LFF: Pasolini review
Creating a biopic of the controversial Italian director, poet and essayist Pier Paolo Pasolini is quite an undertaking, and while Abel Ferrara may have stumbled every now and again in Pasolini, he’s certainly made an admirable effort. Willem Dafoe, who does look rather like Pasolini, attacks the central role with confidence and imbues the film with a real sense … Read more
LFF: Wild Tales review
Wild Tales, a portmanteau film comprised of six stories, opens with one of the funniest sequences I’ve seen in some time. This scene ends with a punchline that is immediately obvious to some but takes a little longer for others to ‘get,’ which results in a slow build of laughter. In my screening, this climaxed at the … Read more
LFF: Nas – Time is Illmatic review
The starting point of Nas: Time is Illmatic, the debut documentary feature from director One9 and writer Erik Parker, is not just that Illmatic, Nas’ debut album, is a great album but that it is a perfect record. It’s no surprise, then, to find that the film is reverential in tone, but what is perhaps most … Read more
LFF: Rosewater review
[ The real life arrest of Iranian-Canadian Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari provides the rich subject matter for Jon Stewart‘s directorial debut, Rosewater. Sadly, Stewart has squandered this material on a film that is terribly uneven and often badly judged. The film begins with a dreamy sequence in which a voiceover talks about ‘rosewater’, before we move to the … Read more