Review - Smashed

Kate Hannah (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is what's known as a "functioning alcoholic." She and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul) habitually drink themselves into a stupor every night, but as long as she manages to drag herself into work on time – after waking herself up with a few shots – she feels that her problem is under control. Smashed is a film about Kate's gradual loss of control, and her decision to finally confront the lifestyle that's gradually destroying her. The breaking point is reached when a drunken night ends with Kate smoking crack and blacking out, before waking up the next morning in the middle of nowhere. She returns home with a fresh desire to straighten herself out, but how can she do so when she is surrounded by booze and boozers?

Smashed is good at showing how recovering alcoholics need to escape damaging environments in order to overcome their dependency. Kate and Charlie's drink-fuelled nights have bonded them together throughout their marriage, but her withdrawal from that scene immediately puts a strain on their relationship. Now sober, Kate finds herself less able to relate to the man she married, and she begins making new friends, through her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which push Charlie even further out of the equation. The question that Kate will ultimately have to ask herself in Smashed is whether a clean break with Charlie will be necessary in order to fully commit to a life without drink.

Smashed is the second feature for director James Ponsoldt, whose debut Off the Black also dealt with an alcoholic protagonist. He co-wrote the film with Susan Burke, who drew inspiration from her own battle with drink in her early 20s, but although Burke is a stand-up comic, her writing here is earnest rather than comedic. In fact, the scenes in which Burke attempts to inject a little humour often result in the film's weakest moments, with the fake pregnancy subplot being by far its most jarring misstep. This turn of events comes about when Kate inexplicably claims to be pregnant (rather than simply unwell) in order to excuse the hungover vomiting witnessed by her young students, a lie that quickly gathers momentum among her colleagues. While this narrative strand conveys the build-up of lies that an addict often concocts to hide her secret, but it feels out of place here.

The film is at its best when it creates an intimate focus on Kate and allows Mary Elizabeth Winstead the time and space to do some very impressive work. This is a strong, sincere performance from the actress, who convincingly walks the fine line between a happy, sociable drunk and a reckless, desperate one. The two most powerful moments in the film come in Kate's AA meetings, where she delivers her heartfelt monologues with the air of someone determined to turn a corner but unsure if she'll have the strength to do so. Smashed is very much Winstead's show, but it feels like it should be a two-hander. As Charlie, Aaron Paul is fine with the material he's given, but he isn't given much to do with his limited characterisation. He's generally just a drunken presence loitering on the edge of scenes, and by the time he starts to snap into focus towards the end it's too late for us to feel the real sense of loss which we should feel in this breakdown of this marriage.

Ultimately, what hurts Smashed is the sense that it all feels so rushed. The film runs for a shade over 80 minutes and that tight construction leaves much of it feeling oddly truncated. Nick Offerman's character transitions, from attentive colleague to creepily over-attentive pervert and back again, come out of nowhere; Octavia Spencer only has a few lines; Mary Kay Place feels like she could have played a more telling role as Kate's heavy-drinking mother. Beefing up these supporting players and creating more tangible, convincing relationships could have helped bring Smashed up to the level of its sterling lead performance. As it is, this feels like a film that's racing through the 12 steps with indecent haste.

Review - Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths opens with the murder of two hitmen, distracted from their vigilance by a meandering conversation about shooting people in the eyeball. This scene immediately sets the tone for Martin McDonagh's second feature as a director, with its self-consciously movie-sharp dialogue, bursts of sudden violence, and recognisable faces filling even the most expendable roles. McDonagh's debut film In Bruges had a great deal to admire before it collapsed in a dismal third act, but the new film doesn't build on that picture's promising aspects and instead we find McDonagh indulging in his least appealing excesses. McDonagh is undoubtedly a very clever man, but Seven Psychopaths appears to be about nothing more than its own cleverness.

Apparently written as a means of dealing with his own creative blockage, Seven Psychopaths is the story of a Hollywood-based Irish screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell), who is struggling with his latest project. He has already come up with a promising title – Seven Psychopaths – and he has a few scraps of ideas, but these ideas are leading him nowhere. Marty's best friend Billy, a reckless motormouth played with energetic relish by Sam Rockwell, jabbers away constantly in his ear, regaling the writer with tall tales and urban myths that he hopes will earn him a co-writer credit, and we see some of these stories in brief vignettes. A Viet Cong guerrilla dressed as a Catholic priest fraternises with an American prostitute; a Quaker seeks vengeance against the man who murdered his daughter. Later, a newspaper advert calling for psychopaths to share their own stories turns up Tom Waits, who recounts his days as a serial killer seeking out and murdering other psychopaths. How on earth is Marty – or McDonagh – supposed to fit all of this into his script?

Wayward and overstuffed, Seven Psychopaths never settles into any kind of rhythm or finds a satisfying narrative path. The movie is constantly interrupting and contradicting itself, and the impact of every event is undermined by a thick coating of irony. The film partially resembles Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation in its construction, deliberately torpedoing its own narrative structure to let one of its characters take command of the screenplay. As Rockwell's Billy grabs hold of Seven Psychopaths the film spirals out of control, but there's a sense that McDonagh wants to have it both ways with his critique of Hollywood storytelling structure, and this is never more evident than in the way the film's female characters are treated. Gabourey Sidibe, Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurylenko deserve better than the cheap roles afforded to them here (Kurylenko's screen time is laughably truncated despite her prominence on the poster); and while McDonagh makes this part of the big joke, having characters criticise Marty's ability to write women, it's a joke that leaves a nasty aftertaste.

Too much of Seven Psychopaths is like that. McDonagh is a gifted writer and with this cast spouting his dialogue the film undeniably has its amusing moments, but the picture is too cruel, contrived and soulless to be really funny. Whereas the narrative transitions in Adaptation felt organic and thematically sound, the road Seven Psychopaths ultimately goes down feels forced, and there's nothing like the emotional heft that Kaufman's script created between the two protagonists. The only resonance here comes from Christopher Walken, whose distinctive delivery feels so right for McDonagh, and whose lived-in performance as a dognapper with a shady past comes closest to providing Seven Psychopaths with its one character who feels real. The best scene in the film is one of its quietest, a hospital face-off between Walken and Woody Harrelson's agitated gangster, and the quality of such small moments makes me despair that so much talent and potential has been wasted on this empty and nasty shaggy-dog story.

Review - Starbuck

Building your film upon a high-concept storyline that stretches credibility to breaking point is a risky strategy that results in failure in most cases. Surprisingly, Ken Scott's comedy Starbuck manages to ride out its unlikely narrative all the way to a satisfying finale, thanks to a screenplay full of neat surprises and a pair of lead performances that bring a grounded charm to this fantastical tale. Patrick Huard is David Wozniak, a 42 year-old slacker and habitual fuckup who spends much of his time dodging local heavies over an unpaid debt and swerving commitment questions from his girlfriend. The event that shakes up David's life is a blast from the past. During the 1980s, he made money be donating sperm under the pseudonym "Starbuck" and it turns out that he is now the unwitting father of 533 children, 140 of whom now want to know who he is.

