Archive
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES – Mike Patton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Place Beyond the Pines is a crime drama directed by Derek Cianfrance and starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne and Ray Liotta. Set in Schenectady, New York, over a 20-year period, the film is a riveting drama about fathers and sons, and the ramifications that the actions of one generation can have on the next. Gosling stars as motorcycle daredevil Luke Glanton, who turns to a life of crime robbing banks in order to provide for his baby son, Jason, and the mother, Romina (Mendes), who accepts Luke’s help only reluctantly. Luke’s increasing desperation brings him into contact with Avery Cross (Cooper), a Schenectady cop with a family history of running for political office, who is dealing with a shaky marriage to his wife Jennifer (Byrne) and a young son named AJ, pressure from his own father, and his own discovery of corruption among his colleagues. The film takes some unexpected twists and turns in its second half – which I won’t reveal here – suffice to say that Cianfrance’s measured direction and languid pacing allows the film to develop into a slow-burning familial drama that is both hypnotic and engrossing, especially as the true depth of the generational secrets are revealed. Read more…
OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN – Trevor Morris
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Olympus Has Fallen is essentially “Die Hard in the White House”, an action thriller set in America’s capital. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, it stars Gerard Butler as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, who is ‘relieved of duty’ from guarding President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) following an accident in which the first lady (Ashley Judd) is killed. Flash forward a year, and Banning – twiddling his thumbs at a desk job – is suddenly called into action once more when North Korean terrorists led by the ruthless Kang (Rick Yune) manage to successfully capture the White House and take the President and his senior staff hostage. Working alone inside enemy territory, Banning manages to contact acting-President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), and keeps them appraised of the situation behind enemy lines, while he picks off the North Koreans one by one, attempting to get the President to safety. Read more…
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW – Abel Korzeniowski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Unless you attended the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, it’s likely that you don’t know much about Escape from Tomorrow. It’s a low-budget independent drama/fantasy/horror from director Randy Moore about a man (Roy Abramsohn) who starts to gradually lose his grip on sanity and reality during a family trip to a theme park. What’s so interesting about the film is that it was shot entirely on-location at Walt Disney World in Florida, without the permission or knowledge of the Disney corporation, meaning that Moore and his crew had to resort to guerilla-style filmmaking techniques in order to get the film made. Moore even sent his film to be edited in South Korea so that Disney execs would not find out about the film and shut it down for trademark infringements before it was ever seen in public. Apparently, the film has some less-than complementary things about the Magic Kingdom and its anthropomorphic rodents, and despite its success and popularity with audiences at Sundance, it’s unclear whether the film will ever receive a conventional theatrical release. Read more…
THE CROODS – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Croods is the latest animated film from Dreamworks Pictures, about a family of dysfunctional Neanderthals trying to find a new place to live when the cave that has been their home for years is destroyed. The film is directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders – the latter of whom also directed Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Dragon – and has an all-star voice cast featuring Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener and Cloris Leachman. Providing the music for the prehistoric adventure is composer Alan Silvestri, who worked with Sanders on Lilo & Stitch back in 2002, and who is writing his fifth animation score since the turn of the millennium, following The Polar Express, The Wild, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol and the aforementioned Lilo & Stitch. Read more…
LOS ÚLTIMOS DÍAS/THE LAST DAYS – Fernando Velázquez
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Last Days – “Los Últimos Días” – is a Spanish science fiction-horror-thriller written and directed by David Pastor and Àlex Pastor, which looks at the aftermath of a peculiar epidemic which spreads across the globe, leaving its sufferers to have an irrational fear of open spaces that causes instant death. With the majority of the world population now trapped inside buildings, one young man from Barcelona, Marc (Quim Gutiérrez), tries to find his missing girlfriend, Julia (Marta Etura), without ever going outside – but uncovers something terrifying about the epidemic in the process. Read more…
HEUTE BIN ICH BLOND/THE GIRL WITH NINE WIGS – Johan Hoogewijs
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Heute Bin Ich Blond is a German comedy-drama directed by Marc Rothemund and starring Lisa Tomaschewski as Sophie, a 21 year-old girl in contemporary Germany who learns she has cancer. Rather than letting her diagnosis rule her life, she instead decides to enjoy her life as though she were not sick; pre-empting chemotherapy, she shaves her head and invests in nine different colored wigs, which help her live out nine different aspects of her personality. Together with her best friend Annabel (Karolina Teska), Sophie goes to parties, flirts, has sex, falls in love with her long-time friend Rob (David Rott), and writes her daily blog, while all the while the possibility of her imminent death looms on the horizon. The film was based on the popular autobiography by Dutch author Sophie van der Stap, “Meisje Met Negen Pruiken”, and received generally favorable reviews when it opened in cinemas in March 2013. Read more…
OSTWIND: ZUSAMMEN SIND WIR FREI/WINDSTORM – Annette Focks
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ostwind: Zusammen Sind Wir Frei is one of those films which, had it been made in America, would have been made by Disney. It tells the story of a rebellious teenager, Mika, who is sent to stay with her stern grandmother, a former champion show jumper, on the family countryside stud farm, in order to “straighten her out”. There she encounters Ostwind, a temperamental old horse whose lack of discipline and bad temper led to the end of Grandmother’s competition career. Naturally, Mika and Ostwind bond, leading to reconciliations all round. The film is directed by Katja von Garnier, stars Hanna Binke, Marvin Linke, Cornelia Froboess and Tilo Prückner, and has a lovely original score by Annette Focks. Read more…
