mix well with alcohol, and following various verbal infractions of the racist/misogynist variety, he was sent…

Directed by JA BAYONA Starring LEWIS MACDOUGALL LIAM NEESON FELICITY JONES Released 1 JANUARY 2 ANTICIPATION. Oh no, not another young adultoriented cash grab. 4 ENJOYMENT. A determinedly weird and macabre exploration of mortality. 4 IN RETROSPECT. Makes you feel like there might be more life in the old YA engine yet. Gawky pre-teen boys heading on a fantastical voyage of discovery from the safety of their bedroom? Change the record will you. We’re living in a world of Potter pretenders, a restless search to find the next googly-eyed boy wizard who is able save us all from some cranky old British character actor. While JA Bayona’s A Monster Calls looks to be a ‘type’ of movie, one cleaving to the generic zeitgeist with every breath in its body, the truth is…

Directed by KELLY REICHARDT Starring LILY GLADSTONE KRISTEN STEWART LAURA DERN Released 3 MARCH 5 ANTICIPATION. One of America’s greatest filmmakers returns. 5 ENJOYMENT. One of America’s greatest filmmakers does her thing. 5 IN RETROSPECT. Still one of America’s greatest filmmakers. When you see Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women the first thing you’ll want to do when you leave the cinema is purchase and eat a big ol’ hamburger. In the third of three hushed anecdotes concerning the everyday struggles of a clutch of Montanian women, Kristen Stewart’s wayfaring supply teacher has to erotically scarf down a plate of diner food prior to an all-night drive across the state. There is, obviously, something cinematically seductive about the idea of Stewart chewing on a burger, and Reichardt knows it. She has Lily Gladstone’s…

Directed by BARAK HEYMANN, TOMER HEYMANN Released 10 MARCH Shunned by the religious community in Israel for his homosexuality, Saar Maoz finds himself distanced even further from his family once diagnosed with HIV. He then discovers a new, thriving support system in the form of the London Gay Men’s Choir. Israeli filmmakers Barak and Tomer Heymann capture the life of Maoz in the warm and defiant Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? The directors are concise with their project, each scene chosen carefully to prioritise the important aspects of Maoz’s story without wasting minutes on establishing mood or setting. There is an urgency about the storytelling that immediately connects audiences to Saar and the world he inhabits. That world is both vibrant and sparse, cleverly highlighted through juxtaposing shots of the choir and Saar’s…

Directed by DANIEL GORDON Starring GEORGE BEST,PADDY CRERAND, MIKE SUMMERBEE Released 24 FEBRUARY Weeks before his death in 2005, George Best insisted that people remember him for his football skills and “forget all the rubbish” that made him infamous. A new documentary about his life makes that seem unlikely. Best opens with ex-wife Angie recalling the time she mistook her husband for a tramp, setting up the story of a prodigious talent prone to self-sabotage. But the foreshadowing proves unnecessary. Even during Best’s ascent at Manchester United in the 1960s – becoming football’s first pop star at 19 – reporters keep asking if all the attention and pressure will become unbearable. As it inevitably does, the film maps out that downward spiral effectively. A procession of talking heads – former lovers,…

Directed by JEFF NICHOLS Starring RUTH NEGGA JOEL EDGERTON WILL DALTON Released 3 FEBRUARY 4 ANTICIPATION. Jeff Nichols always brings a lot to the table, and tends to elicit great performances from his actors. 4 ENJOYMENT. Definitely got something in my eye. 4 IN RETROSPECT. An understated and beautiful story about how ordinary folk took an extraordinary stand. It’s difficult to imagine the police barging into your home, pulling you and your spouse out of bed, and arresting you for the crime of being married. But that’s the position in which Mildred and Richard Loving found themselves one summer night back in 1958. He, a white bricklayer, and her, a biracial woman of African heritage, had left their home state of Virginia to tie the knot, knowing full well it was…

Directed by JOHN LEE HANCOCK Starring MICHAEL KEATON LAURA DERN NICK OFFERMAN Released 17 FEBRUARY 2 ANTICIPATION. The terrible feeling that this might be another capitalist success story… 3 ENJOYMENT. Aesthetically nothing exceptional, but the performances are great and the story just incredible. 4 IN RETROSPECT. A special, worthwhile film that promises more confrontational Hollywood films in the future. In 2008, the financial crisis ruined the lives of millions of Americans. Then, in 2012, Martin Scorsese’s dizzying satire of greed, The Wolf of Wall Street, went widely interpreted as an inspiringly gung-ho tale of ruthless success. And only a few months separate us from the election of a well known crook as President of the USA. Yet today, John Lee Hancock’s McDonald’s origin story The Founder presents, at least conceptually, the…

Directed by SAM PECKINPAH Starring WARREN OATES ISELA VEGA ROBERT WEBBER 1974 Released 23 JAN Blu-ray This is a rare case of a movie living up to (and perhaps even exceeding) the promise of its awesome title. Arrow Films have thrown together a very classy package to bring this ultra-seedy, horrendously violent 1974 road movie to the sick masses, and boy does it feel good. Perma-dappled in an inch of glistening sweat, Warren Oates delivers one of his finest performances as a down-and-out barroom piano player whose idea for a get-rich-quick scheme turns out to be one of the poorest decisions he will ever make. A Mexican crime kingpin named El Jefe wants the severed noggin of Alfredo Garcia, a rapscallion who has knocked up the boss’s daughter and fled. Jefe’s…

Directed by OTTO PREMINGER Starring CAROL LYNLEY KEIR DULLEA LAURENCE OLIVIER 1965 Released 20 FEB Blu-ray Even if you’re unable to warm to the bleak manhunt storyline that makes up the crooked backbone of this angular thriller, Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing still offers an evocative and eerie vision of north London in the ’60s that should not be missed. From the dingy, shoebox-sized flats and tumbledown schools to the smoky pubs and even a very scary ‘hospital for dolls’ in which one key scene takes place, it stands as one of the great London location shoots of the era. Carol Lynley excels as anxiety-prone American immigrant Ann Lake, whose young daughter Bunny doesn’t turn up at the school gates come home time. An inspector, played by Lawrence Olivier, is immediately called…

Directed by EA DUPONT Starring EMIL JANNINGS MALY DELSCHAFT LYA DE PUTTI 1925 Released 23 JAN Blu-ray British moviegoers will likely recognise the name of director EA Dupont as the maker of the salacious 1929 film Piccadilly, which offered an early glimpse of London’s colourful cabaret dance club scene through the eyes of Chinese-American starlet, Anna May Wong. Masters of Cinema expand our intimacy with this notable silent filmmaker by releasing this macabre tale of violent jealousy set in the world of erotic spectacle (aka, Berlin). Emil Jannings goes big and bold as “Boss” Huller, a convicted murderer who, after a decade behinds bars, eventually decides to relinquish the guilt stored up inside him. Once, back in a more innocent time, he was one half of a trapeze artist act with seductress Bertha-Marie…

Look north from London, and the city of Glasgow comes into your sightlines. You’ll see a place that is doing film festivals right. Very quietly, artistic co-directors of the Glasgow Film Festival, Allison Gardner and Alan Hunter, have been building an audience of newbie cinephiles with a programme that skims the best of bubbling-under world cinema while placing old classics into sparkling new context. We spoke to them about the tricky business of planning an executing a modern film festival. LWLies: When you come together to plan the festival, what is the first order of business? Alan Hunter: Normally we run away from each other and lie in a dark room until the memories of the last festival have faded. It is a rolling, year-round thing, so even when we’re…