News

Irish director Lance Daly's Life's a Breeze faces a curious dilemma. How to depict the degrading effects of poverty when your central character, 79-year-old grandmother Nan (Fionnula Flanagan), lives in squalor by choice, having saved up close to a million euros? Her problems begin when her extended family, realizing that she's a virtual contender for Hoarding: Buried Alive, throws out most of her possessions, including the mattress where she's stashed the money. Led by her dim son Colm (Pat Shortt), they then go on a wild chase in search of it. Along the way, Nan and Colm's teenage niece Emma (Kelly Thornton) share many pleasant moments of conversation. Ken Loach's recent comedies of working-class life seem to be Daly's main inspiration here. Life's ...

Not a huge update today as we begin with an amended rating reason for The Raid 2: Berandal as the reason for the R-rating has gone from being for "strong bloody violence throughout, sexuality and language" to being for "sequences of strong bloody violence throughout, sexuality and language." See, that word "sequences" is a big deal because I think there must be about 5 or 10 minutes where there isn't any strong bloody violence, sexuality or language. Those moments are called end and opening credits. Next is the rating for the Think Like a Man sequel due in June, Think Like a Man Too. For some reason I remembered the first one as an R-rated movie, but it was only PG-13. This one is no different. I've included the full ratings bulletin below. Alongside Night Rated PG-13 For some sexual references, violence and drug content. Doc Holliday's Revenge Rated PG-13 For some western violence.

Leviathan | Saving Mr Banks | Carrie | Jeune & Jolie | Marius, Fanny | Saving Santa | The Best Man Holiday | Free Birds | Day Of The Flowers | Life's A Breeze

Leviathan (12A)

(Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, 2012, Fra/UK/Us) 87 mins

An arthouse fishing-trawler documentary sounds like a practical joke, but this takes us to places we've never before – into the ocean depths and back out on to the decks with the catch. It's a series of dark, semi-abstract tableaux full of flapping fish, clanking machinery and tattooed fishermen doing wet, gory work. It's easy to forget this is real life you're watching.

Saving Mr Banks (PG)

(John Lee Hancock, 2013, Us) Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson. 125 mins

How Walt Disney came to make Mary Poppins was hardly a pressing movie mystery, and one suspects a spoonful of drama has been added, but the leads are eminently watchable.

Carrie (15)

(Kimberly Peirce, 2013, Us) Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore. 100 mins

Brian De Palma...

Blue Is The Warmest Colour | The Hunger Games: Catching Fire | Computer Chess : Parkland | The Family | Breakfast With Johnny Wilkinson | Flu | ¡Vivan Las Antipodas! | Vendetta

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (18)

(Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013, Fra/Bel/Sp) Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux, Jérémie Laheurte. 180 mins

Beyond making viewers feel lecherous, this Cannes winner's already notorious sexual frankness is just one element in an intense, sensual study of a young woman learning about love, life and, yes, sex. It's storytelling at its finest: simple but detailed, and at times unbearably emotional.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (12A)

(Francis Lawrence, 2013, Us) Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson. 146 mins

The only post-Twilight teen franchise left standing brings media manipulation and simmering revolution to its next round of youth combat.

Computer Chess (15)

(Andrew Bujalski, 2013, Us) Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James Curry. 91 mins

The cruddy video quality and geeky insularity of the early computing era are fondly rebooted in this delightful retro farce.

When did we become too cynical for a feel good comedy? It doesn't seem like that long ago, really, that quirky indies - largely hailing from the UK - celebrated blue collar roots with simple, funny stories of regular people in odd situations and went on to become significant hits. I'm thinking movies like The Full Monty, Billy Elliott and Waking Ned Devine here.That sort of filmmaking appears to have been largely abandoned in more recent years but Lance Daly's Irish effort Life's A Breeze - just announced as a selection of the Toronto International Film Festival - feels very much lake a blast from that particular past.The story here revolves around a family who try to do grandma a favor by clearing up her...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...