.jpg)
- Hunger (2008)
Adam & Paul (2004) - Garage (2007)
- Once (2006)
- Bloody Sunday (2002)
- Intermission (2003)
- In America (2002)
- How Harry Became a Tree (2001)
- Omagh (2004)
- Kisses (2008)
- Isolation (2005)
Saturday, 23 January 2010
.jpg)
A sweet and agreeable if rather slow and terribly lonely middle-aged man, who has spent his entire life in the same small western Irish town, and most of it working at the same small, independent petrol station, forms an unlikely friendship with a confused 15-year-old boy, who has recently started working at the garage on weekends, in Abrahamson’s subtly written, expressively shot, and affectingly acted character study. Iain.Stott
Friday, 22 January 2010
.jpg)
Three boys – with a bottle of Coke, a bottle of booze, an aerosol, a lighter, and a BMX – spend a delinquential afternoon/evening in a farmer’s field, causing untold havoc, in Duane Hopkins’s enigmatic, understated, and poetically beautiful debut short. Iain.Stott
.jpg)
In Duane Hopkins’s poetic, beautifully photographed, and enigmatically moving short film, a young teenage couple argue strongly; she walks off determinedly; he sits and sulks for a while before realising his mistake; he searches for her, finds her, and pesters her until she relents; they have sex; he says I love you; she replies, “I’ll see you at school on Monday” – and we are left wanting for more. Iain.Stott
UK/Germany
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Duane Hopkins
Cinematographer: Lol Crawley
Composer: Dan Berridge
Cast: Liam McIlfatrick, Che Corr, Tara Ballard, Freddie Cunliffe, Rachel McIntyre, Patricia Loveland, Betty Bench, Frank Bench, Megan Palmer, Kurt Taylor, Mike Randle, Michael Socha, Katie Samuels, Kerry Rowe
.jpg)
Although some of the performances are a tad wooden, and the dialogue occasionally feels a little awkward, Duane Hopkins’s feature debut – following on from a pair of excellent shorts – is an often ethereally beautiful concoction (one sequence in particular, in which a grieving heroin addict fantasises about embracing his dead girlfriend whilst his drug of choice makes its way through his veins, is amongst the most achingly beautiful sequences I’ve ever seen), but at other times, this portrait of disaffected, lovelorn, drug-addled youth is merely wrist-slittingly depressing. Iain.Stott
Highly Recommended
West Germany
Feature Film
Original Title: Händler der vier Jahreszeiten
Writer/Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematographer: Dietrich Lohmann
Cast: Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, Andrea Schober, Gusti Kreissl, Klaus Löwitsch, Karl Scheydt, Ingrid Caven
.jpg)
A violent, hard-drinking Munich man returns from serving in the French Foreign Legion and, after an unhappy spell in the police force, becomes a street vendor, selling fruit to bored hausfraus; he marries, has a child, suffers a heart attack, gives up drinking, and slowly loses the will to live, in Fassbinder’s powerful, bleak, and thoroughly compelling melodrama, which paints a damning and decidedly unpleasant portrait of early ‘70s bourgeois life. Iain.Stott
Recommended
UK/Cayman Islands
Feature Film
Director: Armando Iannucci
Writers: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, Ian Martin
Cinematographer: Jamie Cairney
Composer: Adem Ilhan
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Anna Chlumsky, Enzo Cilenti, Paul Higgins, Mimi Kennedy, Steve Coogan
.jpg)
Armando Iannucci’s trouser-soilingly funny and worryingly credible feeling spin off from his BBC sitcom, The Thick of It, presents the political machinations of a bunch of British and American politicians, spin-doctors, and aids in the build up to a morally dubious middle-eastern conflict, a war that painfully and hilariously mirrors the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iain.Stott
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)