There are pockets of whimsy in the Ken Loach filmography, but following 2009’s Looking for Eric, he seems more fully than ever to be embracing an Ealing-inflected lightheartedness. The Angel’s Share starts off in reasonably familiar territory, as a succession of poor, unemployed Scots have their petty crimes recounted in court, and the community service […]
Movies
Skyfall is the Best Bond’s Looked in Years
Thus far Daniel Craig’s James Bond films – Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace – have been a mixed bag. While the former was a successful reinvention of agent 007 the latter threw most of those intriguing concepts away in favor of a humdrum story about water being our most precious resource. However, despite the […]
AFI FEST 2012 Film Review: A Highjacking (Kapringen) (Dir. Tobias Lindholm Denmark 2012 )
Director Tobias Lindholm’s first feature film R was a gritty prison drama that upheaved the generic genre conventions that came before. His second feature takes a drastic look at a very topical subject, and one very much ignored in detail in the media–except for the sensationalizing of pirates sailing the open sea. A Highjacking is […]
AFI FEST 2012 Film Review: Antiviral (Dir. Brandon Cronenberg USA/Canada 2012 )
If nothing else, Brandon Cronenberg has been quite unafraid to make a film that could pass for an earlier one of his father’s. Antiviral boasts a fertile premise that ties biological interference to celebrity obsession, is very handsomely mounted, and features a fine, committed performance from Caleb Landry Jones in the lead. But the title […]
AFI FEST 2012 Film Review: ‘Something In The Air’ (Après Mai) (Dir. Olivier Assayas France 2012 )
It should be noted that the original title of Olivier Assayas’ well-received Something In The Air is Après Mai. For a film set in France in 1970, that inevitably means “after [the extensive riots of ] May 1968”. Let it be clear, however, that this is neither a political film, nor a film about politics. […]