Film Reviews

By Michael McNulty An intense, thrilling piece of frontline film-making. Cartel Land’s in the thick of it, run and gun, handheld cinematography is enough to enjoy on its own. The film opens in the middle of the Mexican desert in the dead of the night as a group of cartel members cook up a batch of meth. One admits, as thick white smoke swirls in the black around them, that what they are doing is wrong, but that if they...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Paula Bélier is the 17-old-daughter of a cheese farming family in rural France. Early in the morning, she and her younger brother help on the farm, before she cycles to the village to get on the bus that takes her to school in the nearest town. On the bus, she handles all of her family's business phone calls: She is the only hearing person in her family. Both her parents and her brother are deaf.  ...

By Ellery Nick @Ellery_Nick Director Anton Corbijn takes us back to 1950s Los Angeles where a photographer is pursuing a debutante actor on the cusp of stardom. With a little luck that golden quiffed kid might just be his ticket away from snapping starlets on red carpets and back to good ol’New York where being a creative means something.   And so Dennis Stock tries to pin down the elusive James Dean. Both are young artists who share a similar...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel So often in 45 Years a crescendo beckons, and just as often Andrew Haigh steps nimbly away. His third feature, a superb achievement, is far too accomplished a creation to sully the relationship at the heart of proceedings with something as crass as a blunt emotional punchline. This is an altogether more complex and rewarding experience, one that asks a hell of a lot of its two leads, and receives even more in return. The first...

By Leslie Byron Pitt The more you consider the bizarre tale of The Wolfpack, that harder it is for you to bend your head fully round it. The documentary about seven siblings, homeschooled and confined in their Lower East Side Manhattan apartment, away from the waking world by their father, evokes grim thoughts of the deplorable Josef Fritzl. This tale not as grievous as the acts of Fritzl, yet it does ponder a certain amount of concern. We observe Angulo...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Has it really been 25 years since maverick Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky last released a film? Such is his ability to burn surreal imagery permanently into my memory, it’s hard to believe he’s been absent for so long. Not that he’s been resting on his laurels of course. The intervening years since The Rainbow Thief (1990) have seen him dabbling in a wide array of cultural pursuits, from theatre to comics. It’s good to have him back...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel It takes something a little bit out there to reveal how crushingly conventional so much of what we watch is. We all love the familiarity that comes with genre of course, and conventions often become conventions because they’re simply the best damn way of doing something, but where’s the excitement? As far as family films go, Canadian émigré Kenton Hall knows. His feature debut A Dozen Summers shows its budgetary constraints, and with such a frenetic...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada   Quirky twenty-something underachiever Jane gets fired from her job for being too quirky and underachieving and has to come up with a way of earning a living that doesn't involve having to be on time or doing any actual work. For the spoilt child of rich parents she is, begging on the streets isn't the first thing that comes to mind, but after being mistaken for a beggar by a sympathetic passer-by, she and her...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Russia’s increasing global belligerence raises concerns in most, but not all quarters. One part of America in particular is likely to relish the return of the old enemy. For Hollywood, there will be no need to drag out hard to locate Islamic terrorists, bland corporate villains or implausible neo-Nazis. The Cold War is back and it’s time to hang the celluloid bunting. Time has moved on of course. Celluloid is turning digital across the film industry,...