Following Quartet and Performance, Song For Marion is the third recent film about older people finding solace, meaning and fulfilment through music. Like those films, Song for Marion makes some sobering and touching observations about ageing and mortality although it’s often unsubtle in its emotional manipulation and veers awkwardly into the world of quirky comedy. Terence stamp and Vanessa Redgrave
Read moreBy 2008 the Marvel Comics adaptations weren’t looking too healthy. The Fantastic Four films had been turkeys and the overlong and confusing Spiderman 3 had skittled the high expectations raised by the sensational Spiderman 2. Iron Man, however, was like a 50,000 vault surge of electricity to the ailing Frankenstein corpse of superhero movies. The film combined powerful dynamic action
Read moreNo Many films centre on political campaigns including Robert Redford’s fascinating slow burn The Candidate and the overrated George Clooney/ Ryan Gosling spin doctor drama The Ides of March. No, which focuses on a campaign to oust Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s is one of the stranger additions to the political film genre. In 1988 international pressure forced Augusto Pinochet to
Read moreDespite its minimalist plot and the fact that it is set within the crucible of Arab-Israeli tension on the West Bank, French film The Other Son manages to deliver a warm, sensitive and moving family drama that lingers in the memory. When Israeli teenager Joseph (Jules Sitruk) applies for military service he discovers that his blood type does not match
Read moreKon Tiki has nothing to do with drunken Aussies on package overseas holiday tours. Instead, it’s a dramatisation of the amazing journey taken across the Pacific Ocean in 1947 by Norwegian archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl. Thor believed that, a thousand years ago, the descendants of present day Polynesians journeyed to the pacific islands from South America rather than from Asia as was
Read moreI have to confess, I’m not normally a fan of zombie movies and that includes lauded films like 28 Days Later. I generally find the sight of people in bad make-up shuffling around and eating gizzards pretty tedious. Warm Bodies, however, is a different kind of zombie film. First of all, it’s told from a zombie’s perspective and secondly it
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