From the outside it seems as if this latest British crime thriller ticks all the right boxes. Mark Strong as a bad guy? Tick. Ridley Scott producing? Tick. Cop versus criminal, car chases, bullets flying everywhere and anywhere? Tick. Trouble is, one can’t escape the feeling that someone’s thrust some big-name actors and an exhausted plotline into an A Level project, making Welcome to the Punch mediocre at its best and laborious at its worst.
Arbitrage is the feature directorial debut of writer Nicholas Jareck about successful hedge-fund manager Robert Miller and the consequences he must face when honesty is no longer an option. Richard Gere is on top form is a film about the morality of finance in post-crash America.
Guided by the probing mind of Keanu Reeves, Side By Side is a thoughtful documentary exploring the near universal adoption of digital filmmaking techniques by an industry once defined by the physicality of photochemical film. While most of the directors interviewed wax lyrical about new cinematic frontiers and the endless possibilities presented by the 21st century’s digital playground, some dissenters suggest such freedoms mightn’t be such a good thing.
Look, we’ve read the news – we know all about Run For Your Wife only taking £602 on its opening weekend, and about Danny Dyer (probably) threatening to cut the faces off everyone at the distribution company in retribution, apples’n’pears, blah. But when we finally made it to a screening, we were amazed. Forget your preconceptions – the only reason Run For Your Wife has bombed is because YOU PEOPLE AREN’T READY FOR IT.
Acclaimed Korean director Park Chan-wook presents his American debut; a fairytale with a gothic twist. The story of a teenage girl’s sexual awakening could not be more beautifully shot or stylishly presented. Part horror, part psychological thriller and part coming-of-age drama, Stoker is full of surprises.
The Paperboy is a delicious piece of abundant cinematic melodrama set in sultry Florida in the summer of 1969. From writer and director Lee Daniels, who last brought us Precious, the film is based on the true events surrounding the murder of a sheriff in a small town, and a team of journalists and their associates who attempt to get to the truth.
Mother’s Milk is a complicated family drama centring on the fate of a charming holiday orchard house in the south of France. Eleanor Melrose has decided to bequeath the family holiday home in Provence to an Irish shama instructor for its use as a New Age Foundation, rather than giving it to her son Patrick and his family. Over a long summer there, the film explores the relationships between the residents as Eleanor seems on the verge of death. Boringly.
Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and the Wachowski siblings team up to adapt David Mitchell’s sprawling 2004 Novel About Everything into a film that’s crying out loudly to be called ‘epic’, and I feel I must oblige. It’s a sprawling transgenred character-filled wallop of a movie that will probably delight and infuriate in equal measure.
The mining of the vein of vampire lore for our cinematic gratification finally seems to be running out of steam. No matter, for there are plenty of other myths, monsters..
Snipe London
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