Film Reviews by JR

Good performances, but the theme of the film is familiar - the clash between the conservative and sexist values of Palestinian men and parents , and the western free lifestyles of their daughters. One of the flatmates is a lesbian, one is very devout, and the third is a lawyer who is also regular drug and alcohol user. The film maker's political and philosophical points are hammered home in an unsubtle way which detracts from the viewer's involvement with the characters. I began to think the film had been funded by the tobacco industry because almost every frame in the film featured cigarette smoking.

You would think that watching a film about a man sitting for a portrait would be dull. And it is. Lots of cigarette smoking, some 60's and Paris cliches.

The film has some nice views of the Cornish landscape, but the plot stretches credulity and tries to manipulate the audience with unsubtle red herrings. Sam Clafin tries to channel Hugh Grant unsuccessfully, lacking the self deprecating humour. Rachel Weisz is better cast, but the part defeats even her acting powers. The script has glaring language anachronisms and Americanisms. After sitting through all this claptrap, the viewer is even deprived of a conclusion to the 'did she or didn't she? ' .

Elizabeth Olsen feels like the token woman in this thriller set in on native American reservation. It touches on the social problems of the inhabitants, but mainly it's about a lot of macho men with lots of guns. Watch 'Frozen River' for a much better thriller in a similar vein.

This film looks like a film from the 40's - slightly out of focus but not black and white but in bleached colour. The performances are stilted and unnatural, and the scenes seem to jump abruptly from one to another. Bernal is miscast as as Neruda's nemesis. A much better film which mixes poetry and biography is 'A Quiet Passion'.

The film is very slow and dull. The viewer's engagement with the film probably depends on how you see the protagonist, Clara, a woman in her late sixties. She refuses to sell her flat although she has been offered the market price by developers, and her family try to persuade her to accept the offer. The film meanders for far too long through her uninteresting mundane everyday life. The developers seem pretty benign although there is a slight rise in tension towards the end. There are a few short gratuitous explicit, tacky sex scenes, thrown in for no particular reason, including some with a male prostitute and Clara.

Kumail Nanjiani is fantastic - his humour is so low key and dry. The girlfriend's parents are engaging, feisty and funny too. But the girlfriend is one of those "quirky, kooky" young female characters so beloved by male American film makers - for quirky and kooky, read annoying and unbelievable for example, she wakes up and demands to go to a coffee shop in the middle of the night because she is too embarrassed to use the toilet in the boyfriend's flat. The film benefited from her absence in the second half, and Nanjiani, his parents and her parents could get into top comedy gear.

Beautiful cinematograhy and very well acted. The children are presented unsentimentally, and the dramatic tension is strong although it is a quiet and thoughtful film dealing with the tragedy of the fall out from WWII. The love story is tender and believable. I loved it right up until the last climax of a David v Goliath fencing match when it became a bit cliched . But I could forgive that when the rest of the film was so good.

Concerning a surgeon who lives on a grim housing estate, the film explores the pervasive corruption in Romanian society in a v-e-r-y slow way. I felt cheated because the moments of dramatic tension turn out to be an irrelevant tease and remain unresolved. We never find out who attacked the daughter, who threw a stone through the window, or smashed the doctor's windscreen. The surgeon's wife and the lover are under-written and zombie-like. The daughter is likewise passive and lacking in character.