Image via http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Ah Matthew McConaughey, have I ever really loved any film you’ve been in? You’re often a charmer but it’s a smug, chauvinistic sort of charm, especially in those dreadful romcoms you did back ten years or more ago. Mud was okay but I’ve just scrolled through your filmography on IMDb and the answer, really, is no. So why did I bother with Interstellar? I had a vague impression that it was interesting and, being about space, I thought it might interest my Starship Troopers-loving husband whilst also engaging our brains. It did neither. Continue reading
The Unknown Girl is a film that will have an unknown ending for me as I walked out on it. It’s by the Dardennes brothers and I was really looking forward to it but I just couldn’t engage with the storyline. Jenny is a young doctor in her last days at a general practice for low-income patients before she moves on to a better job. One night after closing time, the clinic bell rings and she doesn’t answer it. It turns out to have been a young girl who was then murdered. Feeling responsible, Jenny tries to find out who she is. 
I have no idea what this Iranian film is about. It’s stylish, unconventional and full of beautiful moments and promise but ultimately I felt I was missing out on a cultural context that may have made sense of the story. It begins as a drama with a man, Babak, recounting to an investigator the events that had led up to that moment. We then see the events unfold; he is sent to make a report on a man who has killed himself on the island of Qeshm. He was an ‘exile’ living alone in a derelict boat in the middle of a desert cemetery and Babak can see that he was murdered. His investigations begin to reveal surreal and confusing facts. 
It’s never a good sign when you are hoping a film is about to end, that this scene will be the final one. Not that Kaili Blues is terrible, there is a lot to recommend about it, it just seemed to get lost halfway through and then keep going. And going. 
A bittersweet Tunisian love story, that’s what this film is supposed to be. Hedi is a shy car salesman who likes to draw. He is dominated by his mother, who tries to steers his life into an acceptable version of success, making it clear that he is not as clever as his older brother. 
Expectations again. This Hungarian film was described as a horror, well actually “somewhere between Terrence Malick, Andrei Tarkovsky and a horror film.” It wasn’t a horror. It was a dark tale to be sure but slow to get to its point. That would have been the Tarkovsky bit. 
Disney’s feminist polemic. I know right? What does Disney think it’s doing serving up this thinly veiled feminist propaganda? What are they trying to do, influence the minds of our courageous young boys and tractable young girls? I know what kind of barrow you’re trying to push Disney, you’re trying to tell us that girls can do boy jobs. In fact sometimes they can do boy jobs better than boys because girls are essentially moral and they always try and do the right thing. And if only those aggressive boys would just listen to those good girls they might learn something. Just as long as the girls don’t get too emotional. Or try to tell the boys what to do. And need saving when the going gets really tough. 
Bradley Cooper is a CHEF. He’s had a TROUBLED PAST. He wants to prove that he’s the BEST. But he can’t do it ALONE. And I can tell all of this just from the poster. I laughed when I saw the poster at the cinema a few months ago. It seems like such a formulaic premise for a movie, something that movie execs cook up thinking that it can’t possibly fail because it has all the right ingredients. And it’s not a terrible movie, but it’s like dining at McDonald’s, you know exactly what you’re going to get when you walk in and no amount of artisan presentation will change the fact that it’s the same burger you’ve eaten many times before. 
fillums 