This revelation forces David into hiding, and he hires his friend Avocat (Antoine Bertrand) to plead his case for anonymity in the courts, but curiosity draws him back to the bundle of profiles left with him by the lawyer hired by his offspring. That curiosity is stoked further when he discovers one of his sons is the star player on his local football team, and soon David is tracking down the rest of his offspring, stalking them and attempting to inconspicuously intervene in their lives like a shabby guardian angel. This aspect of Ken Scott and Martin Petit's screenplay is rather contrived and episodic, and the picture is littered with subplots and loose ends that don't quite gel, but Starbuck gets away with it, largely because it is consistently very funny.

The motor of the movie is a tremendous lead performance from Huard, whose innate amiability and sincerity encourages to stick with the character as he travels across his uneven arc. The scenes in which David bonds with his own kin – unbeknownst to them – are finely judged, with sentimentality just about held at bay. His meeting with his mentally handicapped son could have been too mawkish to bear, but Huard makes us believe in his characters conflicted emotions and Scott skilfully dictates the tone of these tricky scenes. The other standout performance in the film comes from Bertrand, as the small-time lawyer tackling the biggest case of his life in defence of his best friend. This exuberant and endearing actor is responsible for some of the film's biggest laughs; from his bewildered reactions to David's predicament to his heartfelt but clumsy courtroom performance towards the film's climax.

Starbuck finally lets sentimentality win during its saccharine closing moments, but the fact that Scott has kept the movie above water for so long is testament to his inventive storytelling and confident direction of actors. It's one of the funniest and most satisfying comedies released this year and it deserves to find an audience, but will it have the opportunity to be a breakout hit? An English-language US remake of Starbuck is already in production with Scott, strangely, taking the directorial reins on this second version of his story. Will that picture share this Canadian production's understated charm? Will Vince Vaughn be capable of following Huard's terrific lead turn? Perhaps the remake will prove to be a worthwhile endeavour, but right now this Starbuck is the one to see, while you have the chance.

Review - Gambit

The chief selling point for Gambit is not the cast, or the director (unless you're one of the few people who really loved Michael Hoffman's The Last Station) but the screenplay, which bears the name of Joel and Ethan Coen. They have written a remake of the 1966 film, in which Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine played a pair of crooks, but the fact that the Coens have handed this script off to another filmmaker rather than opting to direct it themselves suggests it may not up to their usual standards. It doesn't take long for that suspicion to solidify into fact as this film lurches from one awkward comic set-piece to another, struggling to raise more than a handful of chuckles from a narrative that feels like a first draft in dire need of revision.

Many of those chucklesome moments come courtesy of Colin Firth, who is ideally cast as British art curator Harry Deane, a man not quite as smart and debonair as he imagines himself to be. Gambit opens with Deane in Texas, on the trailer of rodeo rider PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz), whom he intends to involve in a con that will trick Harry's obnoxious boss Shabandar (Alan Rickman) into buying a counterfeit Monet. He explains his plan to PJ, and over the next ten minutes we see that plan being executed with consummate ease and professionalism, but everything we see is unfolding inside Harry's head. Harry's scheme isn't as foolproof as he thinks, Shabandar isn't as gullible as he thinks, and PJ isn't quite the smooth operator that he expects.

This structural trick is a neat idea – one of the film's neatest – but as it's lifted wholesale from the original movie it leaves you wondering what this picture has to offer that's fresh. The answer is: not a great deal, with most of the gags and stereotypical characterisations feeling like relics from the 1960s carelessly reheated. The film's biggest set-piece involves Firth being caught trouserless in a series of compromising situations as he snoops around the Savoy and clambers precariously from one window to another. Firth's attempt to maintain a dignified air in farcical conditions ekes a few mild laughs out of this setup, while Julian Rhind-Tutt's perfectly judged reaction shots score a couple more, but the sequence has nowhere to go, and when a punchline is required all it can offer is a fart gag. It might be unfair to expect Coen-like precision from any directors taking on their material, but Hoffman's heavy hand is all wrong for this; what should feel tight and manic instead feels obvious, flabby and lifeless.

Gambit collapse completely in its dismayingly lame third act, but the actors deserve some credit for full applying themselves under trying circumstances. Rickman's dry delivery is perfect for Shabandar and Tom Courtney is good value with the little he's given to do, but a couple of the actors attack their roles with a little too much misplaced enthusiasm. Stanley Tucci's camp German art expert is not this usually reliable actor's finest hour, while Cameron Diaz's best moments in the film occur within its first twenty minutes, before she opens her mouth and starts to speak. It's all downhill from there.

Could the Coens, or any other filmmakers, have made Gambit work? I'm sure they could – the central plot is a solid enough basis for a good farce – but the effort and inspiration required to do so is completely lacking. This film required a rewrite and a change of personnel on both sides of the camera before being ready for production; instead it has limped into cinemas half-baked and looking very sorry for itself. The posters for Gambit feature the names of the Coen brothers prominently, while the director's credit is nowhere to be seen, but enticing viewers with the promise of their level of excellence may be the biggest con trick of all.

Review - Anna Karenina

If you type "Anna Karenina" into the IMDb, you'll be presented with more than two dozen feature films, TV-movies, miniseries and shorts bearing that title, so perhaps a little fresh thinking is required to justify yet another screen adaptation. The latest screen version, directed by Joe Wright and scripted by Tom Stoppard, is certainly unusual and distinctive, with the filmmakers bringing a sense of theatrical artifice to Tolstoy's novel. But while we may be inclined to applaud such out-of-the-box thinking, it's hard to escape the notion that it is a complete misfire. There's nothing wrong with the intention – we've all seen enough conventional and lifeless literary adaptations to last a lifetime – and there's not much wrong with the slick execution either, but in practice it simply proves to be a completely wrongheaded approach to this material.

Anna Karenina largely unfolds inside a theatre, with the world of 19^th century St. Petersburg being recreated onstage, backstage and in the surrounding balconies. Transitions involve characters simply wandering from one scene to the next – often as a backdrop is pulled away and extras change clothes behind them – and occasionally the players will all freeze as a spotlight draws our focus towards particular individuals, lost in their own private drama. Wright even uses a model train set instead of opting for expensive external or CGI-assisted shots; a charming touch that exemplifies the old-fashioned, creative, collaborative spirit infusing the whole production. Whether these decisions were driven by the director's particular vision or by the limited financial means at the filmmakers' disposal, they certainly give us an Anna Karenina that stands alone.

Whether it actually stands up under scrutiny is another matter entirely. There's nothing in Tolstoy's novel that suggests such an approach; after all, the book's realism in depicting Russian city and farming life, and in the richness of its character studies, is one of its defining features. Perhaps the idea being explored here is that St Petersburg is a stage with all of its inhabitants playing clearly defined roles, with their behaviour being constantly scrutinised by a whispering audience. This certainly appears to be the case in the way Wright handles the title character (Keira Knightly), who escapes her marriage to the dour Karenin (Jude Law) for an affair with the dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). It may also explain why the director opts for exterior shots when telling the story of Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), who toils the land and ponders his own romantic future with Kitty (Alicia Vikander) far from the chattering classes and social constraints of the city.

