Reviews, Miles Fielder
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Fuck for Forest
18 Apr 2013
Documentary about Berlin eco-warriors who make amateur porn films
Let’s be clear: Fuck for Forest is a documentary about the titular Berlin-based environmental activists-cum-amateur porn makers and not a pornographic film in its own right. And despite there being quite a lot of flesh on display, Polish filmmaker…
Michael H - Profession: Director
8 Mar 2013
A limited portrait of the austere Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke
This French documentary about the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke convincingly argues Haneke is one of the most important and idiosyncratic filmmakers working today. Writer-director Yves Montmayeur’s doc also makes the more interesting point that…
Oz the Great and Powerful
8 Mar 2013
An action-packed spectacle of a prequel, starring James Franco, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis
This prequel to The Wizard of Oz might have been little more than an expensive special effects extravaganza were it not in the hands of a director with as distinctive a visual style and flair for knockabout comedy as Sam Raimi. As with Tim Burton’s…
Hi-So
26 Feb 2013
Inert Thai drama about a directionless twenty-something in Bangkok
Form follows content in this tediously inert Thai drama about a young man caught between eastern and western cultures and suffering from emotional paralysis. Emotional paralysis is quite possibly the state writer-director Aditya Assarat’s film will…
Crawl
20 Feb 2013
Australian thriller that borrows a little too heavily from the Coen brothers
Bucking the recent trend in Australian thrillers and chillers for grittily and gratuitously realistic lurid documentary-style dramas based on real events (see Wolf Creek et al), Crawl is a pointedly cinematic and resolutely fictional old school…
Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - Nemo: Heart of Ice
19 Feb 2013
Fantastic spin-off from Moore's literary comicbook series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Less than a year after the publication of the concluding episode of the epic third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century, writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill treat us to the first stand alone/spin-off League tale. As with the…
Side by Side
18 Feb 2013
A-list directors on film vs digital debate in doc produced and presented by Keanu Reeves
The title of this reasonably interesting and fairly comprehensive documentary about traditional photochemical film and pioneering digital technology is slightly misleading. Although filmmakers have been using both forms for roughly the last decade and a…
Populaire
15 Feb 2013
Immaculately styled French period romcom starring Déborah Francois and Romain Duris
This immaculately styled French period romantic comedy signals its pedigree with a colourful cartoon credit sequence reminiscent of cute and kookie Hollywood comedies circa the 1950s and 60s. And in fact, co-writer and director Régis Roinsard’s feature…
Run for Your Wife
11 Feb 2013
Hopelessly dated and poorly executed comedy starring Danny Dyer
This comprehensively cack-handed adaptation of the long-running West End stage sex comedy will have all but the most thick of skin and dim of humour running from the cinema as though their very lives depended up on it. Co-director and screenwriter Ray…
The House I Live In
17 Dec 2012
Angry and illuminating documentary about America's war on drugs
Director Eugene Jarecki, the brother of fellow filmmaker Andrew, attacks America’s failed war on drugs in this angry and illuminating documentary that will leave viewers clued-in but fuming. Jarecki’s contention is the multi-billion dollar campaign…
Life of Pi
3 Dec 2012
A fabulously beautiful and faithful adaptation from director Ang Lee
Yann Martel’s wildly imaginative, though long thought unfilmable, Booker Prize-winning 2001 novel is here treated to a ravishing 3D cinematic adaptation by filmmaker Ang Lee. Lee, who has previously transformed a wide variety of literary subjects…
Alan Martin & Mike McMahon - Tank Girl: Carioca
23 Nov 2012
McMahon's art perfectly suits the ongoing tales of the post-apocalyptic riot girl
Since artist Jamie Hewlett handed over stewardship of Tank Girl to co-creator and writer Alan Martin (following Hewlett’s move away from cartooning to pursue his Gorillaz multimedia pop project with Damon Albarn), the anarcho-absurdist comic strip has…
Alps
13 Nov 2012
Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth follow-up retains that film's weird sensibility but lacks its wider focus
