Review: Project Nim****
Director James Marsh of the fascinating 2008 film, Man On Wire, this time gives us jolt of clarity into our ‘playing God’ actions, one filled initially with both hope then despair that ultimately makes you ashamed to be human. Unfortunately for Project Nim, it has the sci-fi action adventure, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, to go head-to-head with this week at the box office. But this documentary film ought to be seen before the latter for full effect of man’s meddling with nature. Nim will give audiences some perspective of what has actually happened in history; in exploring…
Review: Just Do It: A Tale Of Modern-Day Outlaws***
Award-winning documentary film-maker Emily James’s latest ‘window on life’ comes at a very appropriate time when most of us are feeling rather impotent and disillusioned at the way modern-day existence is heading, what with global capitalism ruling the planet and banks (and newspaper organisations) pulling the strings of those in power. Just Do It and its band of environmental activists echo that private and public sentiment, and even painfully admit to feeling their actions are often futile. But what James’s film does is bring hope to the rest of us that there is still a sizeable resistance out there –…
Review: Countdown To Zero****
Good documentary film-making informs and provokes debate, and hopefully, addresses all sides of the argument. So in recent times, we’ve had some highly emotive big-screen subject matter (Inside Job’s banking crisis, for example) that’s naturally one-sided to stir up a hornet’s nest of public outrage. It seems film-makers need to find a common concern to guarantee their mainstream audience, and Lucy Walker addresses one of the biggest here in her new film Countdown To Zero about nuclear power falling in the wrong hands – or ‘proliferation’. Oh, and if an act of terrorism wasn’t enough of a worry, the world…
Review: Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist****
Petrol heads unite; it’s the return of throbbing muscle cars tearing up the streets and desert highways with a bunch of thrill-seeking car enthusiasts at the wheel. Well, kind of, but the noise and adrenaline is certainly still there in full dramatic force. Once you’ve adjusted your ears, seasoned Fast franchise director Justin Lin throws in a dusty desert chase at the very beginning for good measure for fans who have been waiting a couple of years for the next instalment. Apart from trying to work out (spoiler) how a car can flip a coach and still stay intact, lap…
Review: TT3D: Closer To The Edge****
If you’ve ever wondered what the appeal of riding is, no matter how we bikers try in vain to convert you to two wheels from four, Richard De Aragues’s new documentary film is an excellent place to start. Ok, it’s the extreme version of riding, but it absolutely hammers the message across in the bluntest and rawest of terms. TT3D: Closer To The Edge is an exhilarating and heart-stopping adrenaline rush full of big ballsy biking, which like the race magic the petrol-head ‘gladiators’ cherish, draws you in and injects you with the TT lunacy drug. And from some of…
Review: Blooded**
You can’t deny that a film’s synopsis about a bunch of activists chasing a bunch of semi-naked hunt supporters across the Scottish glens doesn’t sound a tad appealing? And that’s the immediate hook of debut director Edward Boase’s new ‘blood sports’ film, Blooded. The first issue to overcome, though, is ‘realism syndrome’, where everything slightly sinister or scary on film, nowadays, has to have grainy ‘real-life’ footage added to make any of the events anywhere near believable or effective. This is the amusing irony of cinematic production values that usually strive for the best quality in any other genre. This…
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
How do you review a Justin Bieber film? If you’re a fan, it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference what critics write – you’ve got the screening time, the date and the cinema ticket already. So, this is aimed at the non-fan, the curious, and those yet unaffected by ‘Bieber fever’. Is it worth seeing? It certainly builds a better picture of this social media phenomenon, even if feels a little tightly edited and controlled by Bieber’s machine (hardly surprising), namely overbearing mentor/producer Scooter Braun, a failed child star, if ever there was one, we suspect. It basically follows…
LFF: Inside Job
With recent news of 200 RBS bankers possibly getting £1 million pound bonuses each, surely the last thing you’d want to see is a film about these smug fat cats and the global financial meltdown they helped cause. There will be popcorn directed at the screens for sure. But like a taunt fictional thriller – and Hollywood couldn’t have made this stuff up, if it hadn’t been real, Charles Ferguson‘s documentary, Inside Job, develops into engaging and probing car-crash viewing because it places those responsible on camera, so we see their mug shots, and watch them squirm for our pleasure,…
LFF: Africa United
In a gloomy world full of socio-political issues, especially in relation to screen portrayals of Africa, it’s refreshing to watch a film that champions the power of positive thought, fuelling the story from beginning to end. It is a vibrant and positively charming journey that captures the true, fighting spirit of Africa, it is an amazing movie. Africa United from debut director Debs Gardner-Paterson is such an inspiring film as it takes young and old on a vibrant and charming journey through several African states (Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa) to capture the true fighting spirit…
LFF: The Arbor
Clio Barnard’s film The Arbor is thought provoking, primarily because of the social issues rising from life on a former rough estate that it flags. However, much as such issues capture the attention, their importance should not be confused with how good/bad a film it is at its core. The Arbor’s style of actors lip-synching to tape-recorded testimony by the family, friends and associates of working-class playwright Andrea Dunbar (Rita, Sue and Bob Too!) may prove too disconcerting for some to marry together. It does take some getting used to and appears like out-of-sync audio with the visuals at first,…
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