For about an hour, the sheer chutzpah of Wright's style commands the attention. At its best, Anna Karenina recalls Ophüls with its elegant camerawork and much-missed British mavericks like Powell & Pressburger or Ken Russell in its imaginative staging. But Wright is a shallow orchestrator of spectacle, and when the charm of his unconventional approach wears off, and when inspiration starts to run dry, the film has no dramatic weight to back it up. While most of the key incidents in the book are covered by Stoppard's screenplay, they are rendered in the glibbest terms. Anna's dissatisfaction with married life is given no context and her dalliance with Vronksy – which should feel like a passionate love worth throwing it all away for – feels rushed and forced. In its second half, Anna Karenina falls into a dull and repetitive rhythm with the theatrical setting only being fitfully utilised, and it rather plods towards a climax clumsily foreshadowed by repeated close-ups on the onrushing Train Wheels of Death.

Nobody wants to see another genteel period drama so trapped by the weight of prestige and propriety that it can barely breathe, but filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence), Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove) and Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) have shown how such adaptations can be modernised and revitalised in subtle, potent ways. Wright's Anna Karenina has numerous obvious problems, from the casting of Knightly, overawed by a role that demands too much of her, to the ludicrously limp Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a romantic lead; but its biggest problem is that beneath its enterprising aesthetic approach, the film remains cold to the touch. Only the relationship that develops on the fringes of the central narrative, between the well-cast and appealingly performed Levin and Kitty, comes close to stirring some sense of feeling. This film reduces Tolstoy's great novel to a superficial and awkward puppet show, but I can't bring myself to damn it too harshly, not when its failings are the direct result of its ambition and desire to be different. Anna Karenina may be a failure, but at least this unhappy movie is unhappy in its own way.

Blu-Ray Review - Cosmopolis

The Film

Some books don't lend themselves easily to film adaptation, and it seems that those books are the ones most likely to pique David Cronenberg's interest. In the past, the director has brought novels such as Naked Lunch and Crash to the screen and successfully made them his own, but Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis presents a set of particularly knotty filmmaking challenges. Set almost entirely within the confines of a stretch limousine, the film consists of a series of arch, epigrammatic conversations that mostly revolve around money and vaguely touch on a multitude of philosophical concerns, with its protagonist being a 28 year-old billionaire bored in his obscene wealth and cut off from the world. How do you make this story cinematic? Engaging? Relatable? If you're David Cronenberg, you do it by staying incredibly faithful to the source material.

The result is a film that has a tone and rhythm unlike any other, and it takes a while to get on the movie's wavelength. The actors deliver their often-cryptic dialogue in a strangely stilted, affectless manner, and in this respect the casting of Robert Pattinson was a masterstroke by Cronenberg. The actor who shot to fame by playing a vampire here plays Eric Packer as a man who seems just as bloodless. As he sits in the back of his limo and is informed of the money that his company is haemorrhaging, he displays no concern and barely any interest. What do you get the man who has everything? All Eric wants is a haircut, which is why this opulently designed vehicle is crawling across a Manhattan that has been locked down for the President's visit and the funeral of a rapper.

The last time Cronenberg made a film that involved automobiles so heavily it was Crash, in which the characters got their kicks from high-speed collisions. Here, the car proceeds at a crawl though the gridlocked traffic, which allows us ample time to observe the world through Eric's windows, and it's not a pretty sight. DeLillo wrote Cosmopolis after 9/11 but his view of a world falling apart has a different context to the one in Cronenberg's film. The anarchic protests that occur throughout the film, including dead rats being hurled (the idea of rats becoming a unit of currency is mentioned a number of times), speaks to our own troubled times, with the idea of a member of the rarefied 1% isolated from these scenes in his hermetically sealed, cork-lined limo working as a potent metaphor. The deeper Eric gets into this environment, the further removed he becomes from his ivory tower and space station-like car, the more human he starts to appear, and Pattinson is excellent in the way he modulates this gradual changes in his character.

Not everyone will want to go along with him for the ride, of course. Cosmopolis is so distant and clinical in its construction, so episodic in its narrative thrust, it will surely alienate many viewers, but there are ample pleasures here if you care to look for them. First of all, Cosmopolis is an impeccable work of direction, with Cronenberg and his excellent cinematographer Peter Suschitzky making the series of claustrophobic conversations inside the limousine absolutely mesmerising. The director's last two films have been two of the most verbose he has ever made, but Cosmopolis succeeds in all the ways A Dangerous Method failed; I found myself hanging on every word of the frequently impenetrable dialogue, riveted by the tension that the film creates between two people. It helps, of course, that he is a magnificent director of actors, and the performances that he draws from this large and imaginatively chosen cast couldn't be better. Sarah Gadon is a notable standout as Packer's wife (in an as yet unconsummated marriage), while Paul Giamatti brings a vital sense of ramshackle energy to the film's climactic scenes as a disgruntled member of Packer's workforce.

When Eric Packer asks a member of his security detail to stun him with a taser, or when he considers firing a gun through the palm of his own hand, it's an impulse borne from his desperate desire to feel something, anything; but what will viewers of Cosmopolis feel? The film may be a tough one to connect with on an emotional level, but its swirl of ideas and gleaming imagery make it one of the most intellectually and cinematically stimulating pictures of the year. It may even come to be regarded as a vital comment on the world we're living in, a world where "money talks to itself" and where the haves face increasing anger from the have-nots, who have taken to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the state of things. Cosmopolis is full of people having bewildering conversations and failing to connect in any recognisably human way, but from this 'unfilmable' novel, David Cronenberg has fashioned an extraordinary film that overcomes its artificiality to become all too real.

The Extras

I was disappointed to find no commentary from David Cronenberg on the disc because he's one of the best movie talkers in the business. Instead, we have half an hour of interview soundbites, but you can skip them and go straight to Citizens of Cosmopolis, a behind-the-scenes documentary that is just as long as the film itself. Exploring every aspect of the production, this feature offers some fascinating insights into how the film was made and allows us to watch this master filmmaker at work on set. Even if the film wasn't excellent, I'd recommend checking out the Cosmopolis DVD and blu-ray just for this documentary, which is one of the best extra features I've seen on a disc in years.

Buy Cosmopolis Here

Review - Skyfall

In movie terms, James Bond is celebrating his 50^th birthday this year, and in many respects Skyfall feels like it could act as a fitting swansong for the character. Of course, that won't happen – the Bond business is a very lucrative one to be in – but the manner in which this film keeps one foot in the past while telling a contemporary story lends the picture an unusually elegiac tone. Skyfall is one of the few Bond films that tries to explore the character's own personal history, and it finds new depths in the relationship between OO7 and his boss M (Judi Dench), which has been the most consistently satisfying aspect of Daniel Craig's tenure. The film also brings Bond home to fight terrorism on British soil after decades spent traversing the globe, and it all leaves you wondering where Bond can go from here.

