Film and Tom Dawson

Polisse

Sprawling French ensemble drama that veers between compelling and ridiculous

16 May 2012

This sprawling ensemble film, which tracks the harrowing daily routines of a Parisian Child Protection Unit, veers wildly between the compelling and the ridiculous. Scripted and directed by Maiwenn, with Emmaneulle Bercot acting as co-writer, it shifts…

Marley

A comprehensive documentary on the singer that would have benefitted from delving a little deeper

25 Apr 2012

(15) 145 mins Executive produced by Bob Marley’s son Ziggy and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, Kevin Macdonald’s comprehensive, if overly reverential, documentary chronicles the life and times of the first musical superstar from the third world…

Rendez-vous with French Cinema preview

The chance to see upcoming French films before they hit cinemas later this year

26 Mar 2012

Now that The Artist has cleaned up at the Oscars, attention can turn to other French films that will be released in the UK during 2012. The Rendez-vous with French Cinema event, which runs in London until Sat 24 Mar and at Edinburgh's Filmhouse from Fri…

Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life

Werner Herzog documentary more than righteous polemic against capital punishment

19 Mar 2012

(12A) 107min In an interview to promote Into the Abyss, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog declares that, ‘it is absolutely clear that the crimes of the persons in my film are monstrous, but the perpetrators are not monsters’. Although Herzog himself…

Director Paolo Sorrentino discusses the Sean Penn-starring This Must Be the Place

The drama merges themes of America, rock music and the Holocaust

19 Mar 2012

The protagonist at the heart of Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must be the Place isn’t your typical Nazi-hunter. Endearingly played by Sean Penn, Cheyenne is a retired rock star, now living in Dublin, whose mental and physical faculties have been impaired by…

Cleanskin

A gratuitously violent Sean Bean action vehicle light on sociological insight

9 Mar 2012

'I love my country. I’ve killed for it and I’ll die for it', growls Ewan (Sean Bean), an ex-soldier turned secret service agent who is tasked with tracking down a cell of homegrown suicide bombers in this London-set thriller by British writer-director…

Michael

Challenging and non-sensationalist portrayal of a paedophile

28 Feb 2012

(18) 96min Doubtless Austrian writer-director Markus Schleinzer, a former casting director for Michael Haneke, will be pilloried in some quarters for making a film which ‘humanizes’ its paedophile protagonist. Yet what makes this rigorously observed…

Carancho

Argentinean neo-noir explores car crash insurance scams

22 Feb 2012

(15) 107 min Beginning and ending with visceral images of car crashes, this slice of contemporary neo-noir, from Argentinean writer and director Pablo Trapero, unites two of his country’s finest actors. The titular vulture (‘carancho’) is an…

Trishna

Michael Winterbottom's bold re-imagining of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

17 Feb 2012

(15) 113 min Roman Polanski filmed Tess of the D’Urbervilles back in the late 1970s as Tess, with his then partner Nastassja Kinski in the lead role of Thomas Hardy’s heroine-cum-personification-of-nature. Here Michael Winterbottom, who’s previously…

Hadewijch

Provocative religious drama from French director Bruno Dumont

24 Jan 2012

(cert tbc)105mins Don’t be put off the fact that it’s taken a couple of years for this provocative examination of contemporary religious martyrdom to gain a cinematic release in the United Kingdom. The film, which explores how extreme faith can…

The Adopted

Quirky, saccharine directorial debut from French actress Melanie Laurent

24 Jan 2012

(15) 100 mins Still only 28-years-old, French actress and musician Melanie Laurent makes her directorial debut with this offbeat family tale, which owes more to her recent performances in US indie Beginners and the sentimental melodrama The Concert…

Profile: Carol Morley

Director of documentary-drama Dreams of a Life

9 Dec 2011

Born 1966, Stockport, England. Background The sister of music critic Paul Morley, film director Carol left school aged 16 to pursue a career as a singer in various post-punk Mancunian bands. Having studied fine art film at Central Saint Martins…

