Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts

Fuck Up (2012)

2012 | Norway | Øystein Karlsen | ★★★

Øystein Karlsen's sporadically entertaining Fuck Up is a wintry Norwegian crime drama, buoyed by committed performances and pitch black comic interludes, but hamstrung by Dag-themed stunt casting and a general lack of dramatic credibility.

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"Jack is pleased with himself for the first time in years. He has decided to stop fucking anything with a pulse and also to cut back on his eager and enthusiastic drug use. Then his best friend crashes into a moose in the middle of the night on the Swedish border. He is found with a hoof buried in his forehead and 2.5 kilos of cocaine in the trunk. Over the next 24 hours, Jack loses his house, his girlfriend leaves him and takes their daughter with her. And as he is about to find out: when you think you have hit rock bottom, it can always get worse." TMDb

Les Invisibles (2012)

Les invisibles
2012 | France | Sébastien Lifshitz | ★★★★

Sébastien Lifshitz's remarkably positive and uplifting Les Invisibles is a simple, elegant documentary about sexuality, intolerance, and ageing, exploring the remarkable lives, in their own words, of several elderly gay French people.

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"Eleven men and women born between the wars. Seemingly they have nothing in common except their homosexuality and growing up in a less open, more intolerant society. Now in their 60s and 70s, they tell their personal stories, either shared or alone. These lives are often revealing and pioneering as they recall their personal experiences. Sébastien Lifshitz, director of 'Presque Rien' and 'Wild Side', offers us intimate portraits of gay and lesbian life from an older generation who often remain ignored and unheard in a youth-obsessed society. Winner of the César Award for Best Documentary, and nominated for the BFI London Film Festival Grierson Award, 'Les Invisibles' is an affectionate but frank account that is in turn touching and amusing, reflecting our own concerns about growing old." Peccadillo Pictures

The Sinkholes (2012)

Les gouffres
2012 | France | Antoine Barraud | ★★★

Antoine Barraud's mildly effective The Sinkholes is an abstruse art house drama about fear and anxiety, featuring naturally lit handheld photography, nightmarishly enigmatic plotting, and a committed central performance from Nathalie Boutefeu.

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"Five gigantic caves have just been discovered on remote plateaus on the other side of the world. A team of researchers is sent to descend into the depths, including Professor Georges Lebrun, along with his wife. Tense and anxious, she is soon engulfed by the proximity of the void." Locarno Festival

Pitch Perfect (2012)

2012 | USA | Jason Moore | ★★★★

Starring Anna Kendrick and a well-assembled ensemble, Jason Moore's Pitch Perfect is a vaguely familiar though hugely entertaining feel-good musical, packed with excellent a cappella song and dance numbers, chucklesome gags, and effervescent performances.

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"Beca, a freshman at Barden University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her school's all-girls singing group. Injecting some much needed energy into their repertoire, The Bellas take on their male rivals in a campus competition. The results are hilarious." Universal Pictures

Aliyah (2012)

Alyah
2012 | France | Elie Wajeman | ★★★

Elie Wajeman's mildly diverting Aliyah is a gently paced, low-key crime drama comprised of naturally lit scenes, featuring unobtrusive handheld camerawork and quiet, earthy performances from Pio Marmaï, Cédric Kahn, Adèle Haenel, et al.

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"Drug dealer Alex finds hope for a new start when his cousin offers him a job in Israel. Now he must make the final score, while balancing a new romance, a past lover, a lifelong friendship and his brother's addiction." Film Movement

Girls (2012-17)

2012-17 | USA | Lena Dunham | ★★★★

Lena Dunham's Girls is an unpredictably entertaining half-hour comedy-drama series about narcissistic arrested development, featuring quietly incisive writing, engaging star turns, and some decidedly memorable guest appearances.

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"The show's creator Lena Dunham stars as Hannah, a struggling writer living in Brooklyn who finds herself broke when her parents decide to cut off their financial support. As she attempts to deal with the trials of life including problems at work and in her relationship with Adam (Adam Driver), her friends Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) each battle with their own issues." HBO

Sightseers (2012)

2012 | UK | Ben Wheatley | ★★★★★

Ben Wheatley's decidedly excellent, BIFA-winning Sightseers is a frequently hilarious yet strangely romantic and touching black comedy, featuring a pair of decidedly excellent comic performances from the superb duo of Alice Lowe and Steve Oram.

