Film Reviews by Steve

Mike Leigh had seemed to have lost his alchemic ability to distil contemporary life in the mid noughties, and how timely he should return to form in 2008. The year the banker's crash triggered austerity. The period when social media began to amplify the splintering of England. It is from the frontiers of this divided nation that Leigh and his cast are reporting. The brilliant Sally Hawkins lives the personality of the title; but she is tough and combative as she needs to be given that experience will burn away your optimism like a match. The core of the film is the exposure of her dayglo, might-never-happen but sincere and conscientious primary school teacher to a trigger-unhappy, randomly prejudiced conspiracy-theorist driving instructor created by Leigh regular Eddie Marsen. Happy-Go-Lucky emotionally channels the anger, the passive aggressive anxiety which is the hum in the wires of the circuits of contemporary British life. Typically the film has divided its audience hugely! Here we are, twelve years on and it seems all the more prescient that Leigh made this when he did. 

Arthouse parable on the interface between colonialism and indigenous culture. This is a brilliant blend of atmospheric strains, including the ambient silences, John Barry's spiritual orchestral score, the otherness of the South Australian outback locations and Roeg's own woozy, narcotic images. The whole film is carried by a seventeen year old Jenny Agutter, Aboriginal debutant David Gulpilil and the director's eight year old son, Luc Roeg and hardly anyone else is on screen. Roeg's work was philosophical and idiosyncratic and usually incorporated improvisation, broken time structures and unusual casting. They make for a strong deep vibration of eeriness. The whole is then balanced by two contrasting conclusions, both disquieting in their different ways.

Sumptuous art film, dense with wit and visual imagination. I'm not a big Fellini enthusiast, who this film repeatedly references, but that was no impediment to liking this film, one of my favourite of the century. An Italian state-of-the-nation film whose bitter world view works for anywhere in the west. Be sure to watch the beautiful, poignant closing credits.

Caper film about a heist carried out by street magicians is exciting until, typical of illusion, it all falls apart when the trick is explained, upon which it becomes a frustratingly idiotic anticlimax. Maybe worthwhile for the ride, but be prepared to be hugely disappointed.

Handsome, touristic (set in Greece), leisurely psychological thriller is well acted and well set up, but suffers for lack of an interesting conclusion. Good for enthusiasts of Patricia Highsmith. Better watch the similar Plein Soleil with Alain Delon.

Shallow and rather voyeuristic indie from the point of view of a kidnapped mother and son is probably a sincere recreation, but has little to say, and fails to follow though on its ideas. Well acted by Brie Larson, who deserved a better script.

Starts off with a nostalgic recreation of seventies dystopian post nuclear event films, but Saoirse Ronan's alienated teen lead made it difficult to care.

Very long, poorly scripted, pointless revisionist western. I'm still angry. Maybe ok for lovers of gratuitous violence.

Utterly ridiculous, implausible melodrama somehow crosses Fame with Full Metal Jacket. Works a bit if you find some elements of allegory in what is at face value an unbelievable situation. Well made (hence three stars) but not actually worth making.

James Franco, what have you done. You were in 127 Hours. You were great.... But this... Obviously a heavy amount of money was thrown at this piece of US religious right propaganda, in which a load of actors playing frat-jocks and nerds/etc get to meet their maker for having sinned. The stars rather smugly play themselves as stars, but that's the least of its problems. One day, will they have to answer for this?

All horror films ask you the same question. Is it right that I should be watching people reenact suffering and fear for my own entertainment? Good horror films leaven this guilt with intelligence, imagination and sensitivity. This piece of trash just offered torture for it's own sake, just to push the experience of screen brutality that little bit further. With no reward. Just the sensation of humanity bumping along the bottom of the extremes of possible depravity.

Time travel film for computer engineers, surely proves that not everything that notionally make sense in a flow diagram is a suitable subject for a cinema release, and really, a multiverse what-if film too far. The talented Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Bruce Willis, chase versions of themselves through the future. There was a memorable scene in a field of corn that made me wish I was watching North by Northwest.

Bleeding obvious culture shock comedy in which Simon Pegg plays a tough city cop (see, it's already not working) sent to a rural village in order to stop annoying everyone, and to be teamed up with slowpoke yokel Nick Frost. What follows is at the level of obviousness suggestive of late period French and Saunders, with a slow motion gunfight a key nadir. Two bloody hours long!

Or the death of feminism. Playmate gets kicked out of Hefner's mansion for being too old. She moves into a University sorority house occupied only by plain looking girls and teaches them how to be babes. A Pygmalion for the end of civilisation. It seems a little harsh to be cruel to a film that Anna Faris dieted so hard for, but really, her fab waistline is this film's only saving grace.

In 1889, Freidrich Nietzsche witnessed (and protested against) a man flogging his horse, and then went mad... This film supposes what happened to the horse. The man continues to abuse him, but we grow to see that the whole life of this poor rural farmer is a kind of abuse. This film is the final distillation of Tarr's unique vision. It is made of thirty, slow, b&w tracking shots, often of banal incidents. There is little dialogue. The audio is filled with repetitive sounds (and no music). It is meticulously crafted (Tarr interviewed hundreds of horses from all over Europe to find his star) and weirdly beautiful.

It's difficult to say what all this means... Tarr seems to be finding and describing the unexpected weight of life. It is an extreme experience. On completing this film, Tarr retired, believing he had nothing left for us.