Category: REVIEWS

Tehran: City of Love is a tragic comedy about three strangers all trying to find a better life, until they suddenly find their lives changing in ways they never expected. Hessem (Amir Hessam Bakhitiari) is a professional body builder turned personal trainer who has aspirations of being an actor, willing to do almost anything to be a star.

Vahid (Mehdi Saki) is a singer whose wife has left him, just as his career picks up and he starts singing for weddings, and Mina (Forough Ghajabagli) is a lonely plastic surgeon’s receptionist who likes to call up the handsome clients she finds and pretends to be somebody else. All three stories are knowingly sad but also have a great spark of humour as their stories play out, even as they find themselves crossing paths.

The second film from writer/director Ali Jaberansari, Tehran: City of Love is played with a wry smile to the audience as the film shows the lives of its seemingly disconnected cast who all share at least one thing in common. The film talks about the world as it is today and the path to perfection that many will take in order to fulfil their dreams or simply to make themselves feel better.

As sad as that may be, unfortunately these themes are universal. However, the audience are never supposed to directly laugh at the main cast, because their stories are so relatable and even if the irony of their stories may seem a little contrived in places, the audience may even find a little of Hessem, Vahid and Mina in themselves.

Out of the three stories, Mina’s journey to find love and to acceptance, is by far the best part of the film. Ghajabagli’s performance is funny and yet endearing, so the audience never really pities her nor see her as a hateful character. Even as Mina is pretending to be somebody completely different on the phone to the handsome clients she meets, the audience still warms to her because, perhaps somewhere in their minds, they would love to have the courage to pull of something so wicked themselves.

This is not your typical romantic comedy where everything ends happily and is tied up nicely before the end credits. However, as the credits roll, perhaps the audience will start to think about their own lives and want to grab the opportunities that life gives them, before it’s too late.

By Fergus Henderson. The inevitable Downton Abbey film has finally arrived, which means it’s the perfect time to examine perhaps the best of that breed of British films that encases in amber the late Victorian aristocracy and their swooning antics, 1971’s The Go-Between. What sets this film apart from the rest of that considerable canon are the two main creatives helming it, director Joseph Losey, and writer Harold Pinter. 

The Go-Between is ostensibly the tale of a young boy, Leo (Dominic Guard), a guest in the country estate of the dandy Maudsleys. He becomes besotted by the older Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie at an indisputable career peak), who in turn is having a secret affair with burly working class farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates). No one can know, as Marian is due to marry the much posher Hugh (Edward Fox). Soon Leo, in a bid to win Marian’s affections, begins delivering their messages, ignorant to what he is really doing.

Now this is ostensibly the story, but as you know, that story could quite easily be done by rote, a simple melodrama of colliding passions and forbidden love. Thankfully, The Go-Between is the third and best collaboration between Losey and Pinter, two absolute masters of subtext and emotion, and so it is truly the best version of that story, the version that expresses its full complexity. 

It is a tale of youth and the winding journey from innocence to experience, one imbued with perversion and fatalism. It is a barbed tale of class, and the repression and expression of anger and sadness. It is doomed love, witnessed by a third party who becomes drawn destructively into it. It is, finally, an elliptically told story that looks back on the past but that seems to be saying that the present is the real mystery. 

The whole thing is so gorgeous and tragic and enigmatic that is easy to forget how perfectly all of its components come together. You have Michel Legrand’s soundtrack, a dramatic cascade of piano scales that gives voice to the passion and drama the characters must keep hidden. There is Julie Christie, there is Alan Bates, both straining invisibly at the class hierarchies that bind them, acting as perfectly as anyone ever has. Behind it all you have Losey’s signature subtle weirdness, coming through in the modernist editing and taut camera work.

It is hard to put into words what really makes this film work as well, and as singularly, as it does. Perhaps it is because Losey was an American, blacklisted and exiled from his home during the McCarthy era, who found his new home (and a renewed and developed artistic expression) in England. Perhaps it is because Pinter was a writer of such talent that Marian’s mother can ask Leo “what have you seen?” and a whole world of pain and suspicion and betrayal can sound out from underneath her words. Perhaps it is that both were fundamentally outsiders to the subject matter. 

Whatever it was, the stars rarely align as perfectly as they did when Losey and Pinter decided to make this film. Seek it out, it is truly ageless. 

