Dec 28
Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, and produced by, amongst others, Harvey Weinstein, and Joel and Ethan Coen – with all that talent, the real Christmas miracle on display here is that Bad Santa is so bad. It veers between sentimental comedy and feel-bad film, with TV-movie lighting (its colour-palette spans the pastel-pink to muddy-brown gamut of the shopping-mall world in which it is set) and, sadly, generally weak acting. Read more
Directed by: Amit Gupta
“I hope you understand”, the last words uttered in Resistance, express a sometimes futile wish. This first feature from director Gupta is at times very confusing – not because it tries to cram too much plot into its ninety-plus minute running time, but arguably too little. The story is economically told, which is often a virtue, and it quickly dispels any notion that it will be a conventional war movie. Instead, it unfolds in a leisurely but frequently elliptical fashion so that we struggle to piece together motivations and roles. Read more
Directed by: Jerzy Skolimowski
Three Americans patrolling across what seems to be the Afghan desert are killed by a confused, frightened (and perhaps unwilling) man (Vincent Gallo) who is then fired on and captured by the patrol’s helicopter support. The temporarily deafened man is processed by his captors (chained, head shaved, dressed in orange) and treated to what are euphemistically known as enhanced interrogation techniques. Read more
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
In a New York theatre, trench-coated Derek Jacobi soliloquises about the greatness of Shakespeare’s works, and then tantalises his audience with the suggestion – no, assertion – that Will was not in fact the author. The scene shifts to early 17th century London where playwright Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto), clutching a pile of papers, is chased through the streets of London by soldiers who eventually manage to burn him out of the Globe Theatre and arrest him, sans folio. Read more
Directed by: Dexter Fletcher
Bill, released after an eight-year stretch in prison, returns to his council flat in the east-end council estate where he finds two sons, fifteen year-old Dean, and eleven-year old Jimmy, fending for themselves, their mother having left some months before. Read more
Directed by: Benito Zambrano
1940, Madrid. In an overcrowded wing in a women’s prison, a nun flanked by prison warders calls out the names of several women who, with varying degrees of terror, gather their belongings and follow the nun to waiting trucks, and then on to the firing squad. Read more
Directed by: Gérald Hustache-Mathieu
Blocked crime novelist David Rousseau (Jean-Paul Rouve) finds himself in the small town of Mouthe on the French-Swiss border, where the body of local celebrity weather presenter (and face of Belle de Jura cheese), Candice Lecoeur (Sophie Quinton) has just been found in a snow-covered field in no-man’s land. Read more
Directed by: Todd Solondz
Overweight thirty-something Abe (Jordan Gelber) lives at home with mom (Mia Farrow) and dad (Christopher Walken), in whose property development business he also works. At home he is a semi-reclusive collector of action figures, and at work an incompetent time-waster (only rescued from exposure by adoring older colleague Marie, played by Donna Murphy) while in both locations he is an overgrown teenager on a permanently short fuse, resenting everyone else’s success, snapping at every suggestion and externalising every shortcoming. Read more
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