Having launched a new wave of bizarro Greek cinema (see also Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg) with his Oscar-nominated queasy black comedy Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a follow up that’s just as absurdly idiosyncratic. The Alps of the…
Sister
9 Oct 2012
Utterly absorbing drama about fractured family relationships
Swiss-French filmmaker Ursula Meier follows her feature debut, the tragic-comic domestic drama Home, with another leftfield story about a family in dysfunction. In this case, it’s a family of two comprising a 12-year-old boy named Simon (Kacey Mottet…
Room 237
5 Oct 2012
Compelling documentary about the hidden meanings in Kubrick's The Shining
This frighteningly engrossing documentary presents a series of (supposedly) hidden meanings to be found imbedded in Stanley Kubrick’s modern horror classic The Shining. The various readings of the film, which range from quite plausible to utterly balmy…
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Meat and Bone
20 Sep 2012
First album in eight years is more of the same down-and-dirty punk-blues
It’s been eight years since the Blues Explosion’s last studio album. In that time the band members have pursued solo projects, with frontman Jon Spencer focusing on his boppin’ rockabilly venture Heavy Trash. Now they’re back 21 years after they first…
Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez - Love and Rockets: New Stories No. 5
13 Sep 2012
The latest edition of the pioneering, punk-spirited, magic realist/sci-fi Latino soap opera
Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s pioneering, punk-spirited, magic realist/sci-fi Latino soap opera feels as fresh and idiosyncratic today as it did when it first appeared on the indie comics scene in 1982. So, it’s fitting that Fantagraphics’ year-long…
Barbara
6 Sep 2012
Slow burning drama set in East Germany with real dramatic weight
Germany’s Best Foreign Language Film contender for next year’s Academy Awards recalls the country’s 2007 winner The Lives of Others inasmuch as it dramatises life lived under the watchful eye of the authorities in East Germany before the wall came down.
Phil Nichol Rants!
22 Aug 2012
Mercurial Canadian comedian rages, blusters, fumes and seethes
The hard-working, hyperactive Fringe veteran, who’s also appearing in his Comedians Theatre Company production of the play The Intervention, can hardly contain everything he wants to say within this single hour of stand-up. And he doesn’t. Before the…
Anne Edmonds in My Banjo’s Name is Steven
21 Aug 2012
Aussie musical stand-up built on good audience interaction
The unwaveringly energetic and unfailingly upbeat Aussie comedian clearly feels she’s a bit too full on for her lunchtime time lot. But, actually, her bright demeanour and likeable manner makes her well suited to the daylight hours. For her Fringe…
Laurence Clark: Inspired
21 Aug 2012
Stimulating comedy from comedian with cerebral palsy
When a fan tweeted Clark saying his show was ‘inspiring’, the comedian with cerebral palsy found the comment so condescending he was inspired to write a new one about what is truly inspirational and what is bollocks. During the course of the show, Clark…
Danielle Ward: Speakeasy/Playdead
21 Aug 2012
Wobbly but winning stand-up
One of the two shows the English comedian is performing on alternate nights is billed as Speakeasy. Accordingly, as the audience take their seats, Ward, who’s dressed in an all-in-one trouser suit with a stylish retro print, pours cocktails for those…
Guardian Reader
20 Aug 2012
Liberal leftie humour from William Hammer-Lloyd
The anonymous reader is a tall, lanky, floppy-haired, bearded, liberal, leftie, upper-middle class intellectual and former teacher. In other words, he’s the archetypal reader of the newspaper affectionately known as The Grauniad. Having become all too…
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
19 Aug 2012
Provocative drama from the French Ken Loach, Robert Guédiguian
Not to be confused with the 1952 Hollywood film of the same name, this is the latest slice of social realism from France’s answer to Ken Loach, Robert Guédiguian. Guédiguian’s The Snows of Kilimanjiro takes it name from the 1966 sugary French pop hit…
Alexis Dubus: Cars & Girls
19 Aug 2012
Too much of a good thing
This exuberant English comedian is too clever for his own good. Alexis Dubus’ new show draws upon some seriously crazy travel adventures he’s undertaken, including a trip to – and at – the psychedelic Burning Man Festival in the American desert. What…