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"Chris (Steve Oram) wants to show Tina (Alice Lowe) his world and he wants to do it his way - on a journey through the British Isles in his beloved Abbey Oxford Caravan. Tina's led a sheltered life and there are things that Chris needs her to see - the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, the Keswick Pencil Museum and the rolling countryside that accompanies these wonders in his life. But it doesn't take long for the dream to fade. Litterbugs, noisy teenagers and pre-booked caravan sites, not to mention Tina's meddling mother, soon conspire to shatter Chris's dreams and send him, and anyone who rubs him up the wrong way, over a very jagged edge..." Studiocanal
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Brazil with Michael Palin (2012)

2012 | UK | Michael Palin | ★★★★

Presented by the former Python with typical easy-going charm, BAFTA-nominated Brazil with Michael Palin is a thoroughly engaging, gently informative four-part travelogue, filled with the sights and sounds of a wonderfully diverse country.

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"Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world - both in terms of population and geography. Over 192 million people call this land their home. Taking up over half of South America, Brazil is a mix of races, religions, sophistication, wildness, wealth, poverty and unexplored wilderness. The country is considered one of the rising global powers with Vast natural resources, a burgeoning industrial base and a strong currency. In this programme Michael Palin visits Brazil for the very first time, travelling from the lost world of Amazonia to the buzzing metropolis of Rio de Janeiro, to meet the people and visit the places that shape this nation." 2entertain

Dredd (2012)

2012 | UK | Pete Travis | ★★★★

Based on the character created in 1977 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra for the British comic book 2000 AD, Pete Travis's Dredd is a thoroughly entertaining, decidedly violent dystopian sci-fi action thriller, featuring gaudily eye-catching visuals and a number of memorable set-pieces.

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"In the future, America is a dystopian wasteland. The latest scourge is Ma-Ma, a prostitute-turned-drug pusher with a dangerous new drug and aims to take over the city. The only possibility of stopping her is an elite group of urban police called Judges, who combine the duties of judge, jury and executioner to deliver a brutal brand of swift justice. But even the top-ranking Judge, Dredd, discovers that taking down Ma-Ma isn’t as easy as it seems in this explosive adaptation of the hugely popular comic series." TMDb

In the Fog (2012)

В тумане
2012 | Belarus | Sergei Loznitsa | ★★★★★

Bold Ukrainian film-maker Sergei Loznitsa’s masterfully directed In the Fog is an intense, beautifully paced Belarusian Second World War drama, featuring memorable imagery and an outstanding central performance from Vladimir Svirskiy.

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"In 1942, Belarus is in the hands of Nazis and the local militia. Sushenya is taken from his house in the middle of the night by Burov and his sidekick Voitik, two partisan fighters hiding out in the hills and forest. Sushenya is the only one of four captured rail workers who has been allowed to live by the occupying Germans after seemingly sabotaging the rail tracks. With the village and even his wife turned against him as a collaborator, Sushenya accepts what must happen next until the Germans suddenly appear and he is - perhaps - given a second chance, leaving space for doubt both on his betrayal and on the legitimacy of punishment by death. The three and later two - men walk in the wood, exhausted, fleeing death from the Nazis while discussing and living the moral dilemmas of treason, heroism, guilt and revenge." New Wave Films
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Frances Ha (2012)


Noah Baumbach’s funny, hopeful, and affecting Frances Ha is an absolutely delightful character study, notable for its bold soundtrack, striking photography, and co-writer Greta Gerwig's rather wonderful central performance.

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"Frances, an apprentice in a dance company wants so much more than she has but lives life with unaccountable joy and lightness. This modern fable from Noah Baumbach explores youth, friendship, class, ambition, failure and redemption." Mongrel Media
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memento mori (2012)

2012 | Canada | Dan Browne | ★★★★★

Canadian experimental film-maker and artist Dan Browne’s utterly wonderful memento mori is a thrillingly kinetic, seductively painterly short film that masterfully breathes vibrant new life into a tired, old metaphor.

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"A meditation on (im)mortality, mediated by a lifetime of images." Dan Browne
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Like Someone in Love (2012)

ライク・サムワン・イン・ラブ
2012 | Japan / Iran | Abbas Kiarostami | ★★★★★

Starring Okuno Tadashi, Takanashi Rin, and Kase Ryō, Great Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliantly directed, Japan-set Like Someone in Love is a formally daring, thematically dense drama, featuring fine performances, beautiful visuals, and unpredictable scripting.

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"Like Someone in Love, named after Ella Fitzgerald's jazz standard, is a droll, elegant and playful film preoccupied with identities mistaken and assumed, laced with references to the films of Yasujiro Ozu. Akiko, a pretty and slightly distant sociology student works nights as a high-class escort. Instead of studying for her exams and meeting her grandmother, she reluctantly goes to the house of her latest client, retired sociology professor Takashi. The next morning, she allows him to give her a ride to university, crossing paths with her volatile boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryo Kase). The latter assumes that the kind old man is Akiko's grandfather, thus allowing an odd role-playing routine to begin, until, perhaps, the hoax is discovered." New Wave Films
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