Festival Review: The Program (2015)
★★★☆☆
With an outstanding performance from Ben Foster, Stephen Frears’ The Program gets bogged down in intricately retelling the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong.
★★★☆☆
With an outstanding performance from Ben Foster, Stephen Frears’ The Program gets bogged down in intricately retelling the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong.
★★★☆☆
The energetic and sassy tale of two transgender hookers in West Hollywood, Sean Baker’s Tangerine takes friendship and revenge to the streets.
★★★★☆
Winning Oscars for his Roman Holiday and The Brave One scripts, Hollywood blacklister Dalton Trumbo becomes an unlikely hero in Jay Roach’s Trumbo.
★★★☆☆
After An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala brings Malala Yousafzai’s story to the masses. Just a little too easily.
★★★☆☆
A violent exploration of civil war in West Africa, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts Of No Nation is a powerful portrait of a continent thrown into darkness.
★★★★☆
A female road-trip with a devastating performance from Lily Tomlin, Paul Weitz’s Grandma delves into feminism past, present and future.
★★★★☆
Bringing a fearsome pace and inescapable style to Shakespeare’s tragedy of murderous ambition, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is a luscious, bloody triumph.
★★★☆☆
Recreating a brief episode in James Dean’s life, Anton Corbijn’s Life sees the icon on the cusp of fame thanks to a series of photographs for Life magazine.
★★★★☆
Ain’t no mountain high enough, Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest climbs the nuts and bolts of the fight to the summit without descending into human conflict.
★★★★☆
Evoking the last days of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini lets the controversial Italian filmmaker’s thoughts and ideas do the scandalising.
★★★★☆
David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn is a surreal and painfully accurate portrayal of isolation that features the most essential Pacino performance in over a decade.
★★★★☆
With Paul Dano and John Cusack embodying the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy is a triumph of performance and the creative force.
★★☆☆☆
Boasting a stellar cast of Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Izzard and Kathy Bates, François Girard’s The Choir belts out one disappointing cliché after another.
★★★★☆
Charting the rise, fall and rise again of Nina Simone, Liz Garbus’s What Happened, Miss Simone? creates an icon of the High Priestess of Soul.