Month: October 2011

Albatross ****

Watching first-time feature director Niall MacCormick’s Albatross reminds you of Emily Lloyd’s confident and unforgettable performance in the 1987 film Wish You Were Here, complete with smart, sexually explorative teen challenging the small-town, small-mindedness and setting a few older hearts a flutter – there are even similarities in the seaside film poster image. Albatross is …

Everything Must Go ****

One of the most moving performances sometimes is when a comedic actor plays it straight. Will Ferrell does so in Dan Rush’s Everything Must Go, a thoughtful and realistically crafted and paced piece of touching drama with subtle additions of humour. Ferrell plays Nick Halsey, an executive salesman and alcoholic who loses his job, his …

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. …

Tyrannosaur *****

Paddy Considine’s first feature film’s subject of domestic violence was never going to be an easy film to watch. But what was unexpected is how powerful a debut Tyrannosaur truly is. It’s almost cathartic in nature and raises questions about the writer-director’s own experiences. Self-destructive widower Joseph (Peter Mullan) comes across charity shop worker Hannah …

Perfect Sense ***

Imagine losing your senses, one by one – a too terrifying prospect to contemplate. David Mackenzie’s new drama Perfect Sense plunges you into that nightmare, but suggests that the greatest sense of all, the sense of love, will prevail when everything else shuts down. Set in an alternative Glasgow, chef Michael (Ewan McGregor) falls for …

Johnny English Reborn ****

Cynics might be too quick to mock the news of another Johnny English film. But Johnny English Reborn is one example of a sequel that knocks spots off the original, which admittedly wasn’t hard, purely because those involved have had eight years to mull over the mistakes made in the first to now offer a …