Despite the number of pleasing elements that feel fresh, Skyfall remains a very old-fashioned James Bond movie at heart, adhering to the formulaic structure that has sustained the series so remarkably for 50 years. As per tradition, it opens in medias res with Bond finishing his previous mission in Turkey, although the mission almost finishes him. In pursuit of a hard drive containing the names of undercover MI6 agents, Bond and Moneypenny (Naomi Harris) chase their target through streets, across rooftops and onto a moving train. The scene ends with Bond being shot and falling to his death, although we feel safe in assuming that he survived both the bullet and the fall as we haven't even had the ornate, Adele-accompanied credits sequence yet.

It's a very promising and accomplished opening salvo, in which director Sam Mendes and the legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins prove themselves to be more than capable with the kind of outrageous blockbuster action that pushes them both into new territory. In fact, Deakins is very much the star of Skyfall, relishing the opportunities the film offers for rich and varied lighting. Mendes, Deakins and the film itself reach a dazzling peak in Shanghai, where Bond must chase an assassin to the top of a skyscraper before fighting him next to a perilous fall. This sequence is framed by vivid neon lights projected across walls of glass, and when the two men come to blows they are framed as silhouettes, occasionally illuminated by muzzle flare. It's rare to see an action sequence in a contemporary blockbuster shot with such imagination and visual flair, and it's a peak that the rest of the movie struggles to live up to.

All of this occurs within the film's opening hour, and while the rest of Skyfall is generally entertaining, too much of it feels like opportunities missed or simply mishandled. The idea of a James Bond action sequence set on the London underground sounds far more thrilling than it ultimately turns out to be, and while Javier Bardem certainly makes an impact as the villainous Silva, the lack of a proper climactic confrontation between him and Bond (why waste that ice set-piece on some random henchman?) seems like a misstep. The film also disappoints in its handling of Bond's two female companions. Moneypenny's first appearance as a gutsy and likeable field agent is a surprise, but she instantly becomes a less interesting character when she inexplicably turns up in Craig's hotel room to shave him flirtatiously, before deciding to settle for a place behind a desk. Still, at least she fares better than Bérénice Marlohe's Sévérine; even by the retrograde standards of this series, few women have been tossed away by the plot as egregiously as she is.

Despite these and other flaws – the plot does feel clumsily cobbled together – Skyfall holds the attention effectively enough to stand as one of the better Bond films (from a collection that's often a lot worse than our collective nostalgia allows us to believe), and it certainly possesses one of the better Bonds. Craig still can't deliver a quip and looks far more comfortable as a killer than a lover, but he has brought an emotional texture and vulnerability to the role that makes his Bond feel slightly more real than those that have gone before. The series itself, however, feels more awkwardly poised than ever between fantasy and reality, and Bond himself cuts an increasingly incongruous figure in today's world. So many of the crimes committed in Skyfall take place through computers and digital networks, and while Q (Ben Whishaw) observes that sometimes "a trigger has to be pulled," the filmmakers seem acutely aware of Bond's dinosaur status. Nevertheless, Skyfall ends not with Bond hanging up his double-Os but returning to duty "with pleasure," and the closing credits promise his swift return. It appears there's life in the old dog yet, but you do wonder just how much.

Review - Argo

The true story that inspired Ben Affleck's new film Argo is a cracker. In 1979, angry Iranian protestors, demanding the return of the Shah from America, stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took fifty of its staff hostage. Six escaped and took refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador, while the CIA back in Washington failed to come up with a single workable plan to get them home. The best idea they had was to send bicycles for the group along with maps to the Turkish border, but exfiltration expert Tony Mendez suggested creating a fake science-fiction movie called Argo, which would allow him to enter Iran on a location scout and remove the fugitives by having them pose as a Canadian film crew. Remarkably, all of this really did happen and – even more remarkably – it worked.

It's a hard tale to screw up in the telling, and Ben Affleck doesn't. This is Affleck's third feature as a director and it again proves that he's a serious filmmaker whose desire to make smarter-than-average mainstream entertainment is very commendable. Before Argo begins, the 1970s Warner Brothers logo appears onscreen, and it's clear that Affleck is as determined to evoke to the cinema of that era as much as he is to evoke the era itself. The ghosts of filmmakers like Sidney Lumet and Alan J. Pakula haunt Argo, which is no bad thing, as directors in that league are at a premium in today's cinema. If Affleck fails to reach the level of the artists he aspires to, it's perhaps because he plays it a little too straight; compared to the electric atmosphere of Dog Day Afternoon or the weird eccentricities of The Parallax View, Argo feels a little colourless.

The film does have many virtues, however. Affleck is strong on atmosphere, convincingly recreating the sense of fear that gripped the US embassy as angry crowds stormed the gates; government workers frantically attempt to destroy important papers before gun-toting Iranians gain access to the building. In terms of scale, this is the biggest story Affleck has attempted to tell in his young directing career, and in many ways it's his most technically accomplished. The period detail feels authentic, both in its depiction of 70s Iran and the bland CIA offices at home, while Rodrigo Prieto's gritty and atmospheric cinematography is perfectly judged. Chris Terrio's screenplay also requires a blending of disparate tones, with the rising tension of the situation in Iran being juxtaposed against a lighter section set in Hollywood, in which Affleck's Mendez attempts to set his plan in motion. The director just about pulls off this delicate balancing act, although he occasionally risks having a bit too much comic fun with the foibles of the film industry.

Mendez's jaunt to Tinseltown introduces two of the film's most memorable players. John Goodman plays John Chambers, the Oscar-winning makeup artist (for Planet of the Apes) who had a clandestine second job assisting the CIA, and he helps Mendez enlist the services of producer Lester Siegel (a composite creation, played by Alan Arkin) to begin setting up their fake movie. This segment of Argo is played very much for laughs, with Goodman ("So you want to come to Hollywood, act like a big shot, without actually doing anything? You'll fit right in.") and Arkin ("You're worried about the Ayatollah? Try the WGA.") forming a very amusing double-act. Affleck is a very fine director of actors, with Bryan Cranston also adding plenty of character to his role as Mendez's superior at Langley. Unfortunately, when Mendez flies off to Iran to execute his mission, all of these interesting performers are left at home.

I don't think it's any coincidence that Affleck's most accomplished film as director is Gone Baby Gone, the one in which he didn't also star. Dividing his workload across both sides of the camera doesn't do him any favours, and as a leading man Affleck lacks the charisma to make an underwritten character like Mendez come to life. The six fugitives he has come to rescue have been given few character traits to work with as well, so the Iranian section of the film just becomes a nuts-and-bolts exercise in tension. It works, because Affleck is a pretty good nuts-and-bolts filmmaker, but it's telling that the director feels the need to lay on twists and drama so heavily at the end of the film. The climactic flight from Iran is plagued by last-minute hitches and against-the-clock revelations, and it feels like every possible tension-building trick has been utilised simultaneously, creating a finale that's breathlessly gripping in the moment but curiously unsatisfying after the fact. Argo tells a story that's almost too good to be true, but the film Affleck has made is only just good enough.

