2014
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Begin Again
When I sat watching writer/director John Carney’s latest movie that was hoping to follow on with the surprise success of his last hit, instead of being enthralled by the warbling tones of singer/songwriter Gretta on screen I just couldn’t get a certain Sondheim lyric out of my head. ‘Once, yes, once for a lark, Twice, though,…
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Bethlehem
This tense taut thriller is about yet another deadly incident in the ongoing struggle in the Middle East and was written by a former Israeli Secret Agent and a Palestinian journalist. Yet despite its bipartisan credentials the overwhelming feeling that you come away after watching ‘Bethlehem’ is that the world is split into different camps…
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IDA
It’s hard to decide exactly what period this new cinematic masterpiece from Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski is set in with its austere dramatic settings that look like they have remained unchanged for centuries. This unforgiving bleak countryside that seems to have escaped any attempt at modernisation is in fact 1962 but you have this sinking feeling that…
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Up To The World aka Il Mondo Fino In Fondo
When 18 year old Davide returns home after college to the provincial industrial town in Northern Italy he is expected to join the family firm just like his much older brother. Loris is only 35 but bears all the stresses of the struggling business and tries to juggle that with sharing his wife’s anxiety that…
