Review: Like Crazy***

Relationships are hard enough without visas, stretches of water and time differences standing in your way. Writer-director Drake Doremus’s new romantic indie drama, Like Crazy, tackles the tricky issues faced by any fledgling couple, in addition to trying to keep love alive while separated by two continents. British college student Anna (Felicity Jones) is coming to the end of her summer term at an LA university, but has fallen for American student Jacob (Anton Yelchin), and the pair cannot bear to be parted. She decides to stay the summer, overstaying her student visa. When she returns to the UK then arrives back in the States, she is banned from entering the country. Can their long-distance…

Review: W.E.***

Madonna’s second foray into film directing naturally raises more scrutiny than is focused on her new film itself, which is a pity because W.E.produces some memorable moments among its flawed narrative. In fact, had you not known it was the star in the writer-director’s seat, this love story still makes for a haunting picture of obsession that is pleasantly surprising to watch, and offers some strong female performances. W.E. tells the story of two fragile but determined women separated by six decades – Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), the American divorcée King Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) abdicated the British throne for back in 1936, and New Yorker Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) living in 1998 who is…

Review: The Artist*****

If you are looking for something utterly unique and totally charming this holiday, to be transported back to when cinema first captured the hearts and minds of audiences in its glory days, French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist is simply a joyous breath of fresh air. Its old-fashioned romance and drama – as depicted in the film’s poster – is acted out in complete silence, a testament to the power of great improvisation. It is also a complete change of direction for silly OSS spy-film spoof team Hazanavicius and star Jean Dujardin. Dujardin is George Valentin in this, the slick, rhythmic star of the silent silver screen in 1927’s Hollywood who has the world of glamour…

Review: The Lady**

Visionary French director Luc Besson is no stranger to developing utterly compelling stories centring on intriguing female protagonists, and delving into the make-up of their psyche during their individual struggle, from adults (Nikita) to children (Leon). Therefore, with the story of what made one of history’s most iconic female figures, Burmese pro-democracy fighter Aung San Suu Kyi tick at his fingertips, Besson has surely struck cinematic gold? Disappointingly not, even if charismatic actress Michelle Yeoh is present to help translate Daw Suu’s remarkable political and personal journey. The story is one of a ‘fairy-tale’ love story staged across faraway lands between Daw Suu (Yeoh), the daughter of Aung San, the alleged ‘father of modern-day Burma’,…

Review: New Year’s Eve*

You have to worry when a film’s musical medley finale is far more entertaining than what you’ve just sat through. Another snag for the filmmakers of the equally disappointing Valentine’s Day last year is their biggest star, Robert De Niro, is woefully miscast in the sombre role, when his true comedic talent is apparent in the end sing-song. – You’ve guessed it: it’s nearly ball-dropping time in Times Square, New York City, and a bunch of characters have all sorts of New Year’s resolutions to make and keep, all to do with some form of love: forgiveness, compassion, opening their hearts to a different point of view etc. We follow the 24 hours before the…

Review: My Week With Marilyn****

It’s gems like filmmaker Colin Clark’s memoir of his personal experience with an icon that make the best screen stories, the ones that delve deeper into the celebrity’s persona to prove, disprove or enlighten our knowledge further and make for a more honest and intimate affair. My Week With Marilyn, the name of said memoir and debut feature-film director Simon Curtis’s new film title is one such example that much like Marilyn Monroe it portrays, is an instant heart warmer that you can’t help but be utterly charmed by. In the summer of 1956, Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe (played by Michelle Williams) arrived on British soil to produce and star in The Prince and the…

Review: The Deep Blue Sea***

The closing film at this year’s 55th London Film Festival, The Deep Blue Sea, has more of a touch of the stage than the big screen to it, although it has an implied admiration for the exquisiteness of yesteryear’s silver screen in its stunning cinematography and scene construction. It is also another ode to nostalgic post-War England that writer-director Terence Davies excels in, so is naturally highly romantic and self indulgent in form. Based on Terence Rattigan‘s play, Rachel Weisz is Hester Collyer, the wife of a renowned British judge William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) who is a lot older than she is, but who keeps her in a comfortable lifestyle in post-war Britain that…

Review: Breaking Dawn Part 1**

As predicted, the next film in The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn Part 1, breaks box office records for the ‘biggest non-3D’ opening Friday film of all time. Perhaps if it had been 3D, it could have topped even that feat – who knows? One thing is for certain, the love triangle that is Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black continues to fascinate audiences, or maybe it’s the curiosity of how the Twilight movie-making machine – that includes author Stephenie Meyer producing – will reproduce the turbulent love affair? Our guess is it’s actually the birth scene that’s the real moneymaking clincher here. In the forth film, Bella (Kristen Stewart) finally becomes Mrs Cullen and marries…

Review: Wuthering Heights***

Those expecting the delicate etiquette and burning passionate of Emily Brontë’s infamous 1847 doomed love affair, Wuthering Heights, set on the Yorkshire Moors, may find award-winning Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold’s film version a little rougher round the edges, but equally dramatic. Rather than the fluffy period drama brought to many screens over the years, Arnold who is known to be a very instinctive film-maker, aims for the dark heart of the novel’s depiction of mental and physical cruelty. A poor, young black boy called Heathcliff (Solomon Glave) is discovered on the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw (Paul Hilton), a farmer, and taken back to Yorkshire to live on the family farm on the…

Review: Midnight In Paris****

SPOILER: As a Brit watching Woody Allen’s latest European muse, the first thing that springs to mind is Only Fools’ Nicholas Lyndhurst’s time-travelling sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart about an accidental time traveller who discovers a time portal, allowing him to travel between the London of the 1990s and the same area during the Second World War. Time travel captures the imagination and has fascinated audiences, from Back to the Future to Quantum Leap. For this reason alone, Allen’s new romantic comedy, Midnight In Paris, has an instant awe – and not just as a result of the setting being the upmarket parts and cultural haunts of gay Paris. An American family travel to Paris on business,…