Category: Film

Wild Wes in Dead End Gulch

Ensemble casts behaving weirdly? Outlandish things being said by people who don’t seem to think they’re outlandish? Cartoon-like characters cast adrift in a comic book world? Yes, folks, it has to be Wes Anderson. When Robert Altman died, I wondered where I’d go for my fix of familial dysfunctionality. There was no need to worry.…

Click here to subscribe

A day in the death of ‘King’ Iver

Iver (Liam Carney) has motor neurone disease. He wants to die. Maria (Maureen Beattie) is the carer entrusted with the task of ending his life. As she’s about to do so, a visitor arrives. Leon (Barry Ward) has had a heroin problem in the past. Now recovered, he’s trying to get a music career going.…

Click here to subscribe

Boy meets fish in Disney extravaganza

The “meet-cute” is a hallowed tradition in Hollywood romances. It’s how the hero first encounters the heroine. In The Little Mermaid (PG), a live action re-imagining of the Hans Christian Anderson classic directed by Rob Marshall, it acquires an innovative spin, occurring after a shipwreck when disgruntled Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) has his life saved…

Click here to subscribe

A finely textured work turns tawdry

In The Laureate (15A), moody British poet Robert Graves (Tom Hughes) is experiencing writer’s block brought on by shellshock after being at the front in World War I. He invites aspiring American poetess Laura Riding (Dianna Agron) to live with him and his wife Nancy (Laura Haddock), an artist, in his country cottage (called, perhaps…

Click here to subscribe

Head versus heart across two continents

On the surface it looks as if Zoe (Lily James) is commitment-phobic. She isn’t really. It’s just that Cupid hasn’t fired his arrows yet. When her mother Cath (Emma Thompson) tries to fix her up with a local vet, the nice but dull James (Oliver Chris) we know it just ain’t gonna work. She has…

Click here to subscribe