2 May 2025. ON SWIFT HORSES (LES INDOMPTÉS) **1/2 With her delicate features, English actress Daisy Edgar Jones seems to have been designated as the girl who shines in old-fashioned, novel-based romantic melodramas such as “Albion”, “Voyagers” and “Where the Crawdads Sing”. If those are your type of films, you may like this latest one, […]
FILM: THE ACCOUNTANT 2 ** – heavy duty killings and retaliations
25 April 2025. Sorry – this is not a great week for releases….But some good news – the excellent LA COCINA (reviewed last week) at the GRÜTLI, is also showing at the BIO Cinéma in Carouge! THE ACCOUNTANT (MR. WOLFF 2) ** As the film starts it feels like Ben Affleck is still awfully mad […]
FILM: LA COCINA **** – like a fist in the stomach
LA COCINA **** This work is like a fist in the stomach. Filmed in black and white, almost like a documentary, it features various workers in a busy restaurant – The Grill – around Times Square. They are cooks, busboys, dishwashers, waitresses, all with different backgrounds, languages, hangups. This is the lower echelon of the […]
FILM: THE AMATEUR *** – a taut, intelligent thriller
11 April 2025. THE AMATEUR *** Langley, Virgina, near Washington D.C. – we’re at the CIA headquarters. And we’re following the life of one Charlie Heller, a brilliant decoder, a bit of a shy loner, in this vast, almost anonymous web of spies. Unfortunately there’s a huge spoiler if I go any further, but suffice […]
FILM: READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN
4 April 2025. READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN ***1/2 (vo Farsi) I have to confess that I had a hard time back then getting through Azar Nafisi’s 2003 best-seller of the same name, on which this film is based. The reason was that the group of girls Nafisi included in her private Western literature classes (held […]
FILM: AGENT OF HAPPINESS ***1/2
21 March 2025. AGENT OF HAPPINESS ***1/2 (vo Bhutanese/Dzongkha, Nepali) Bhutan is a small, mountainous country, nestled between Nepal, China and India, with breathtaking natural vistas and a citizenship that has been gently guided by its popular king to believe in its serenity and peaceful harmony. It creates some beautiful cinema, with films such as […]
FILM: PARTHENOPE *** – the destruction beauty causes
14 March 2025. PARTHENOPE *** (vo Italian) You can’t get more Italian than a Paolo Sorrentino film – “Il Divo”, “La Grande Bellezza”, “Youth”. And his films are always present in competition at the Cannes film festival. Sorrentino loves his country and all its foibles, exposing them in films covering famous political figures and the […]
FILM: A REAL PAIN ****
28 February 2025. A REAL PAIN **** Now this is what’s called a sleeper. A little jewel of a film that’s coming up big, without any pretension or top stars but a great deal of depth about relationships and difference of characters. Two cousins who grew up together and were very close but have not […]
FILM: WISDOM OF HAPPINESS ***
WISDOM OF HAPPINESS *** The Dalai Lama, whose name means ’Ocean of Wisdom’ and who is the Holy leader of Tibetan Buddhism, is internationally known as a man representing love and peace. This inspiring film has him talking directly to us, giving of his wisdom and experiences, as he explains that compassion and happiness should […]
FILM: BRIDGET JONES – MAD ABOUT THE BOY ***
13 February 2025. BRIDGET JONES – MAD ABOUT THE BOY *** In this very troubled world of ours, it never hurts to be taken away from reality and come back into the colourful, chaotic world of Bridget Jones. This is her fourth and probably last sequel following her romantic adventures since the first film in […]
