How tough a job is teaching and disciplining a bunch of lively, but often disinterested and unmotivated students? The engaging French dramedy School Life (La Vie Scolaire) explores that question. A new vice-principal, Samia Zibra (Zita Hanrot), arrives at a school in economically disadvantaged Saint-Denis. She wants to do all she can to make a…
Christmas cheer is not all it’s cracked up to be for one “happy” couple in Clea DuVall’s holiday comedy Happiest Season. Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) live together and are in love. It is the holiday season and during a night visiting suburban homes festooned with lights, Harper invites Abby to share the…
A haunting tale of desperation and regret, Let Him Go packs a punch. We’re in rural Montana in the early 1960s. George Blackledge (Kevin Costner) is a former lawman, but when it comes to “my way or the highway”. His wife Margaret (Diane Lane ) rules the roost. Once she gets an idea in her…
A spoof on mercenary Hollywood producers, The Comeback Trail delighted me. It features three of the biggest stars in the business. It’s Hollywood, 1974. Max Barber (Robert De Niro) is a producer whose lack of success in churning out D-grade dirges precedes him. Barber works in partnership with his nephew, Walter Creason (Zach Braff), although…
Something is not quite right with talented artist Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko) in Paula van der Oest’s The Bay of Silence. One minute the mother of young twin daughters is exuberant and full of life. The next, she’s sullen and suspicious. She sleepwalks and claws at the walls. Then she meets and falls for Will (Claes…
John Hyams’ psychological thriller Alone has twists aplenty. This two-hander set in the Pacific Northwest kept me engaged throughout. Six months ago, Jessica (Jules Willcox) lost her husband in tragic circumstances. Now she’s decided to move away. Her parents were going to help her pack, but she decided to do it alone and avoid especially…
While a largely enjoyable romp, The Mystery of Henri Pick becomes too convoluted for its own good. Henri Pick made pizzas for a living in France’s Brittany region. No one could have guessed was a gifted author (so much so that he could juxtapose Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin with the last throes of a relationship)?…
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa is world’s most famous painting by the world’s most famous artist in the world’s most famous museum. And it’s just one of the works featured in the remarkable, insightful documentary A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci. The film is based around an exhibition that closed at the…
A mind-numbing comedy for senior citizens, Never Too Late relies on fanciful nonsense to move the story forward. A voice-over by Jacqui Weaver as Norma McCarthy sets the scene. Norma once met a handsome soldier Jack Bronson (played as an elderly gent by James Cromwell) the day before he shipped out to Vietnam. If he’d…
In Curtis Vowell’s comedy Baby Done, outdoorsy Zoe (Rose Matafeo) works as an arborist, alongside her boyfriend Tim (Matthew Lewis). Theirs is a happy union. All their coupled-up friends seem to be having babies, but the thought of being tied down makes Zoe shudder. And then she discovers she’s pregnant. Shellshocked Zoe doesn’t tell Tim…
