Film Review: Crimson Peak (2015)

When aspiring author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) goes to see an editor about a story she has written, she responds to his describing it as a ghost story by saying that it's actually "a story with a ghost in it." A similar sentiment could be applied to the film in which she finds herself, since Crimson Peak is not a horror film, but a film with horror in it. While it does feature spurting arteries, decaying corpses and a haunted house, most of those elements are employed sporadically, or are restricted to the film's exuberant finale. For most of its running time, it's a Gothic romance with a dash of sinister mystery thrown in for flavour.

Film Review: Begin Again (2013)

Writer-director John Carney had a surprise hit in 2007 with his lovely, lo-fi romance Once, in which a man and a woman (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) fall in love while composing music together. It was a thoroughly charming and winning story - one that was given extra resonance when the two leads fell in love in real life and toured together as The Swell Season - that felt like a scruffy, raw debut album, the kind that people fall madly in love to. If Once was Carney's "Funeral", then Begin Again is his "Neon Bible"; a slicker, more polished sophomore effort that has much the same romanticism that its predecessor had, but lacks that sense of intimacy.

Film Review: Enough Said (2013)

Whether or not you like Enough Said, the latest film from Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking, Please Give) will probably boil down to what you want from a comedy. Specifically, whether you value structure and plotting over character and performance, or vice versa. The film positively overflows with the latter, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini giving warm, funny and natural performances as a pair of divorcees who embark on a playful romance together, but those very graceful and unforced performances are in service of a plot which at times feels very awkward and contrived. In order to discuss the film in any depth, it's necessary to give away the set-up, which is admittedly established fairly early on, but if you're really spoiler-adverse consider that fair warning.

Film Review: A Guy Named Joe (1943)

After America entered World War II in the wake of Pearl Harbour, there was a raft of Hollywood films dedicated to making the case for war in ways both subtle and not. The Ox-Bow Incident, for example, is a Western about the dangers of mob mentality and the terrible things that can happen when good men do nothing. It's a story that could have been told at any time, yet the context of when it was produced and released - not to mention the inclusion of a card asking viewers to buy War Bonds at the end - indicate how film-makers were using their art to support the national cause.

Film Review: Happy Together (1997)

The cinema of Wong Kar-wai tends towards the romantic, both in terms of its stories and visuals. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are about people falling in love and moving slowly, inexorably towards each other, and whether or not they end up together at the end is in some sense less important than the process itself. This is also true of his style, which replicates the sensory experience of modern life through its visual exuberance and, particularly in his earlier films, its kineticism and eclecticism. In his films, the images themselves tend to be as important - if not more so - than the events being depicted since they are key to getting across the atmosphere and texture of his world, which is one of love and the senses.

Film Review: Tabu (2012)

Shot in gorgeous black-and-white and, at least initially, set in Lisbon between Christmas and New Year, Miguel Tomes' Tabu introduces us to three women; Pilar (Teresa Madruga), Aurora (Laura Soveral) and Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso). Pilar is kind to a fault, and she dedicates her time to helping people, either through actions or through prayer. Despite her kindness, her life seems sad and unfulfilled, an idea which is never spoken of, but which Gomes illustrates - in the best moment of the whole film -  by showing Pilar quietly sobbing in a cinema. Pilar is a fascinating character whose unspecified melancholia colours the entirety of the first half of the film, which is appropriately titled "Lost Paradise" (though this title has a more specific meaning in relation to the second half of the film, it also speaks to Pilar's nostalgia or pining for something she can't articulate).