CineVue

Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'Gimme the Loot' review

2012-05-27T01:05:08-07:00

★★★☆☆

One of four films to debut in the Un Certain Regard section of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot (2012) is a brisk and refreshingly jolly look at life on the streets of New York from the perspective of two young graffiti artists, Sofia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson) aka Shakes. We are introduced to the characters as they shoplift paint canisters from a DIY shop, aided by their heavily tattooed Hispanic getaway driver Champion (Meeko).
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Competition: Win tickets to the 'The Angels' Share' UK Premiere

2012-05-26T08:34:48-07:00

We've teamed up with the lovely chaps at Entertainment One to offer our British cinema-loving readers THREE pair of tickets to the UK Premiere of Ken Loach's The Angels' Share (2012) (review here) at Glasgow's Cineworld Renfrew Street on Tuesday 29 May. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'In the Fog' review

2012-05-26T02:04:48-07:00

★★★☆☆

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa returns to the Cannes Film Festival with Palme d'Or nominee In the Fog (V tumane, 2012), a sombre wartime drama set in Belarus at the time of the Nazi occupation. The film begins with the execution of three local men, hung by the Germans for sabotage. We then move on to a night-time scene as two shadowy figures on horseback move through the woods: one, Burov (Vladislav Abashin), is in uniform and they both carry rifles.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'The Paperboy' review

2012-05-26T01:33:31-07:00

★★☆☆☆

Following up on the critical success of his previous film Precious (2009) (which screened at both Sundance and Cannes), Lee Daniels' The Paperboy (2012) is a star-studded oddity; an overly-directed pot-boiler unable to decide how seriously it wants to take itself. In the end, the pot simply boils over.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'Cosmopolis' review

2012-05-26T00:21:23-07:00

★★☆☆☆

A man drives across New York to get a haircut and it takes all day: simplicity itself. Celebrated Canadian director David Cronenberg enters the running for the coveted Palme d'Or prize at the 65th Cannes Film Festival with Cosmopolis (2012), an overly faithful adaptation of the Don DeLillo's novel of the same name.
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DocHouse: 'Surviving Progress'

2012-05-25T04:00:09-07:00

★★★★☆

From executive producer Martin Scorsese and screened as part of the DocHouse strand, Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks' documentary Surviving Progress (2011) is a fascinating and highly ambitious evaluation of 'economic progress', questioning whether the term always necessary means improvement in a world of rapidly evolving technologies and increasing global debt.
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Competition: Win Lena Dunham's 'Tiny Furniture' on DVD

2012-05-25T02:00:01-07:00

To celebrate the release of Lena Dunham' US indie comedy Tiny Furniture (2010) on DVD from Monday 28 May, we're giving our loyal readers the chance to win one of THREE DVD copies of the film courtesy of Independent Distribution. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue.
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Competition: Win the Classic Bergman 5 disc box set on Blu-ray

2012-05-25T00:00:02-07:00

Thanks to the home entertainment team at Artificial Eye, we have THREE Blu-ray copies of the upcoming Classic Bergman 5 disc box set (released on 28 May) to give away to our world cinema-loving. The box set includes five Bergman classics: It Rains on our Love, A Ship Bound for India, Sawdust and Tinsel, Dreams and So Close to Life. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'Holy Motors' review

2012-05-24T12:47:15-07:00

★★★★☆

French-born director Leos Carax returns to cinema screens this year with Holy Motors (2012), his first feature film for over a decade (since 1999's Pola X ), which premiered at the 65th Cannes Film Festival and has since become somewhat of a late favourite for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize. It's a truly bizarre, thoughtful, pretentious and insane circus of a film, but somehow gets away with it all by being so consistently, utterly entertaining.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'In Another Country' review

2012-05-24T07:29:55-07:00

★★☆☆☆

In competition at this year's 65th Cannes Film Festival, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo returns with In Another Country (2012), a carefully crafted, slight whimsical comedy that isn't particularly funny and has nothing new to say. A young girl is stuck with her mother at a seaside town as they have stood guarantor for an uncle who has gone missing. On learning of their predicament, the young girl decides to write three scripts, each one featuring the visit of a French woman (Isabelle Huppert) to the small boring little town.
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Film Review: 'Personal Best'

2012-05-24T23:11:06-07:00

★★★☆☆

Not to be confused with the 1982 romantic drama, Sam Blair's Personal Best (2012) is a BFI-supported documentary sharing the stories of three professional runners aiming towards competing in the 2012 London Olympics. What Personal Best lacks in fictional tales of love and friendship, it makes up for in real-life, gripping drama as the three hard players fight opposing factors to achieve their sporting dreams.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'Sightseers' review

2012-05-24T09:04:48-07:00

★★★☆☆

Showing in the Director's Fortnight strand of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Ben Wheatley's Kill List (2011) follow-up Sightseers (2012) is an unexpectedly lighthearted jaunt - with serial killing of course - but a jaunt nonetheless. Taken from a script developed by its two leads Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, initially intended as a stand-up routine and then a television pilot, Wheatley adds a splash of his own twisted world view, lending the comedy a sharply macabre edge.
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Film Review: 'Barbaric Genius'

2012-05-24T04:00:08-07:00

★★☆☆☆

Writer and director Paul Duane turns his hand to feature documentaries with Barbaric Genius (2011), which examines the 'colourful' life of ex-con turned author John Healy. Born in Ireland, Healy grew up with an abusive father in a small town, later joining the army only to desert and become a homeless alcoholic in London.
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Film Review: 'Tales of the Night'