Dreams of A Life

Compelling UK documentary-drama investigation into life of dead woman

7 Dec 2011

(12A) 90min Back in January 2006 a 38-year-old Londoner of Afro-Caribbean descent, Joyce Vincent, was found dead in her Wood Green housing association flat located above a busy shopping centre. Her decomposing corpse had lain there undisturbed for…

We Have A Pope

Light-hearted touches within surprisingly pessimistic vision of Catholic Church system

9 Nov 2011

(tbc) 104mins Although it’s set in the world of heavyweight prize-fighters, it would be cruelly limiting to describe Martin Scorsese’s lacerating study of masculine self-loathing Raging Bull as a film about boxing. Ditto Italian writer-director Nanni…

Romantics Anonymous

Surprise hit at French box-office far more saccharine than bittersweet

9 Nov 2011

(12A) 78mins ‘I don’t have a problem with women,’ confides chocolate factory owner Jean-René (Belgian actor and comedian Benoît Poelvoorde) to his psychoanalyst (Stéphan Wojtowicz). ‘They just terrify me, that’s all.’ In clinical terms le patron is…

The Well Digger’s Daughter

Beautiful landscapes and convincing performances in polished if unadventurous directorial debut

9 Nov 2011

(PG) 107mins A quarter of a century after his acclaimed performances as the shifty hunchback Ugolin in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon des Sources, French actor Daniel Auteuil plays it safe in his directorial debut with this…

Las Acacias

Low-key and sparing Argentinean film illustrates how less can be more

8 Nov 2011

(12A) 86 mins In the renaissance of South American cinema during the last 15 years, the road movie has been embraced by numerous film-makers: think Walter Salles’ Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries and the forthcoming Jack Kerouac adaptation On…

Interview: Kaya Scodelario on Skins, Wuthering Heights and Now Is Good

Former star Skins takes lead in Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights

21 Oct 2011

You were in line to work with Red Road and Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold on Wuthering Heights, yet you missed your first audition for the role? How come? ‘I was incredibly nervous about doing a period drama. I thought that to play period you had…

Self Made

Gillian Wearing's study of acting blurs the line between fiction and reality

17 Oct 2011

(15) 87min An intriguing debut feature from Young British Artist-turned director Gillian Wearing, which in a manner reminiscent of Clio Barnard’s The Arbor skilfully blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction filmmaking. Having responded to…

Miss Bala

Impressive crime drama from Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo

12 Oct 2011

(15) 113min Maria Full of Grace meets Heat in this absorbing thriller from Mexican writer/director Gerardo Naranjo (I’m Gonna Explode), whose title translates as ‘Miss Bullet’. Laura (newcomer Stephanie Sigman) is a young working-class woman living…

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Personality-driven documentary about the world-famous publication

14 Sep 2011

(15) 91min These are dark days for the newspaper business. Advertising revenues and circulations are slumping in the face of ‘free’ online competitors, whilst scores of titles have already folded. Andrew Rossi’s fly-on-the-wall documentary charts a…

Mademoiselle Chambon

Moving romantic drama from director Stéphane Brizé, starring Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain

14 Sep 2011

(12A) 101min Mademoiselle Chambon is another bitter-sweet and elegantly orchestrated chamber drama from Stéphane Brizé, the French writer-director of Not Here to be Loved, which plays like a Gallic variation of Brief Encounter. Jean (Vincent Lindon…

Attenberg

Clinical emotional awakening both intrigues and mystifies

19 Aug 2011

(18) 95min Unfolding in a strangely deserted seaside Greek industrial town, Attenberg charts the gradual emotional awakening of a withdrawn young woman Marina (impressive newcomer Ariane Labed), whose dying architect father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis…

In a Better World (Hævnen)

Oscar-winning, powerfully acted work that loses its way

15 Aug 2011

(15) 117min The winner of the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the digitally shot In a Better World is another of director Suzanne Bier’s emotionally intense male melodramas, scripted by her regular collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen. It…

Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)

9 Aug 2011

(12a) 104min Despite the efforts of a fine French cast – which includes Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila and Audrey Tautou – this visually unremarkable romantic comedy from writer/director Pierre Salvadori (Wild Target, Priceless), in which mother and…