Review - The Master

The Master is a spectacular display of filmmaking technique, and in the often arid landscape of contemporary American cinema, that in itself is reason enough to recommend the film unreservedly. But I do have my reservations about Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, even as I recognise that it reconfirms his status as one of the most ambitious and innately gifted directors working today. I appreciated The Master on almost every level – composition, editing, performance – and it contains a number of scenes that look and feel like nothing else. I was fascinated and hugely impressed by the picture, but I can't yet say if it really works as a story or a character study; is The Master really a great film, or is it simply the flawed work of a great director?

Such a question hardly seems worth asking in the film's hypnotic opening hour, which is where Anderson's artistry is most evident. The Master begins with a gorgeous shot of wide-open ocean waves, and it introduces us to a character who is all at sea. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is serving his last days in the US Navy and preparing to go home, but the deep-rooted psychological scars left by his WWII experiences have not yet healed. This is Phoenix's first acting role since he notoriously attempted to torpedo his own career with I'm Still Here, but if anything his performance here is even more unexpected and strange. Within minutes of the film's start, we see him simulating sex with a woman built out of sand, and when he returns to the US and attempts to rejoin civilised society, we watch each agonising scene just waiting for the time bomb to go off.

Phoenix is all stiff angles and jutting elbows, mumbling lines out of the side of his tightly grimacing mouth. There's something raw and animalistic about him, something he tries to contain but cannot prevent exploding out of him in violent, often moonshine-fuelled outbursts. He seems doomed to drift across America from town to town, job to job, leaving regret and recrimination in his wake, but his decision to hop on board a yacht one night gives him a shot at salvation. The boat belongs to Lancaster Dodd, a man who is developing an idea known as "The Cause" that bears more than a passing similarity to L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology religion, but a critique of that movement is not what Anderson is after here. The Master explores the fractured psychology of post-war America and examines the nature and limits of control, but the real heart of the story is this relationship between Dodd and Quell. Operating on the father-son dynamic that has driven so many of PT Anderson's films, The Master becomes a kind of love story between two very different men who feed something in each other, but whose relationship is ultimately doomed.

The pas de deux that Quell and Dodd engage is spellbinding to behold, with the clashing acting styles of Phoenix and Hoffman creating a riveting tension and chemistry. A "processing" scene that consists entirely of tight close-ups (Mihai Malaimare Jr's 65mm cinematography is most potently used in such shots) is a bravura piece of acting from both men, but as the film progressed I yearned for a shift in focus. Freddie is a static character in many ways, incapable of moving forward or cutting free of the ties that bind him, and watching him can be an incredibly frustrating and exhausting experience. In contrast, I found myself increasingly drawn to Dodd, just as Freddie and the other Cause followers are. Hoffman's performance as this self-appointed visionary oozes charisma and garrulous charm – he's part preacher, part snake-oil salesman – but some of the most telling and intriguing moments in the film come when this mask slips. "He's making it all up as he goes along," Dodd's sceptical son tells Quell, and on the two occasions when Dodd's ideas are challenged or even lightly questioned, he snaps with a blistering fury. I wanted to dig deeper into Dodd, particularly his relationship with his wife (played by Amy Adams in a deceptively bright-eyed performance that's as brilliant and unsettling as anything else in the picture), but Anderson doesn't let us get too close.

Instead, The Master slips away, with the second half of the picture being marked by a series of inscrutable scenes punctuated by ellipses. My love of Paul Thomas Anderson's pictures to this point has largely been down to the unashamed emotional directness of them, especially his stunning late-90s double-bill of Boogie Nights and Magnolia (which, for me, remains his best film). Even the more austere There Will Be Blood managed to hit me on a gut level, but for long stretches of The Master I just felt nothing. The film gets more enigmatic, evasive and wayward with every step, and the momentum of it stalls as Anderson allows it to drift. The level of craft on show never drops, but at some point in the picture Anderson's determination to avoid any easy resolutions or clear answers sees him painting himself into a corner, and leaves the film feeling disjointed and distant.

And yet, as unsatisfying as my initial viewing was, I'm already desperate to see The Master again. There are nagging questions I need to find the answer to (How much of the film is viewed from Freddie's addled perspective? What's the story with that dream he has before leaving for England?) and frustrating gaps that I want to fill. Right now, The Master feels like a confused misstep from a brilliant filmmaker, but when I think of my initial adverse reaction to Punch-Drunk Love – a film I now adore – I can't write off a PT Anderson film just yet. The Master is a film that invites multiple viewings; its greatness will be defined by how fully it rewards them. I want to embrace this film as a vital and distinctive work of modern American cinema, but for the moment The Master keeps slipping through my fingers, like so much sand.

Review - The Shining

"What's basically wrong with Kubrick's version of The Shining is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little; and that's why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror should." – Stephen King

Stephen King has been very outspoken on his dissatisfaction with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, but over the past three decades, few cinephiles have shared his view on the flaws in Kubrick's approach. In 1997, King even attempted to rectify those perceived wrongs by writing a TV miniseries that stuck rigidly to the content of his novel, but while that effort was quickly forgotten, the 1980 film has endured. When people hear the name The Shining now, they immediately think of Jack Nicholson losing his mind, Shelley Duvall whimpering with fear, Danny Lloyd cycling endlessly around those long corridors, and the elevators opening to release a torrent of blood. Despite King's protestations, it's Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that refuses to let go.

In some respects, perhaps King was right in his assessment of Kubrick. The director didn't come close to making a horror film in the form that we have come to expect of such a picture. He didn't try to make the audience jump with cheap scare tactics. Instead, Kubrick's film is quieter, slower and more enigmatic, but this is how it slowly sucks us into its brilliantly constructed environment and gets under our skin in a deeper way than the average genre picture. It is a ghost story, but it's also a portrait of a man going mad and a family falling apart, and the film is so evidently the work of a master filmmaker, it hypnotises even if you struggle to grasp what exactly the film is about.

That vexing question of The Shining's meaning is one that has prompted debate ever since its initial release, and in the recent documentary Room 237, a group of theorists put forward their own ideas about Kubrick's intentions. As far-fetched as these suggestions may often be, however, The Shining is a film that can seemingly support any reading ; it is so richly ambiguous and teasingly symbolic. The basic narrative of the film is simple enough. Aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Nicholson) takes the role of winter caretaker in the Overlook Hotel, where hopes to find the peace and isolation required to complete his novel. His wife Wendy (Duvall) joins him with their son Danny (Lloyd), and Danny brings his imaginary friend Tony, whom he speaks to while his parents indulge this childish fantasy. But the kindly chef Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) sees something more in Danny; a kindred spirit, another who possess that extra-sensory perception that his grandmother called "the shining".

