Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are close friends in South Korea during their youth in Celine Song’s heartbreaking film Past Lives (PG). Their paths divide when, at the age of twelve, Nora’s parents move to New York. Twelve years later, Hae locates Nora, managing to connect with her through Skype. He learns…
Sound of Freedom (15A) Tim Ballard is a former CEO of the Nazarene Fund. This was set up to help persecuted religious and ethnic minorities. He’s also the founder of an organisation called Operations. Underground Railroad which specialises in rescuing child victims of sex traffickers. Jim Caviezel, who took the role of Jesus in Mel…
Robert De Niro is 80 this week. The most acclaimed actor of his generation has been appearing in films with religious subtexts almost since he started out, most notably in the films he made with his Catholic friend from Little Italy, Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was a former altar boy who once studied to be a…
Elvis Presley, as I mentioned in my review of Baz Luhrmann’s movie Elvis last year, feared he would be forgotten after he came out of the army in 1960. The rock ‘n’ roll boom of the 50s had passed its peak by then. He thought he would be irrelevant to the new generation about to…
All those years after his death in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock still remains not only the ‘Master of the Macabre’, his more ubiquitous soubriquet, but also the supreme purveyor of enticing visual grammar in storytelling. In Mark Cousins’ fascinating documentary My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (15) – which I recommend you watch in tandem with the…
While We Watched (15A) is an engrossing documentary from director Vinay Shukla (An Insignificant Man) that shines a laser beam into a dark porthole of India. It follows veteran TV reporter Ravish Kumar into dangerous territory as he struggles with Hindu nationalists and other forces seeking to silence him. Kumar has won many prizes for…
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.…
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.…
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…
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…