The Goldfinch: The BRWC Review. Theodore Decker was 13 years old when his mother was killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The tragedy changes the course of his life, sending him on a stirring odyssey of grief and guilt, reinvention and redemption, and even love. Through it all, he holds on to one tangible piece of hope from that terrible day — a painting of a tiny bird chained to its perch.

John Crowley’s lastest feature film The Goldfinch is a fascinating one, not so much because the end result is amazing, but rather, it is fascinating because we often see glimmers of greatness sprinkled throughout the film as the plot progresses, but so many things often hold it back from being spectacular.

Crowley is obviously an extremely talented filmmaker, coming off the success of the Academy Award nominated historial period drama Brooklyn, which, much like The Goldfinch, was also a book to screen adaptation. It was the first time in which people really took notice of him as a truly talented force to be reckoned with in the industry. He even worked on the critically acclaimed television drama True Detective.

All signs pointed to this movie being one to look out for come awards season. Crowley’s direction, the highly talented cast, and the director of photography being Roger Deakins, who is one of the most admired cinematographers working in the industry.

Why does The Goldfinch not work? A large reason as to why is because of the screenplay, unfortunately. Donna Tartt’s groundbreaking novel was adored by millions due to its gripping story, interesting characters, and powerful moments. In the film adaptation however, these are elements that are strangely lacking. A ton of the dialogue in the film comes across as dull and it feels as if it is only there to keep the plot moving. The movie, while two and a half hours long, at times feels like it rushes things.

It is also one of those films that really does not have any memorable scenes whatsoever. This is such a disappointing aspect due to the source material being the exact opposite. The film, while faithful to the novel, never reaches the emotional heights that Tartt’s novel did.

The editing and musical choices for some of the sequences came across as a bit jarring and strange as well. It is nowhere near Bohemian Rhapsody level bad editing, but there are so many scenes where there are an abundance of quick cuts in one sequence that it can be frustrating.

Ansel Elgort is a grown up version of the lead character Theodore “Theo” Decker in The Goldfinch, which was something highly exciting for me. Elgort has proved himself in recent years to be an incredible actor, with great films such as The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver under his belt. His performance here is genuinely really good thankfully. The same can be said about the rest of the cast as well. Nicole Kidman, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, and company are all really good in an otherwise lackluster motion picture.

My favorite element of this entire movie however, is the cinematography by Roger Deakins. Ever since my love of films began, he has been my all-time favorite cinematographer. He is responsible for some of the most beautiful looking movies ever, such as Blade Runner 2049, Prisoners, Skyfall, and No Country for Old Men attached to his filmography just to name a few. His shots are so good that it seems like he could film grass growing on somebody’s lawn and it would be interesting and beautiful to look at. All of the shots in The Goldfinch are truly amazing to look at, and there is really never a boring looking shot in the whole movie gladly.

While the cast is great and it has terrific cinematography from Roger Deakins, The Goldfinch is a disappointingly boring, slow, and uninspired film.

“A bold girl discovers a bizarre, threatening, and mysterious new world beyond her front door after she escapes her father’s protective and paranoid control.”

Freaks is a sci-fi thriller that follows 7 year old Chloe as she tries to make sense of her father’s erratic behaviour. They are holed up in a dilapidated suburban house, running through “safety drills”, which include Chloe reciting personal information: “My name is Eleanor Reed, I am 7 years old, my favourite sport is baseball”

Paranoid dad, Henry (Emile Hirch), walks a fine line to keep the audience guessing for the first 20 minutes or so—Is he telling the truth, or completely delusional? Lexy Kolker’s headstrong Chloe is reminiscent of a young Drew Barrymore, and Bruce Dern is a good fit as cantankerous Mr Snowcone.

Freaks should pique the interest of anyone who enjoyed Monsters (2010), Looper (2012) or the first season of  Umbrella Academy (2019-).

Freaks takes Marvelesque mutants and puts them in an environment akin to Shyamalan’s shaky supernatural joint Signs (2002). Although it contains all the right elements Freaks struggles to break new ground. It is not just the abundance of X-Men-type stories of recent years that causes Freaks to suffer, but our new viewing habits.

Freaks runs to just over 100 minutes, which is on the short side for a feature these days, but it was a surprise to be left thinking “is that it?” I am now so accustomed to watching at least a handful of episodes back-to-back that I think a 1 hour 40 minute film is unfinished. I may have finally noticed the Netflix effect. Freaks did not need to be any longer—the story was complete. But maybe the presence of Grace Park reminded me of BSG binges.  

 Read the BRWC interview with directors Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein here