sorana_necula_reset

                                                                                                                  Philip Roth's angry, painful novella The Dying Animal, about Roth's recurring and now ageing character David Kepesh and his self-lacerating affair with a beautiful young student, has been intelligently transformed into a movie called Elegy. The change of title is a clue to how the text has been softened and sweetened - elegies are composed in honour of dead people, not dying animals - but the result works perfectly well on its own terms, and it is substantially better than the last Roth adaptation to reach the screen, The Human Stain. As the story of a love affair and its long, unhappy endgame, ...

The film is based on writer-director-producer  Sean Hanish’s  own experience, as it tells the story of  Maggie  and  Aaron  ( Minnie Driver  and  Paul Adelstein ) in the aftermath of a stillbirth. Maggie falls into depression, their relationship and their relationship crumbles, and eventually they’re faced with another pregnancy and the uncertainty that comes with it. Cheery subject matter, I know. But if you can believe it, the movie avoids corniness, and there was minimal eye-rolling on my part, which you can imagine is one of the highest compliments for me to pay a movie. Minnie Driver’s performance definitely helped, and fortunately the script lived up to the star power. It felt honest and truthful to how real people talk about their problems, without relying heavily on cliche or metaphor. She made me really feel for her character, and unlike with other TV movies about serious issues, I didn’t find myself wondering the whole time, “Is t...

Gleeson plays Father Lavelle, a no-nonsense but grounded priest on the gorgeous Sligo coast, and during confession one of his parishoners tells him that he is going to kill him in a week's time. Instead of trying to sway his would-be assassin, the good priest simply continues about his business, as he plays the role of one part police detective, one part social worker, and one part therapist for the entire village. Despite the tiny population, the village is full of a vast array of characters, with an excellent supporting cast - Kelly Reilly, Dylan Moran, Chris O'Dowd, Domhnaill Gleeson, David Wilmot - bringing them all to life. The terrific new film from writer-director  John Michael McDonagh , is a whodunnit with a difference, a black comedy with aspirations, merrily lifting its name from the small hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was slain.  Calvary : the title serves notice and puts the viewer on guard. It flashes like the final destination on the front of a bus, as M...

The presence of Kristin Scott Thomas in this literate French movie by Philippe Claudel is so powerfully distinctive that it's as if Claudel has not merely written the lead role for her, but extrapolated his film's entire narrative structure from Scott Thomas's personality. Her formidable bilingual presence, her beauty - elegant and drawn in early middle age - her air of hypersensitive awareness of all the tiny absurdities and indignities with which she is surrounded, coupled with a drolly lenient reticence: it all creates an intelligent, observant drama about dislocation, fragility and the inner pain of unshakeable memories. Scott Thomas is on screen for almost every minute of the film, often in close-up and her face is at once eloquent and deeply withdrawn. I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime) Production year:  2008 Country:  France Cert (UK):  12A Runtime:  115 mins Directors:  Philippe Claudel Cast:  Claire Johnston, Elsa ...

"Paradise Now" -  With wit and subtlety,  Paradise Now   explores the lives of Palestinian suicide bombers. “If you fear death, you’re already dead.” “Under the occupation, we’re already dead.” “If we can’t live as equals, at least we’ll die as equals.” “In this life, we’re dead anyway.” These lines of dialogue, scattered throughout director Hany Abu-Assad’s remarkable  Paradise Now , suggest the extreme mind-set of the Palestinian citizens portrayed in this harrowing fictional portrait of two suicide bombers. Although Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are a couple of likable slackers—childhood friends who goof off from their low-paying jobs as mechanics, drink sweet tea, and share puffs on a hookah—tension always runs just beneath the surface of their existence. Everything is a matter of life or death for these Palestinians trapped in the impoverished city of Nablus; they’ve come to believe that there is no future in an occupied ...

"Stockholm" -  An unsettling, minimalist meditation on the hidden dangers of teen romance, which signals its director as someone who's already marked out his own distinctive style. About halfway through  Rodrigo  Sorogoyen 's thoughtful, carefully-worked second feature, Stockholm , what at first looks like a dialogue-heavy standard teen romance becomes something far more chilling and interesting. Essentially a low-budget, theatrical-looking two-hander about what the word “love” means now, the film is potently stripped-back on all levels, and although its second act is far stronger than its first, and though rising Spanish actress  Aura Garrido  tends to outperform her opposite number, it remains both stylish and unsettling.  Stockholm  has been designed with smart teens and early 20-somethings in mind, and has achieved minor cult status in Spain, suggesting that further fest invitations seem likely. The movie opens with a standard conversation bet...