Author: The Reviews Hub - Film

Writers: Haruki Murakami, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi Haruki Murakami’s slight short story Drive My Car is transformed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (writer and director) and Takamasa Oe (co-writer) into a powerfully compelling film. In Murakami’s story, Kafuku, an actor, has been a widower for ten years. The film, however, begins with the strange dynamics of Kafuku’s marriage to beautiful screen-writer Oto. Its erotic intensity appears to derive from something deeper and more troubling. Hidetoshi Nishijima is compelling as Kafuku, his melancholy, mask-like face strangely expressive, while Reika Kirishima dazzles as Oto. The writers add a potent subtext:…

Writers: Lisa Schiller and Joshua Zeman Director: Joshua Zeman The hook for this documentary is simple: the search for a legendary whale, believed to have spent its entire life alone because the frequency of its call is unrecognisable to other whales. Scientist Roger Payne identified it as broadcasting at 52 hertz. He and a handful of fellow researchers believe this points to the existence of a unique whale, a hybrid between a blue and a fin whale. Director Joshua Zeman clearly aims to touch our hearts with the film’s focus on a lonely creature, swimming the oceans in solitude, unable…

Writer and Director: Sebastian Godwin Taking your new wife to meet your children is a family saga fraught with trauma but with Richard’s teenage family it becomes a trial of endurance for Hollie who is dragged into an unnerving dynamic in Sebastian Godwin’s new film. Homebound, available in cinemas before a digital released later in April, is a domestic drama with horror influences. This 70-minute story is intriguingly filmed to reflect Hollie’s increasing disorientation. Having not seen his children for some time, Richard returns for his youngest daughter’s birthday and while he introduces Hollie, they decide to conceal their marriage.…

Writers and Directors: Stephen de Beul, Ben Tesseur and Jeff Tudor Choreographer: Ted Brandsen The film Coppelia, directed and written by Stephen de Beul, Ben Tesseur and Jeff Tudor, is based on Ted Brandsen’s 2008 production for Dutch National Ballet. It is a mixture of animation and live action dancing, again choreographed by Brandsen, by a small cast of mainly young performers. The writers have updated the original 1870 ballet so that although it’s still set in a timeless fairy-tale town, the characters belong to a modern-ish world of clean-cut youth and sunny adults. Sinister Dr Coppelius is no longer…

Writer: Ben Hopkins and Elbert van Strien Directed by: Elbert van Strien Directed by Elbert van Strien, Repression (also known as The Marionette) is a conceptual thriller. The script takes us through the journey of child psychiatrist, Dr Marianne Winter (played by Thekla Reuten) who has relocated her life – professional and personal – after the traumatic death of her husband. Dr. Winter leaves America to work with a psychiatry team in Scotland. She arrives, as confused as we are, over such a dramatic change. Dr. Winter’s previous life is in deep contrast to what she finds in her new…

Writer and Director:  Manu Gomez At the height of ETA’s terror campaign in 1985 Euskadi (Basque Country) the summer holidays beckon for 12-year-olds Marcos, José, Toni and Paquito. But there are no carefree days at the beach for these kids of immigrant parents, who moved to the industrial town of Mondragon to escape the poverty that blighted much of Franco’s Spain. Instead, they spend their days roaming the grimy, graffiti-covered streets, collecting the police rubber bullets fired at protestors calling for the return of jailed ETA members to the homeland. For writer and director Manu Gomez, this is a love…

Director:  Leigh Brooks Among this year’s offerings at the BFI Flare Festival are quite a few films that celebrate queer people in music genres that, at first, don’t seem predisposed to attract queer people. Invisible: Gay Women in Southern Music looks at lesbians working in country music, Sublime is a coming-of-age story from Argentina about a boy in a garage rock band in love with one of his bandmates while The Sound of Scars is a biography of the death metal band, Life of Agony, headed by trans woman Mina Caputo. The film is an edifying lesson in sex, drugs…

Writer and Director: Catherine Corsini Hospital dramas tend to be quite glossy and for all the terrible accidents and illnesses on show, the doctors and nurses rarely ruffle their perfect hair dos and pristine white coasts. Catherine Corsini’s new film The Divide, screening at BFI Flare, is far more immersive, capturing the energy and gritty camerawork of early ER in showing the relentless tide of patients and activities in a French emergency room during a violent Parisian riot. Following a break-up worthy argument with her partner Julie (Marina Foïs) of 10-years, Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) slips and damages her elbow.…