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Holy Motors
Surrealist comedy delivering a visual feast populated with gripping performances. A day-in-the-life tale of a shadowy character called M. Oscar results in a concoction tailor-made for cinephiles. Makes other films look staid. The spark for the film came from Carax’s observation that stretch limousines were being increasingly used for weddings. He was interested in their…
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Listen Up Philip
Up and coming young New York novelist Philip (Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman) suffers a crisis of confidence on the eve of the publication of his second novel. He finds solace in a burgeoning friendship with his Philip Roth-like hero, played by Jonathan Pryce (Ike Zimmerman – echoes of Roth’s alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman). This dry, misanthropic…
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Tangerine
An independent ground-breaking comedy-drama that proved a big hit at the Sundance Festival in 2015. Two transgender sex-workers in LA look for a pimp that did one of them wrong. The film was shot using 3 iPhone 5S smartphones instead of traditional cameras. The money saved on equipment was used to pay for locations and…
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Young Frankenstein
Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s loving pastiche of the old Universal Studios series of monster movies, some of which was shot using the original Hollywood props from the 1930s. While the critics were often sniffy on its release, the film has gone on to be considered a classic in its own right, being recognised by…
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Only Lovers Left Alive
Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive was nominated for Palme d’Or but won the Soundtrack Award. The film is full of music from different centuries, much of it performed by Jarmusch’s own band, SQÜRL. It spans from Paganini to Wanda Jackson and the Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan. Equally, the sources of the music also vary…
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The Ciambra
A moving crime-drama in the Italian neo-realist style written and directed by Jonas Carpignano. A 14 year old Romany boy moves between the Italian, African and Romany communities in a small town in Italy’s far south. He’s had to grow up fast and he’s learning to be one street-smart teenager, when adult responsibility falls on…
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The Lighthouse
An hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers trying to keep a grip on their sanity and humanity on a remote New England island in the 1890s. “As with The Witch, it’s the atmosphere that seeps into you like sea brine. You don’t watch this film, you are submerged in it.” Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro…
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The Taste of Tea
The Taste of Tea has been referred to as a psychedelic version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, but this is to undersell the humour and warmth of Katsuhito Ishii’s tale of three generations of the Haruno family. There is no oppressive religion and little angst beyond the growing pains of the children, Sachiko and…