As Jack starts to go crazy – "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" – and his wife cowers in fear, Kubrick draws two extraordinary performances from Nicholson and Duvall. The making-of documentary filmed on set by the director's daughter shows how he worked with his two stars, indulging Nicholson while pushing Duvall ever closer to her emotional breaking point. When the film reaches its apex with an axe-wielding Jack chasing his wife around the hotel, both the husband's insanity and the wife's quivering fear feel entirely real. From Danny Lloyd too, Kubrick coaxes one of the great screen child performances, as the young actor displays a stillness that is so unsettling in one so young. Kubrick was often accused of being a cold formalist, disinterested in the human factor of his films, but amid the fastidiously controlled mise-en-scène, he churns up a tumultuous emotional undertow that keeps it from feeling like too much of a deliberate exercise in craft.

When The Shining was released in 1980 it received mixed reviews from American critics and many complaints centred on the film's length and pacing. In response, Kubrick re-edited the film for its European release, shaving off over twenty minutes and endorsing the shorter cut as his official version. The release of the longer American version of The Shining in the UK is something of a mixed blessing. Some scenes appear entirely superfluous – such as a couple ineffectually extending Halloran's journey to the snowbound hotel – while others feel weirdly out of place, notably a startlingly odd shot of skeletons that occurs late in the film. But there are more glimpses of the director's brilliance here too, the slower pace often feels more chillingly exact, and there are valuable new scenes with Wendy and Danny. Either way, an opportunity to see The Shining, in any form, on the big screen is one not to be passed up. It remains a milestone, not just of horror but of cinema; a film that completely envelops us in its world and defies any rational explanation. Seeing The Shining in a cinema allows us to scan the screen for clues, appreciate the insidious sound design, marvel at Kubrick's compositional acuity and – above all – to lose ourselves in this endlessly fascinating maze.

Review - Tempest

When staging a production of a William Shakespeare play, the question often arises of its relevance to a modern audience. Many film and stage productions have provided modernised versions to the Bard's work to spark contemporary curiosity, with the innate power of these plays successfully enduring under the most unlikely presentations, as the success of The Globe's international Shakespeare season earlier this year will attest. But what about the players bringing this material to life? How do they relate to the Kings, Emperors and other characters who were created centuries ago? The new documentary Tempest attempts to tackle that problem by bringing Shakespeare to a group of people hungry for something far removed from their immediate surroundings.

Tempest opens with footage of last year's London riots, playing under soundbites from inner-city teens that reiterate their sense of the persecution and lack of opportunities that blight their lives. Directors Rob Curry and Anthony Fletcher clearly intend to alter our perception of such youngsters, and their film follows 17 amateur thespians as they take their first faltering steps into the world of Shakespeare, with a performance of The Tempest. This play formed part of Danny Boyle's Olympic Games opening ceremony (a night that felt like an act of healing for the capital, coming a year after the aforementioned riots) and it's a good choice for this group to tackle, offering broad comedy, romance and drama, and themes that they can understand within the context of their own experiences.

The manner in which these teenagers reconfigure Shakespeare's play to better understand it is one of the most interesting aspects of Tempest. Early rehearsals show them struggling with the archaic language, but they successfully break the play down into simple terms, playing scenes with their own words, and gradually get to grips with the emotional truths at the heart of the play. In interview sequences, they speak intelligently and thoughtfully about their characters and motivations, and one of the most striking ideas is their decision to have seven different actresses playing Ariel simultaneously, as they can't conceive of Prospero's imprisoned spirit as a single role. Through such choices, they make The Tempest their own.

There's a lot to enjoy in watching this unfold, particularly the infectious enthusiasm and growing confidence that the cast exhibits. They are young men and women who are embracing an opportunity to express themselves and taste something new, but the rarity of such opportunities is a problem the film only hints at. Tempest attempts comment on deficiencies in the education system and community programmes that are failing youngsters from disadvantaged areas, but in the film's slight and occasionally choppy structure it's only a fleeting aside, with the filmmakers failing to lend it any weight. Nevertheless, the blossoming of these young actors in Shakespeare's world is in itself a powerful argument for the continued relevance of his works, and the vital importance of a proper arts education for today's youth.

LFF Review - Laurence Anyways

"Is beauty important to you?" Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) is asked towards the end of Laurence Anyways. "Is air important to your lungs?" he replies, and at this point we might hear the director's words coming from his lips. Beauty is clearly of great importance to Xavier Dolan, the enormously talented Canadian director who has just made his third feature at the age of 23. His films are full of images that just pop out of the frame; he loves to shoot attractive actors and actresses; he uses colour to dazzling expressive effect; and he frequently reverts to slow-motion in order to linger on his stylistic flourishes. Dolan has a gift for capturing moments of remarkable, vivid beauty, and he isn't shy about flaunting that gift for his audience.

Such brash confidence won't endear him to all viewers, and many critics of Laurence Anyways will undoubtedly suggest that the director is a wayward talent that needs to be reined in, but the reckless ambition of the film is one of its virtues. Working on a bigger canvas than ever before, Dolan's latest film is a 160-minute melodrama about a relationship that's tested when Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) tells his girlfriend Fred (Suzanne Clement) that he has been living a lie for too long, and now wants to live as a woman. As if that wasn't a complicated enough issue for an inexperienced filmmaker to tackle, Dolan elects to make it a period film, beginning in 1989 (the year he was born) and running to the year 2000, and shooting for the first time in the Academy ratio.

I'll admit, I was sceptical about Dolan's ability to make this work – after all, I thought his much shorter Heartbeats felt lopsided and baggy – but to my surprise he does make it work to an astonishing degree. In truth, I'm not sure of he always has a firm grasp on the complexity of his characters or their motivations, which is perhaps where his paucity of life experience rubs up uncomfortably against the scope of his ambition, but the characters remain vivid and fascinating enough to carry the picture. While we have to take Laurence's desire to transform into a woman on trust, Poupaud (a last-minute replacement for Louis Garrel, who it's hard to imagine working as well in the role) is fully invested in every moment; charming in his awkward femininity, and touchingly vulnerable. The opening shot of the film consists of people staring with curiosity, surprise or outright disdain as Laurence walks past them as a woman, and Dolan makes us feel the prejudice and threat of violence that stalks those who dare to be different.

Dolan, here staying behind the camera for the first time, draws hugely impressive performances from all of his actors, including Nathalie Baye (as Laurence's caring but cold mother) and Monia Chokri (delivering the deadpan goods in a small but important role). Suzanne Clement, who is exceptional throughout, delivers an incendiary display in one notable scene, when she angrily defends Laurence against prying questions. This moment is an example of the dramatic bombs that Dolan drops throughout Laurence Anyways; what's remarkable is that they cohere into something that feels recognisable, consistent and real, instead of blowing the picture apart. The film stands as the best rebuttal to critics who have found his previous features to be superficial. Here Dolan has found the substance to match his considerable style.

