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Manchester film reviews
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Manchester film reviews

The Pearl Button

The Pearl Button shown at HOME

Reviewed by John Hutchinson March 2016

What does the country Chile conjure up for you in the mind? I am not referring here to its political associations directly although for most of us we might summon up the names of Pinochet and Allende, and the CIA provoked coup of the 1970s. Can you define Chilean identity and the country’s national characteristics? If you can’t then you need to watch The Pearl Button and also if you get the chance, its predecessor, the even more remarkable Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia of the Light, literally translated) part of a planned trilogy of which the Pearl Button is the middle film.

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Manchester film reviews

Thérèse Desqueyroux

Thérèse Desqueyroux, Cornerhouse

Reviewed by Jane Turner June 2013

 

The late Claude Miller’s final film is intensely claustrophobic, unventilated and suffocating, leaving one gasping in the darkness for a small shot of air. It is also an exquisite and accomplished adaptation of Francois Mauriac’s classic 1927 novel, strikingly framed and idyllically located in French period heaven which is a little at odds with the tale itself, as oppressive as a totalitarian state.

 

It hasn’t received the same publicity as that other recent adaptation – The Great Gatsby – which is a bit of a shame in my view, as it is a sumptuous and solemn film, a feast for the senses that provides an extraordinarily perceptive insight into an intense and miserable marriage of convenience and emulates its oppressiveness by perfect pace and timing. A nourishing visual feast, seductive sounds and an overwhelming quietness of a quality, you rarely find in modern life, that is at once both soothing and stimulating. It is indeed a work of art, and so right at home in the little gem that is Manchester’s Cornerhouse.

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Manchester film reviews

Denise and Paul arriving at the Welsh campsite

Dream On by Lloyd Eyre-Morgan

Reviewed by Simon Belt June 2013

 

This coming of age story about two teenage boys who meet on a Welsh campsite is also a coming of age story for Lloyd Eyre-Morgan (LEM Films) as a filmmaker. It is certainly evocative of much of the randomness and accident involved in fumbling through those coming of age experiences, in terms of story, structure, execution and outcome. It's also a bit random in its flirtation with politics and moral messages.

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Manchester film reviews

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

Reviewed by Una Cottrell May 2013

 

"That was more romantic than I was expecting.” To quote my 12 year old daughter after watching the The Great Gatsby, the most recent film from the master of romance himself, Baz Luhrmann (of Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge fame).

 

Starring Leonardo Di Caprio and, she who can do no wrong, Carey Mulligan, the film IS romantic. After all, the film is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book of the same name and delves deeply into the lives of the rich and famous of the decadent 1920’s.  Set in New York, the film looks at the lives in particular of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and his rich and beautiful cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). Unhappily married to womanising Tom (Joel Edgerton), Daisy re-establishes contact with her cousin Carraway, and he unsuspectingly becomes the conduit between herself and the enigmatic J. Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio) for them to rekindle their love affair of five years earlier. The story unfolds until its predictable, but still shocking, tragic end.

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Manchester film reviews

19th Viva! Film Festival

19th Viva Hispanic Film Festival, Cornerhouse

Humour, Crisis and Lost Identity

Reviewed by John Hutchinson March 2013

 

The 19th Viva Festival opened on the 8th March to the themes of guerrilla warfare re-enacted on the car park of an American DIY store and the tragi-comedy of a botched jewel robbery in Madrid in the 1950’s. Humour starts the festival but rapidly turns into a much darker side.

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The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises

Reviewed by Ian Betts July 2012

 

There is a terrorist on a plane. While he and his devoted followers murder its passengers, he shows no signs of remorse, nor fear of reprisal. Explosions dismember the hull and as the metal carcass of corpses falls to the ground, the terrorist escapes promising to wreak only greater havoc.

 

His name is Bane.

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Poster for killer Joe

Killer Joe, Cornerhouse

Reviewed by Ian Betts July 2012

 

It is deeply enjoyable when typecast actors take on roles that corrupt their clichéd screen personas. Robin Williams did it in 2002 for One Hour Photo by portraying an obsessive photo-lab technician who constructs a delusional reality for himself using other people’s images. Having set himself up as a feel-good wizard of the sickening and schmaltzy after winning the Oscar for Good Will Hunting, Williams moved on from emotive dross like Patch Adams and Bicentennial Man by refashioning himself as a disturbing, compulsive fanatic, combining his ability to evoke our yearning for kindness and compassion with darker, more sinister urges.

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Manchester film reviews

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom

Screened at Cornerhouse, Manchester

Reviewed by Anne Ryan May 2012

 

At a time when the American dream seems further away than ever for the majority of its citizens, Wes Anderson harks back to an America that never was, a world of small town eccentrics whose lives are characterised by an almost Capraesque decency and sweetness.

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She Stoops to Conquer

She Stoops to Conquer, National Theatre

Screened at Cornerhouse, Manchester

Reviewed by Anne Ryan March 2012

 

Following the National Theatre’s production of A Comedy of Errors we have another of the classics of British theatre presented on the big screen - Sophie Thompson acts up a storm in She Stoops to Conquer. Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th century masterpiece is a warm and witty comedy, and here we have a blissfully funny production by an ensemble of skilled comic actors.

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The Kid With a Bike, Thomas Doret and Egon Di Mateo

The Kid with a Bike at Cornerhouse

Reviewed by Anne Ryan March 2012

 

The films of Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne portray lonely vulnerable characters fighting to survive. Filmed in an almost documentary style, they portray the reality of the lives of the poor. In Rosetta, the winner of the 1999 Palme d'Or, the child of an alcoholic lives in a trailer park and survives from pay day to pay day. L'Enfant tackled the story of a man who sells his newborn child to black marketeers. In their most recent film, Lorna's Silence they turned to a portrayal of Liege's criminal underworld. The Kid With a Bike returns to the industrial wastland of Seraing in Belgium and the world of the underclass.
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