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 […]
Film Festival
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. […]
AFI FEST 2012 Film Review: Like Someone In Love (Dir. Abbas Kiarostami France/Japan 2012 )
Abbas Kiarostami has gone to Japan, and why not? Like Someone In Love is less obviously tricksy than his last, and his first outside of Iran, Certified Copy [2010]; and it reveals a little more of what was obvious all along – that Kiarostami’s interests lie in people, identity, and communication (between characters, and with […]
AFI FEST 2012 ‘Breakthrough’ Must See Selection: Nairobi Half Life (Dir. Tosh Gitonga 2012 Germany Kenya)
If you go to the AFI FEST website, and select Film Guide from the navigation menu, you will find all of the festival’s sections laid out before you, with an image from one film highlighting each. It should come as no surprise that Nairobi Half Life has been selected to represent the ‘Breakthrough’ section of […]