120 BPM is a film you tend to admire rather than love. Robin Campillo’s film deals with the rise of Act Up in France in the late 80s and early 90s as the activist group tackled the complacency of government, medical and pharmaceutical establishments in dealing with the crisis. If the film veers towards being a polemic at times, it contains many scenes that remind one of the anguish and…
Read MoreFilm Review: A Gentle Creature
Reviewed by Lee Hill Vladimir Putin may be looking forward to another six years of running the Russian Federation, but his country’s best filmmakers will not give him an easy ride. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Loveless have been recent state-of-the-nation molotovs lobbed at Mother Russia. Sergei Lotznitsa’s A Gentle Creature is a further reminder that, despite the monolithic philistinism that Putin embodies and revels in, dissident filmmaking is not just…
Read MoreComing Soon: Tony Richardson and Woodfall Films
Tony Richardson and Woodfall Films: A Revolution in British Film A month-long season at the BFI Southbank, April 2018 Reviewed by Lee Hill From 1959 to 1963, director Tony Richardson became synonymous with “kitchen sink realism”. That catchphrase simultaneously celebrated and dismissed a new wave in British film. The wave first came to attention when Richardson and Karel Reisz screened their documentary short, Mamma Don’t Allow, as part of the…
Read MoreInterview with Gholam Director Mitra Tabrizian
Interview with Mitra Tabrizian, co-writer and director of Gholam by author and Screenwords critic Lee Hill Gholam is the haunting feature film debut of Mitra Tabrizian. In collaboration with her co-writer, Cyrus Massoudi, Tabrizian has created a subtle character study of an Iranian exile in London trying to make a living as a mini-cab driver and in his free time, struggling to move on from a dark and complicated past as…
Read MoreWonder Wheel: A Meta Review
Reviewed by Lee Hill If you want a review of Wonder Wheel, Woody Allen’s 48th feature film as writer and director, the following will prove disappointing or perhaps, even upsetting. Go ahead cry, fume, tsk tsk or rant – tweet if I care. This is a meta-review of Wonder Wheel (not to be confused with Woody Allen Summer Project 2017 aka A Rainy Day in New York, which may or…
Read MoreFilm Review: The Square
Reviewed by Lee Hill In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell said: “…if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.” Clear thinking, common sense, open debate and reason face new threats from the grip that marketing, branding, spin, “fake news” and other forms of intellectual cheerleading now…
Read MoreFilm Review: I Got Life!
Reviewed by Lee Hill I Got Life! is a deceptively slight film about the shifting moods and epiphanies one experiences in middle age. Having just turned 50, Aurore (Agnès Jaoui), a divorcee with two daughters living in La Rochelle, France, is hit not just by the onset of early menopause, but an omnipresent sense of how quickly youthful energy and potential can dissipate in mid-life. After walking out of a…
Read MoreFilm Review: Sweet Country
Reviewed by Lee Hill Sweet Country is a sympathetic, but unsentimental look at one of many turning points in the tortured relations between aboriginal peoples and white Australians. Set in 1929, Mick, an embittered and alcoholic war veteran (Thomas M. Wright) buys a station in a remote part of New South Wales. With little farming know-how, he enlists the aid of Fred Smith, his closest neighbour (Sam Neill), a born-again…
Read MoreFilm Review: You Were Never Really Here
Reviewed by Lee Hill It is nice to see Lynne Ramsay back from Director Jail. In 2013, Ramsay had a very public falling out with the producers of the western Jane Got A Gun, which was completed by Gavin O’Connor. As often happens when a director is replaced early in shooting the rumour mill went into overdrive (see also Joseph Strick being replaced by George Cukor on Justine, Ken Russell…
Read MoreFilm Review: Gholam
Reviewed by Lee Hill Gholam (Shahab Hosseini), the title character of this mordant portrait of an exile in extremis, is a shy, laconic Iranian military veteran in his 30s. He survives on the margins of the expatriate community in London by driving a mini-cab at night and odd jobs at a garage during the day. When not sleeping in a grim, mold encrusted studio flat, he spends his meagre free-time…
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