Style, and beauty, remains paramount in the director's thoughts, of course. The slick, vivid visuals are complemented by the period soundtrack and costumes (Dolan also acts as costume designer on his films), making Laurence Anyways an aesthetic pleasure for all of its 160 minutes. It feels like a major leap forward for a director whose talent and confidence was never in doubt, and while many will advise Dolan to pass editing duties over to someone with a firmer hand, I'm happy for him to keep making his movies his way. There are scenes and images in Laurence Anyways that arguably don't need to be there – a sky full of discarded clothes, a butterfly emerging from a person's mouth – but Dolan includes them simply because he can, and what's wrong with that? Storytelling discipline may come later for Xavier Dolan or it may not, but this feels like a film made by an exceptionally gifted 23 year-old, and right now it's just thrilling to watch him spread his wings.

LFF Review - Amour

There's a scene in Terence Davies' film The Deep Blue Sea in which the romantically inclined Hester is confronted by her no-nonsense landlady, who takes a break from caring for her invalid husband to educate the younger woman on the real meaning of love. "A lot of rubbish is talked about love," she tells Hester. “You know what real love is? It’s wiping someone’s arse, or changing the sheets when they’ve wet themselves, and letting them keep their dignity so you can both go on.” I was reminded of that moment as I watched Michael Haneke's Amour, in which an elderly couple fight against the ravages of age and illness. The title may seem a strange one for a Michael Haneke film to possess, but it is entirely appropriate. Amour is one of the purest and most devastating portraits of love that I have ever seen in the cinema.

It is moving precisely because it deals with the infirmities and indignities that so often afflict the elderly. This is something we have all witnessed or experienced in our own lives, but the depiction of this universal condition on screen is so rare that Michael Haneke's film almost feels revolutionary. There's nothing particularly special about the couple played by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who are named, like every couple in this director's films, Anne and Georges. When we first see them they are just two faces in the crowd, part of an audience engrossed in a classical music performance. They return home to the apartment in which we will spend the next two hours, and they are in high spirits, hardly perturbed by the damaged lock on their front door from a failed break-in.

That damaged lock is an early indicator of this couple's vulnerability, later underscored by a chillingly effective nightmare sequence which is superbly orchestrated by Haneke. Such jolting moments are rare, though, as Amour instead observes the slow and gradual deterioration of a person's body. When Anne suffers a stroke as the couple enjoy breakfast, this seismic turn of events is dealt with so quietly, as Georges struggling to come to terms with the sudden change in his wife and Anne initially seems oblivious to what has occurred. After this point, with his wife confined to a wheelchair, Georges does all he can to care for her while she insists that there is no need for such fuss, determined to retain some independence; but they must soon bow to the inevitable. "Things will go downhill, and then it will all be over," Georges bluntly states.

Amour is essentially a two-character film, although other figures arrive from time to time. Isabelle Huppert plays the couple's daughter Eva, William Shimell is her husband, Alexandre Tharaud is a former student, a few nurses come and go, and a couple downstairs awkwardly offer to help Georges in whatever way they can. But to Georges, nobody else seems to exist. He closes ranks around his ailing wife and devotes himself to her care. Trintignant and Riva make us believe in these people and in the relationship that has sustained them for decades; a relationship built upon a shared intelligence, humour and love of music. It's unbearable to see all of that slip away as it does here. Trintignant remains so resolute in his determination to relieve his wife's suffering, recounting stories from his youth that he somehow never shared with her, and snapping at anyone who he feels infringing on their remaining time together. Riva undergoes an astonishing physical transformation during the course of the film, and it is heartbreaking to see her lying immobile, her delightful smile turned into a grimace, and only capable of uttering a single moan: "Hurts..."

All of this unfolds under the unflinching gaze of Darius Khondji's camera, as Haneke's flawless compositions capture Georges and Anne's difficulties in a typically clinical manner. Of course, we are used to Michael Haneke films being tough to watch, but there's something markedly different about this picture that we haven't seen in his work before. Amour contains a number of scenes that are moving in the most delicate way – Georges remembering a time when his wife would play music for him, or stroking her hand to ease her cries of pain – and even the symbolic pigeon that flies into their apartment is dealt with in a more tender fashion than I could have ever anticipated. Amour has been made with all of the intelligence and rigour that we have come to expect from Michael Haneke, but the depth of compassion on display is a new element, and it is that welcome addition to this director's formidable arsenal that makes his latest film a masterpiece.

Review - Holy Motors

When audiences walk out of Holy Motors, they may echo the words of a photographer who ecstatically snaps pictures of a strange goblin-like creature in one of the film's many bizarre sequences – "So weird...so weird." Holy Motors is weird, there's no doubt about that. Before making this film, Leos Carax hadn't directed a feature in 13 years, and at times it feels like he has simply poured every idea, fantasy, dream and nightmare he had in that period into a single extraordinary picture. One of those ideas will be familiar to anyone who saw Carax's contribution to the portmanteau film Tokyo! in 2008, as Holy Motors reprises the sewer-dwelling, flower-eating, armpit-licking Monsieur Merde from that anarchic short. This time, however, Monsieur Merde is just one of many elaborate characters performed by Denis Lavant.

Lavant plays Monsieur Oscar, who is a businessman of apparently some importance, and we first see him settling into a limousine and looking at the heavy schedule of appointments he has ahead of him. When he emerges, however, he is no longer dressed in a suit. Instead, he is in the guise of an old beggar woman; stooped over, shabbily dressed, with one arm extended as she beseeches pedestrians for some spare change. In Holy Motors, Lavant adopts a series of disguises and immerses himself into these extremely varied roles. The inside of the limousine is decked out to resemble an actor's dressing room, but for what purpose? For what audience is Monsieur Oscar going to this effort? We never really find out, and I'm not sure if that matters anyway.

Perhaps Holy Motors is Carax's meditation on the nature of performance, or a metaphor for the way we all wear masks and present ourselves differently in different situations in our own lives. It's hard to get a fix on Holy Motors because it keeps wriggling away and reinventing itself every few minutes. Just when we have recovered from the shock of seeing Monsieur Merde kidnap a fashion model (a very game Eva Mendes), the film presents us with a father-daughter scene that is very touching in the natural honesty of its emotions. A strange motion-capture scene segues into an even stranger sexually charged CGI sequence, while a segment in which Monsieur Oscar attempts to assassinate his doppelganger develops towards an amusing and very clever punchline. There's even a musical interlude, which may be my single favourite moment in this year of cinema.

Inevitably, the film is episodic and some of these vignettes work better than others (the deathbed scene is a weak link), but such missteps are rare. Towards the end of the film, Carax deals another surprise, with Kylie Minogue turning in a surprisingly effective and affecting cameo as another of these mysterious performers, who shares some unspoken link with Monsieur Oscar. In fact, all of the actors cast in the film manage to make a memorable impact despite the mysterious nature of their characters: Michel Piccoli pops up in the limo to offer words of advice to the jaded actor; Edith Sciob is the driver tasked with transporting Monsieur Oscar around town all day (she also sparks one of the film's more on-the-nose cinematic references); and the director himself kicks things off by appearing in the opening scene. He plays a man who wakes in a strange room and finds a portal in the wall that leads to a darkened cinema, where an audience is transfixed by the bright screen. The link between cinema and dreams made explicit right at the start of his remarkable film.

