Reviewed by Lee Hill When Stanley Kubrick was alive, little was known about his working methods due to his unwillingness to participate in publicity beyond the release date. As the gaps between films grew, Kubrick’s reclusiveness added to the mystique that his canon was created in near perfect, seemingly infinite and almost magic conditions of freedom and possibility. Since Kubrick died in 1999, the mythic aura around Kubrick remains, but…
Read MoreFilm Review: A Cambodian Spring
Reviewed by Lee Hill On paper, a two hour plus account of a land dispute in Cambodia sounds like a worthy documentary subject, but also like being forced to eat all your vegetables. The reality is that A Cambodian Spring works on the senses like a sly thriller with close to the bone reminders of how many developers flaunt the law and human rights in collaboration with governments ducking responsibility…
Read MoreFilm Review: Mansfield 66/67
Reviewed by Lee Hill After Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield is the other mythic blonde bombshell that haunts Hollywood’s past and present. Her fame mainly rests on her comedic roles in two Frank Tashlin films, The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), arguably the first truly visionary rock n’ roll movie, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957). Typecast as a well-endowed bimbo, Mansfield tried to do more serious work, but earned…
Read MoreFilm Review: Entebbe
Reviewed by Lee Hill A glance at the Wikipedia entry for Operation Entebbe, the 4 July 1976 raid by Israeli commandos into Uganda to rescue 106 passengers of a hijacked Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, reveals a depressing number of near forgotten films, made-for-TV movies, documentaries and other fictions inspired-by. The historical record somehow remains unsullied by these attempts at a greater truth (read: mega-box office success…
Read MoreFilm Review: New Town Utopia
Reviewed by Lee Hill Christopher Ian Smith’s lyrical documentary looks at Basildon, one of 10 new towns approved and developed to provide innovative as well as affordable housing solutions after the Second World War. In September 1948 MP Lewis Silkin. Minister of Town and Country Planning in Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government said: “Basildon will become a City which people from all over the world will want to visit. It…
Read MoreLFF 2017: Redoubtable
One of the unofficial laws surrounding biopics is the more complex and rich the subject, the more reductive and superficial the treatment of the life. Redoubtable is ostensibly about a great cinema revolutionary, Jean-Luc Godard, but his life and art are alas interpreted by Michel Hazanavicius, a director who wears his slim talent for pastiche heavily. Hazanavicius is best known for The Artist, one of the least deserving Best Picture…
Read MoreFilm Review: Beast
Reviewed by Lee Hill Francois Truffaut will never be entirely forgiven by some of the country’s film buffs for saying that British cinema was a contradiction in terms. For every bold visionary like Michael Powell, Nicolas Roeg, Derek Jarman or Lynne Ramsay, there are countless directors whose plodding efficiency and middle brow choice of subject can make one long for the personal signature of a Richard Donner (yes, he did…
Read MoreFilm Review: The Ciambra
Reviewed by Lee Hill Against a timeless backdrop of mountain and foothills, a simply dressed yet elegant looking young man with a mustache tends to a horse and his encampment. This image will be a rare moment of calm and reflection before the chaotic narrative that follows. Where the opening shot of The Ciambra suggests timeless, romantic tradition, the remainder of the film will immerse us in a deracinated sub-culture…
Read MoreFilm Review: Truth or Dare
Reviewed by Lee Hill Truth or Dare is such a bland, albeit efficient horror genre retread that its only conceivable raison d’etre is to keep risk averse mid-level studio executives employed. Entering a market that has been rejuvenated by the likes of Get Out, It Follows and A Quiet Place, this film deserves to get beaten to death at the box office and exiled to a remote corner of streaming…
Read MoreLFF 2017: Custody (Jusqu’à la Garde)
Reviewed by Lee Hill The bitterness of separation, divorce and the all too common legal battles between former spouses has made for familiar terrain at the movies. Shoot the Moon, Kramer Vs. Kramer, The War of the Roses, Blue Valentine and Boyhood are a few titles that spring to mind and of course, television drama would be crippled without domestic strife as convenient narrative fodder. Given the countless variations on…
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