Drama

Directed by celebrated painter Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year old Parisian fashion editor and playboy who, at the zenith of wealth and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from “locked in syndrome”, where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world.

Bauby wakes up in hostpital from a coma to find himself paralysed from head to toe and unable to speak. The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid, which he uses to communicate. The pretty speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) recites the alphabet in the order of most frequently used letters, and Bauby chooses a letter by blinking. Thus, letter by letter, blink by blink, he ‘dictates’ his extraordinary memoir on which this film is based.
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In this now-classic 90’s horror, two mismatched policemen follow a serial killer with a biblical bent, trying to establish a pattern to his murders. The subject matter certainly won’t win brownie points for originality, but this exceptionally nasty thriller twists these familiar elements into a gripping and claustrophobic web of tension.

In a grim, anonymous city which seems to experience constant rainfall, steady-handed veteran Detective William Somerset is preparing to retire from the force, weary of the horror and apathy that surrounds him. But before he does so, he is matched with Detective David Mills, a young cop with a can-do attitude who has recently moved from a smaller town with his sweet-tempered wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). The pair form the modern detective cliché – the wise old hand and the cocky young upstart who gradually learn to rub along.
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Love in the Time of Cholera is based on the sumptuous, florid novel by Nobel Prize winning Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez. The film adaptation by Mike Newell, who is best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, just goes to show that the best novels rarely work well on the big screen.

The setting is the small Columbian town of Cartanega around the year 1900. The young clerk Florentino (played by Unax Ugalde as a teenager and Javier Bardem as an adult) catches a glimpse of wealthy beauty Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) through an open window as he is going about on an errand. A poet of sorts, Florentino eventually wins Fermina’s heart by writing letters to her and the two embark on a breathless courtship (complete with Romeo and Juliet balcony scene).

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The beguilingly titled Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is based on writer/director’s Dai Saijie’s best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name. Set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution during the 1970’s, the film centres around two adolescents who have committed the sin of being born to “reactionary” parents – doctors who dared to suggest that Chairman Mao might not be entirely perfect. On account of their background, the boys are sent on a rural “re-education” camp where they are to learn the virtues of Maoist thinking and hard work, which includes much lugging of human excrement up a hill.

However, their gruelling stay is brightened by meeting the captivating daughter of the local tailor, known simply as the Little Seamstress (the boys never bother to find out her actual name). An uneducated peasant, the two bourgeois city-boys seek to open her mind through forbidden Western novels which they have stolen from another member of the camp — classics from the likes of Dickens, Flaubert and, yes, Balzac, the Little Seamstress’ favourite. The boys also read “The Count of Monte Christo” to the old grandfather, which inspires him to add many elegant details to his garments.

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Directed, written and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!. This masterful epic, spanning the first three decades of the twentieth century, centres on the loathsome and unflinching silver miner-cum-oilman Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a man driven entirely by greed and his hatred of people (“I look at people and I see nothing worth liking”), who will go to any measures to stifle all competition.

The film opens with a 15 minute wordless sequence in which Plainview is seen toiling as a silver-miner. On the basis of a tip-off from a visitor named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview travels with his adoptive son to the town of Little Boston, California, where the Sunday family home is brimming with oil.

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Noah Baumbach is the king of dysfunctional, and in this follow up to The Squid and the Whale he gives us another bite at the cherry as he explores the way in which families can be both a blessing and a curse.

The central relationship this time round is sisterhood. Waspish short-story writer Margot (Nicole Kidman) takes her 11-year-old son Claud (Zane Pais) to Long Island where her estranged and nervy Sister Pauline is about to marry unemployed artist Malcolm (Jack Black). As well as a wish to bury the hatchet, Margot, who has recently separated from her husband, has some intentions of her own. She hopes to hook up with old flame and fellow writer Dick (Ciarán Hinds), with whom she is also jointly holding a talk.
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On a sultry summer day in 1935 an upper-class family prepares for a dinner party at their country mansion. Precocious 13 year old Briony is looking for drama, and writes a playlet to be performed in front of the adults. When the thing falls flat she goes for a walk, and observing her elder sister Cecilia stripping off after a strange argument with Robbie, the housekeeper’s son, Briony’s fevered imagination and sexual naïveté lead her to make a dramatic false accusation which sees Robbie sent to jail. Five years later the drama moves to World War II. Briony, estranged from her sister, embarks on a nursing career in a lifelong struggle to atone for her single terrible lie which destroys the lives of a whole family. Cecilia has also become a nurse, while Robbie is a footsoldier preparing for the Dunkirk evacuation.

In this powerful and sumptuous adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) deserves praise for bringing the novel’s major themes - betrayal, redemption, sexual repression, and the unreliability of narrative - to the big screen. Wright likes to give us extended close-ups which bring the characters’ repressed emotions to the fore – Robbie’s clouded brow disguising the hurt of betrayal and discrimination; Cecilia’s jaunty visage which breaks into a warm smile when she encounters her beloved Robbie.

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Control is the beautifully shot biopic of Ian Curtis - the frontman for the short-lived but immeasurably influential post-punk group Joy Division - the screenplay of which is loosely based upon the widowed Deborah Curtis’ memoir Touching from a Distance.

As such, the film documents the slow-burning rise of Joy Division, playing numerous toilet venues before being lined up for a two-week American tour, which is inversely paralleled by Curtis growing illness, withdrawal from his surroundings and eventual death.

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With the second season of the hit sci-fi serial Heroes due to touch down on BBC2 anytime soon, everything Heroes-related has been flying off the shelves like hotcakes of late.

According to our sources, the Season 1 box set has been one of the most requested items on customers wish lists, as subscribers have been keen to take advantage of the fact that multi-disc box sets (sensibly) only count as one order, and those on unlimited plans can keep hold of an order for as long as they want. (more…)