Tag: london film festival

Miral (2010) Review

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First published on Snipe for London Film Festival 2010 //

Director Julian Schnabel
Country USA

Julian Schnabel has more than impressed, actually he has excelled in his past features, all biopics of wildly varied personalities and very different nationalities. First there was his contemporary, and fellow New Yorker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, for whom he made 1996’s ebullient Basquiat. He followed up with an Oscar-nominated performance from Javier Bardem in the Cuban-set Reinaldo Arenas biography, Before Night Falls (2000), before picking up more Academy award nominations and the Best Director gong at Cannes with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

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Black Swan (2010) Review

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First published on Snipe for London Film Festival 2010 //

Recommending this film is not the easiest thing to do. You have those who already know and appreciate the prospect of a new Darren Aronofsky film, granted some of those fans fell off at The Fountain, his most personal and ambitious work, before being pulled back in by The Wrestler.

Then you have those yet to be convinced.

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Brighton Rock (2010) Review

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First published on Snipe for London Film Festival 2010 //

Director Rowan Joffe
Country UK

The Surprise Film at previous London Film Festivals has ensured its hot ticket status, with big films making it worthy of the hype. In 2007 they gave us the Coen brothers’ adaptation of the bleak Cormac McCarthy novel No Country For Old Men. In 2008 it was the treat of Mickey Rourke as The Wrestler. And last year it was Capitalism: A Love Story. All right. That was a bit of step down but it wasn’t awful, just disappointing.

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Picco (2010) Review

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First published on Snipe for London Film Festival 2010 //

Director Philip Koch
Country Germany

When you watch Picco you get the feeling that former-critic and one-time film
student Philip Koch knows his stuff. In his feature debut follow-up to the award-
winning short Lumen, Koch skilfully blends the theory and artful subtlety that
seems to have informed his Nouvelle Vagary from criticism to filmmaking.

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The Kids Are All Right (2010) Review

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First published on Snipe for London Film Festival 2010 //

Director Lisa Cholodenko
Country United States

The Kids Are All Right is a film that, like its two main characters, gets stuck in its meandering second half. And although it seems a sincere and even genuine slice of family life at first, Cholodenko’s latest directorial effort stumbles into a disappointing conclusion.

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