But Holy Motors is Denis Lavant's film, and he seizes his multiple roles with breathtaking skill and conviction. Not since Beau Travail in 1999 has the actor been granted a role that takes advantage of his unique physicality in such a thrilling manner. Carax has said that if Lavant turned down this role he would have "offered the part to Lon Chaney or to Chaplin. Or to Peter Lorre or Michel Simon." Like their great iconic roles, it's easy to see Lavant's staggering multiple performances here going down as one for the ages. Like the film around him, the actor is exhilaratingly fearless, boundlessly imaginative and, of course, "So weird...so weird."

Review - About Elly (Darbareye Elly)

Seeing Asghar Farhadi's A Separation become the darling of last year's awards circuit was as rewarding as it was unexpected. Few could have imagined that this Iranian tale of domestic strife spinning out of control would strike such a chord with audiences around the world, but few films in recent years have been as deserving of such acclaim as Farhadi's masterpiece. But we might only be seeing the real benefit of that attention now, as the director's previous film About Elly – which I first saw in 2009 – has finally received a UK release on the back of A Separation's Oscar success. The good news is that this long overdue release is richly deserved, for About Elly is every bit as impressive, compelling and morally complex as its successor, and it proves beyond any doubt that A Separation was no fluke.

About Elly is another film about secrets and lies, another film about moral and ethical decisions in which our loyalty towards the characters is constantly being questioned, but it doesn't begin that way. Farhadi takes his time revealing his hand, and About Elly's first half is played loose and light. A group of upper-class friends are heading to the beach for the weekend, and from the way they interact we can tell that they are long-time companions, who are comfortable in each other's company. The exception to this is Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti), who has been invited to join the party by Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani) in the hope that she can be fixed up with her single friend Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini). The well-meaning but misguided Sepideh has concocted this plan without the knowledge of anyone else in the group; the first instance in the film of information being withheld, but not the last.

Although it initially seems a little aimless, the effect of this opening section of the film is to let us spend time with these characters, get to know them and observe their group dynamics. It allows us to develop a sense of attachment with them, which is why the mid-film twist that ruptures the whole narrative has such a devastating impact. To say any more about what exactly this twist entails would be a crime, as experiencing the fallout from this unexpected narrative shift firsthand is one of the many pleasures About Elly offers. Farhadi handles the abrupt tonal switch with consummate skill and grace, and we remain riveted as the easygoing drama we've been watching suddenly takes on the urgency of a thriller.

In the second half of About Elly, half-truths and outright lies continue to pile up, as Sepideh and her anxious friends only exacerbate the terrible situation they find themselves in by attempting to cover up the truth. Farhadi's screenplay is a marvel of storytelling and moral complexity. His ability to pull us into a situation that poses such thorny questions and to consistently alter our perceptions of the situations and the characters is just as potent here as it was in A Separation. Farhadi's characters are never painted as being right or wrong – they are just ordinary people trying to cope with things as best they can, making decision with no knowledge of what consequences they will bring upon themselves.

At the centre of it all is Golshifteh Farahani, giving an extraordinary, emotionally draining performance as Sepideh, who remains steadfast in her belief that everything she is doing is for the best, even as the rest of the group stands against her. Farhadi is a fascinating figure among Iranian filmmakers; he makes films about modern, progressive, independent characters, but they still exist within a society bound by its particular codes and traditions. On one level, About Elly can be seen as a film criticising Ian's culture of deception, but such political readings are always kept as subtext in Farhadi's films, and they are above all else, gripping and affecting human dramas. Viewers looking at the releases coming out of Hollywood may despair at the lack of intelligent, compassionate, universally appealing dramas being produced, and may suspect that filmmakers have given up on discerning adult audiences. But these films do exist, you just have to look a little further afield in order to find them, and right now, not many directors are doing it better than Asghar Farhadi.

Review - The Turin Horse (A Torinói ló)

The Turin Horse is a 146-minute movie that documents a single week in the lives of its two characters, but such definite statements have little meaning in the world of Béla Tarr. He is a man who can make time stand still or make it feel as if the minutes are passing by at a fraction of their normal speed. Maybe Tarr himself feels the passage of time in a different way to the rest of us? He is only 56 years old, and yet he has stated in no uncertain terms that The Turin Horse will be his last film. It certainly feels like a valedictory work, the final statement of an artist who feels he has said enough about the human condition and is leaving us with a final masterpiece that deals unceremoniously with the end of things.

The film opens with an anecdote about a horse that was on the receiving end of a severe beating from its owner when Friedrich Nietzsche happened upon the scene. Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck, sobbing, and then returned home, where he lay still and silent for two days. After finally speaking what proved to be his last words – "Mutter, ich bin dumm." – he died. This incident took place in 1889 – are we to infer from the film's opening shot that the horse in this film is the same one? Can we even be sure that this film is occurring in the same time and place? Tarr gives us no hints, and a sense of timelessness runs throughout The Turin Horse.

Certainly, the horse that we see in the opening image looks like he has taken some beatings in his time. The first shot of the film is a stunning cinematic coup that pinned me to my seat, as an aged farmer and his tired old nag make their way down a country road, the wind howling around them. The farmer's name is Ohlsdorfer (János Derzsi) and he lives with his daughter (Erika Bók) in a small stone cottage, with no other inhabitants in view. Ohlsdorfer has a useless right arm and left eye, and he relies heavily on his daughter for dressing, undressing, cooking and manual labour. Once we are safely inside this cottage, with a storm continuing to rage outside, this is where we stay, as the film counts down a few days in the lives of these people; days in which nothing unremarkable happens, but beyond the walls we gradually sense that everything is happening.

The films of Béla Tarr are very much an acquired taste. His pictures are slow-moving, black-and-white dramas in which dialogue is at a premium, and they unfold in long, unbroken takes. The Turin Horse consists of around 30 individual shots in its 2½-hour running time, and many of these are simply images of the old man getting dressed in the morning, or the pair sitting down at the table to eat their daily potato. It sounds like a parody of misery-soaked Eastern European art cinema, but The Turin Horse is utterly engrossing as it immerses us in the mundane routine of this pair's day-to-day existence before disrupting that routine with incidents of increasingly grave portent. The woodworm that Ohlsdorfer has heard for 58 years suddenly fall silent, the horse refuses to budge from his barn, the well dries up, and all the while the wind outside continues to howl incessantly.

This doom-laden atmosphere, combined with the plaintive score and Tarr's rigorous control of every scene creates an astonishingly evocative atmosphere of ever encroaching dread. Nobody else makes films like Béla Tarr and The Turin Horse is another towering achievement, fit to stand alongside his Werckmeister Harmonies. With his departure, it feels as if we are losing more than simply a great director, as Tarr seems to stand for an entire way of looking at the world that is so out of step with the rest of contemporary cinema. He was a serious filmmaker who was serious about the things his films could say and do, but if The Turin Horse must be his last film then it is a fitting farewell. How many filmmakers can say they bowed out with a film that feels like the end of the world?

The Turin Horse is available on blu-ray now