Tom Dawson

The Walker

(15) 109min

9 Aug 2007

‘I’m not naive, I’m superficial’, smiles Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson), the latest in a memorable line of existential loners created by Paul Schrader.

Longing (Sehnsucht)

9 Aug 2007

Following on from the exorcism drama Requiem and the Stasi surveillance thriller The Lives of the Others, Longing is further evidence of the current resurgence in German cinema.

Private Fears in Public Spaces (Coeurs)

16 Jul 2007

What is it about those French New Wave filmmakers? Godard, Rivette, Chabrol and Rohmer all continue to make films, and here 84-year-old Alain Resnais returns with this elegant and melancholic study of emotional repression, loneliness and longing.

Paris, Je T'Aime

Short-film anthology

19 Jun 2007

For this portmanteau work, 21 directors from around the world have contributed five-minute shorts, which are set in 18 of Paris’ administrative districts. The project was intended as a cinematic valentine to the French capital, with the theme of love…

Close to Home

21 May 2007

DRAMA Written and directed by a pair of female filmmakers, Dalia Hager and Vidi Bilu, Close to Home has the distinction of being the first ever Israeli film to focus on the experiences of women in the country’s armed services. The rebellious Smadar…

Bamako

7 May 2007

Written and directed by Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness, Life on Earth), Bamako provides a refreshing African variation on the conventional political drama. Set in the backyard of a house in the Malian city of Bamako…

My Best Friend (Mon Meilleur Ami)

7 May 2007

The French director Patrice Leconte seems drawn to unusual pairings: think of Juliette Binoche’s governor’s wife and Emir Kusturica’s condemned prisoner in The Widow of Saint Pierre; Jean Rochefort’s retired teacher and Johnny Hallyday’s bank-robber in…

The Lives Of Others

(12A) 138 mins

11 Apr 2007

The masterful debut feature of writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others is the first major German film to examine the activities of the Stasi in the former East Germany. Where the likes of Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin!

The Family Friend

26 Mar 2007

The Neapolitan writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows up his sleek Mafia thriller The Consequences of Love with the wonderfully eccentric and unpredictable The Family Friend, which he has described as ‘a dive into humanity and its degeneracy’.

Climates

13 Mar 2007

Written and directed by the Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Climates charts the breakdown of a relationship between a middle-aged university professor Isa (played by Ceylan) and his younger girlfriend Bahar (the director’s real-life wife Ebru Ceylan)…

Old Joy

13 Mar 2007

Less is more in this rueful and sensitively observed study of male friendship undermined by the passing of time. Written and directed by Kelly Reichardt (River of Grass, Ode), and accompanied by a melancholic Yo La Tengo soundtrack, Old Joy follows two…

Iraq In Fragments

13 Mar 2007

Photographed, edited and directed by the American filmmaker James Longley over a two year period following the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003, this haunting documentary doesn’t take the familiar perspective of the occupying forces. Instead it goes…

Esma's Secret

13 Mar 2007

The past haunts the present in this coming-of-age drama from Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Zbanic, which won the a prize at last year’s Berlin festival. The film’s original title Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams refers to a Sarajevan suburb, where in…

Orchestra Seats

12 Feb 2007

‘A comedy about people who are suffering’, is how director and co-writer Danièle Thompson describes Orchestra Seats. In fact, this predictable slice of middlebrow entertainment resembles a Gallic Love Actually. Set in and around Paris’ prestigious…

Glasgow Film Festival - Half Nelson - Ryan Gosling interview

School daze

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL Named after a wrestling hold in which an opponent’s strengths are turned against themselves, the US indie Half Nelson is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Glasgow Film Festival. The directorial debut of Ryan Fleck, whose…

Notes on a Scandal

29 Jan 2007

Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) - note that grasping surname - is not a popular figure at the North London comprehensive where she teaches history. To the staff and the students she is, in her own words, ‘a battleaxe’, and to the headmaster, she is an…

Play

29 Jan 2007

‘Times were hard but they were modern’ runs the unattributed Italian proverb at the beginning of this vibrant debut feature from young Chilean writer-director Alicia Scherson, which provides a real tonic for jaded cinematic palates. Described by its…

Ghosts

15 Jan 2007

Documentary-maker Nick Broomfield’s first dramatic feature since his ill-fated toff murder tale Diamond Skulls some 17 years ago, Ghosts traces the events leading up to the drowning of 23 Chinese cockle-pickers in February 2004 off Morecambe Bay. Like…

A Prairie Home Companion

20 Dec 2006

‘The death of an old man is not an occasion for tragedy,’ concludes the master of ceremonies Garrison Keillor in A Prairie Home Companion and it’s hard not to hear in these words the voice of the film’s director Robert Altman, who died a few weeks ago…

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

(15) 102min

7 Dec 2006

CRIME/THRILLER Ex-Cahiers du Cinema critic-turned-director Serge Le Péron revisits the intriguingly murky circumstances surrounding one of Gaullist France’s greatest political scandals. On 29 October 1965, an exiled Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka…

Gabrielle

6 Dec 2006

‘I love her as a collector does his most prized possession’, announces Jean (Pascal Greggory), a wealthy publisher in pre-WWI Paris, of his socialite wife of ten years Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert). The husband’s arrogant self-regard is punctured…

Italian Film Festival

The Italian Film Festival

13 Nov 2006

5 REASONS TO VISIT 1. The return of Nanni Moretti Five years after the Palme d’Or-winning The Son’s Room, Italian actor-writer-director Nanni Moretti returns with the multilayered The Caiman (pictured). Set in contemporary Rome, it’s the study…

Johanna

(15) 86min

13 Nov 2006

DRAMA/MUSICAL ‘She cures me and I don’t need my pacemaker any longer,’ sings an elderly patient in this expressionistic film opera, directed by the Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo (Pleasant Days) and composed by frequent collaborator Zsófia…

The Page Turner

30 Oct 2006

Imagine a vintage Chabrol thriller set in the rarefied world of classical music and you’ll have a sense of this cleverly understated revenge drama from French writer-director Denis Dercourt, who is himself a professional musician. It begins with a…

Eros

30 Oct 2006

On paper the prospect of three internationally feted directors each contributing to a trilogy of half hour films about erotic love might seem an enticing prospect, but this portmanteau project veers from the sublime to the ridiculous. Wong Kar-wai…