Love & Peace is a charmingly inconsistent monstrosity

 

You never know quite what you’re going to get with Sion Sono.

The cult Japanese director’s most recent film, Shinjuku Swan, was a live-action adaptation of a manga about a young talent scout’s forays into the red light district; the one before, Tokyo Tribe, a futuristic gang warfare film featuring almost literal “rap battles”.…

11 Minutes has too many lines and too few hooks

 

The fundamental question any film must ask itself is, “Why tell this story?”

In the case of 11 Minutes, the twenty-fifth film from Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, the problem is exacerbated: why tell these stories, any of them?

Why tell the story of ambivalent blonde actress (Paulina Chapko), the intense, insinuating casting agent (Richard Dormer) looking to bed her, or her wounded husband (Wojciech Mecwaldowski), who spends the film stalking stylized hotel corridors in search of her?…

Assassination makes Sergio Leone look like the soul of brevity

 

At once an old-fashioned action-adventure of the sort Harrison Ford once felt so at home in, an elegiac historical drama with shades of Sergio Leone, and a guts-and-glory shoot ‘em up that recalls Inglourious Basterds, Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination offers up plenty of bang for its buck.

In Listen To Me Marlon a long-dead legend finally opens up

 

Whatever happened to Marlon Brando?

Better known in his later years for his onset antics rather than the quality of his performances, it seemed a far leap from the chiseled passion of his early work — The Wild Ones, A Streetcar Named Desire — to the boredom and bloat that marked his final decade.…

Suffragette is a worthy but overly respectable

 

As with The Imitation Game, which kicked off last year’s London Film Festival, Suffragette — another period drama — is a quintessential work of British cinema. It too tells an important story.

Instead of the huts of Bletchley Park, we find ourselves at an East End laundry circa 1913, the workplace of Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) and dozens of other industrious women.…

Don’t Grow Up is a conflicted kid torn between arthouse and genre

 

The challenge with “genre fiction” is how to to blend the recognizable tropes, the cliches even, with  new and exciting elements. Take Don’t Grow Up, the latest film from director Thierry Pouiard.

Opening at a mysterious youth facility amidst a misty forest of dark evergreens, six troubled teens find themselves abandoned and alone.…

Ryūzō and His Seven Henchmen is a bit of a rabble

 

For those among us who know him only for cult TV export Takeshi’s Castle, the news that Takeshi Kitano has just made an absurdist comedy might not be surprising.

For fans of both his double-act “Beat” persona and his work starring in/directing the resurrected Zatoichi franchise, Ryūzō and His Seven Henchmen promises cinematic mana.…

James White is a compelling study of Millennial lostness

 

James White, the film, is the directorial debut of James Mond, third member of the Borderline Collective (he worked as producer on Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene and Antonio Campos’ Simon Killer).

James White, the character, stunningly captured by Chris Abbott, is a twenty-something washout whose look recalls both Josh Hartnett and Kit Harrington.…