2012-05-24T23:38:32-07:00

★★★☆☆

Seasoned French animator Michel Ocelot returns with the charming Tales of the Night (2011), six tales of whimsy and magic set across different cultures. Those familiar with Ocelot's work will notice numerous similarities with Princes and Princesses, released in 2000. Each tale is linked by a short introduction, set in a darkened theatre where an old screenwriter and two young actors play out the stories, along with a machine that rapidly changes their costumes.
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Film Review: 'Free Men'

2012-05-24T23:37:24-07:00

★★★☆☆

It would be fair to say that French Algerian actor Tahar Rahim hasn't quite met the lofty expectations placed upon his relatively young shoulders following his towering performance in Jacques Audiard's breathtaking A Prophet (Un Prophète, 2009). Recent performances in Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle (2010) and Jean-Jacques Annaud's Black Gold (2011) have been competent rather than remarkable, but thankfully his latest turn in Ismaël Ferroukhi's Free Men (2011) represents a marked improvement on past outings.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'On the Road' review

2012-05-23T14:29:02-07:00

★★☆☆☆

It's been a long journey from the original publication of Jack Kerouac's beat novel On the Road in 1957 to this Walter Salles-directed big screen adaptation. Over half a century has passed, and in the meantime the cultural influence of the 'Beat Generation' has inspired music and film on many different levels. Salles' On the Road attempts to condense and capture one of the great unfilmable books, but instead motors onto the Cannes Croisette with its trunk packed full with baggage.
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Film Review: 'What to Expect When You're Expecting'

2012-05-23T06:06:18-07:00

★★★☆☆

What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), the new multi-tiered, ensemble comedy from British director Kirk Jones, starring - amongst others - Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock and Cheryl Cole (!?), is good fun as long as you're not expecting too much. The film follows five couples as they experience the ups and downs of pregnancy and childbirth, in the process learning about themselves whilst dealing with the unforgettable experience of bringing a new life into the world.
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Film Review: 'Moonrise Kingdom'

2012-05-24T23:37:58-07:00

★★★☆☆

American indie auteur Wes Anderson returns to live action filmmaking this year with Cannes opener Moonrise Kingdom (2012), a typically quirky offering that partially manages to break free of its mawkish trappings for a sweet(ish) tale of childhood romance. Anderson regulars Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman are joined here by a somewhat hit-and-miss ensemble cast of players, including Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'Le Grand Soir' review

2012-05-23T03:42:08-07:00

★★★☆☆

Following last year's underwhelming Mammuth (2010), directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern present their latest oddball comedy Le Grand Soir (2012) in the Un Certain Regard section of the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Our protagonist is Not (Benoît Poelvoorde), "the oldest punk in Europe with a dog" as he describes himself. Despite his ostensible claims to living a life of freedom, Not gravitates around a single shopping mall on the edge of town where his mother and father own a chip shop, which he consequently visits in order to celebrate his mother's birthday.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'The Sapphires' review

2012-05-23T03:08:41-07:00

★★★☆☆

Wayne Blair's musical comedy The Sapphires (2012), screened out of competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, tells the (apparently true) story of a group of four Australian Aboriginal girls (Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell) from a rural community who aspire to musical greatness. They sing together as a family and defy the racism of local townsfolk to enter a talent competition, where they manage to catch the eye of the MC, charmer and drunken soul aficionado David Lovelace (Chris O'Dowd).
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Film Review: 'Iron Sky'

2012-05-23T03:04:45-07:00

★★☆☆☆

It's undeniable that the premise behind sci-fi comedy Iron Sky (2012), from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola, has the power to immediately grab an audience's attention. The arresting and potentially hilarious central concept sees a group of Nazis leave earth in 1945 for the dark side of the Moon, only to return to conquer the Earth in 2018. Yet despite its amusing, 1950s-style B-movie plot, Iron Sky is a surprisingly dull affair that lacks any genuinely funny moments or real lasting appeal.
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Cannes Film Festival 2012: 'The Angels' Share' review

2012-05-23T00:19:43-07:00

★★★★☆

Named after the term that describes the amount of alcohol that evaporates from a cask of whiskey, The Angels' Share (2012) finds director Ken Loach - Cannes' only British Palme d'Or contender - returning to more light-hearted, yet invariably true-to-life and politically-tinged form. Newcomer Paul Brannigan plays Robbie, an untoward young man who, by the skin of his teeth, escapes a prison sentence in favour of a community service ruling.
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Preview: Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby' gets its first trailer

2012-05-23T04:38:53-07:00

Having previously tackled the world of ballroom dancing, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996), Paris' Moulin Rouge! (2001) and the history of white colonialism Down Under in Australia (2008), Aussie director Baz Luhrmann now sets his sights on a 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby for the silver screen. Ahead of its December release, the first trailer has just emerged online and sees Luhrmann once again apply his own bombastic visual style to proceedings.
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DVD Review: 'Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles'

2012-05-22T08:00:02-07:00

★★★★☆

Despite an influx of Sherlock Holmes adventures doing the rounds, there are none quite like revered Russian director Igor Maslennikov's celebrated interpretations. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1981), his version of the Victorian detective's encounters with a beastly dog in the wilds of Devonshire, starring Vasili Livanov, Vitali Solomin and Nikita Mihalkov, is a serious yet lively retelling of the popular tale.
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DVD Review: The Rafi Pitts Collection

2012-05-22T07:20:21-07:00

★★★☆☆

Released by Artificial Eye on 28 May, The Rafi Pitts Collection brings together three of the Iranian director's most pivotal films, from the pastoral drama of Sanam (2000) through to the Tehran-based, melancholic revenge movie The Hunter (2010), via his Berlinale hit It's Winter (2006). All three films share a focal interest in the role of men in modern Iran, and whilst Pitts may not quite be in the same league as your Jafar Panahis or Nuri Bilge Ceylan (both key exponents of Islam-centric cinema), he is undoubtedly a fluid storyteller.