UNSERE MÜTTER, UNSERE VÄTER/GENERATION WAR – Fabian Römer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter is an ambitious 3-part German mini-series broadcast on the ZDF network in March 2013. The story follows five friends in their 20s, each on different paths through Nazi Germany and World War II: two are Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front, one is a nurse, one is an aspiring singer, and one is a Jewish tailor. The narrative spans five years in Berlin in the 1940s, beginning when the friends meet up for a last time before embarking on their journeys, enthusiastically vowing to meet up again the following Christmas. The series stars Volker Bruch, Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler, Miriam Stein and Ludwig Trepte, was directed by Philipp Kadelbach, and has an original score by composer Fabian Römer. Read more…
BACZYŃSKI – Bartosz Chajdecki
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Baczyński is a film about the life of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, one of Poland’s most celebrated contemporary poets, who wrote powerful, romantic poetry while also acting as a member of a resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II. He was killed by a sniper in Warsaw in August 1944, aged just 23, but remains a popular and influential figure in Polish literature. The film was written and directed by Kordian Piwowarski, stars Mateusz Kosciukiewicz as Baczyński, and features a gorgeous and heartfelt score by Bartosz Chajdecki. Read more…
RUBINROT/RUBY RED – Philipp F. Kölmel
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Rubinrot is a children’s fantasy adventure film based on the first book in the “Liebe Geht Durch Alle Zeiten” series of popular German-language novels written by Kerstin Gier. The story follows a young girl, Gwendolyn Shepherd, who discovers that she and all the other members of her family can travel through time, and explores the opportunities and disadvantages such powers bring. The film is directed by Felix Fuchssteiner, stars Maria Ehrich, Jannis Niewöhner and Laura Berlin, and has a score by 40-year-old Philipp F. Kölmel, yet another composer who was completely unknown to me prior to this project. Read more…
NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON – Annette Focks
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Night Train to Lisbon is a German drama film directed by Bille August and starring Jeremy Irons. Based on the novel “Nachtzug Nach Lissabon” by Pascal Mercier, and written by Greg Latter and Ulrich Herrmann, the film is about a Swiss professor who saves the life of a woman and then abandons his teaching career and reserved life to embark on a thrilling intellectual adventure, following in the footsteps of a doctor who opposed António de Oliveira Salazar’s right-wing dictatorship in Portugal in the 1950s. The score for Night Train to Lisbon is by Annette Focks, who is finally starting to gain some international prominence, having been working tirelessly on films in the German film industry for many years. Read more…
SYBERIADA POLSKA/SIBERIAN EXILE – Krzesimir Dębski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Syberiada Polska is an epic wartime historical drama, directed by Janusz Zaorski, based on the novel by Zbigniew Domino. It tells the story of a family of Polish Jews who are deported to Russia during World War II. It follows the fortunes of one family, specifically the family’s youngest son Staszek, who are sent to Siberia and must struggle for survival against the harsh Siberian winter, and the cruel camp commandant who decides their fate. The film stars Adam Woronowicz, Sonia Bohosiewicz, and Pawel Krucz as Staszek, and is scored by composer Krzesimir Dębski using the Orkiestra Sinfonietta Cracovia. Read more…
KELEBEĞIN RÜYASI/THE BUTTERFLY’S DREAM – Rahman Altin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There aren’t many Turkish films which attain any sort of international prominence, but director Yılmaz Erdoğan’s film Kelebeğin Rüyası – The Butterfly’s Dream – is one of the rarities. It was Turkey’s official submission to the 86th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film; according to its official press, the film is set in Turkey in the early 1940s, and revolves around two good friends, Rüştü Onur (Mert Firat) and Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu (Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ), who make a living out of publishing poetry. However, with World War II in full swing across the world, and with the social class system and religious barriers of the time giving rise to numerous problems, their story takes a turn when both fall in love. Read more…
VERGISS MEIN NICHT/FORGET ME NOT – Jessica de Rooij
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Vergiss Mein Nicht is a feature-length German-language documentary about Alzheimer’s disease. Specifically, the film looks at the life of Gretel Sieveking, the mother of director David Sieveking, whose diagnosis inspires David to look at both his parents’ marriage – they had been a part of the student movement in the 1960s and led an open relationship – and the German health care system as a whole, which cares for 2 million other Alzheimer’s patients each year. The score is by Jessica de Rooij, best known amongst film music fans for being the composer du jour of controversial director Uwe Böll, but who has been given the chance to turn her hand to something more substantial and meaningful here. Read more…
ZERO DARK THIRTY – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Zero Dark Thirty is the seventh and final score of 2012 from the workaholic composer Alexandre Desplat, whose output this year has ranged from the lush and emotional Cloclo to the quirky Moonrise Kingdom, the sweeping and playful Rise of the Guardians, and the darkly dramatic Argo, for which he received his fifth Academy Award nomination. His work on Zero Dark Thirty, as one would expect, is most closely aligned with his work on Argo, making use of subtle Middle Eastern tones as part of its orchestral makeup, but its overall demeanor is less flashy and less crowd-pleasing than that of Argo, matching the tone and style taken by the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, in the movie itself.
I have some serious issues with Zero Dark Thirty as a movie, but I’ll get to those in a minute. The film tells the painstakingly detailed and (allegedly) true story of the way the United States military tracked down Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader responsible for masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York in 2001, who was eventually killed by elite US special forces during a raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. Read more…
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