Paradise Hope / Paradies Hoffnung (2013)
★★★★☆
With a teenager falling for an older man at fat camp, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Hope remains optimistic of a better life. All it needs is a little discipline.
Film reviews by Dog and Wolf
★★★★☆
With a teenager falling for an older man at fat camp, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Hope remains optimistic of a better life. All it needs is a little discipline.
★★★★☆
Down and out in Paris and Brooklyn, Noah Baumbach’s playful comedy Frances Ha is a bittersweet romp through the earnest dreams of youth.
★★★☆☆
On tour through the globe’s indigenous and marginalised peoples in Pierre-Yves Borgeaud’s Viramundo, Gilberto Gil is turning the world upside-down.
★★★☆☆
With a New York family in crisis, Drake Doremus’ Breathe In finds an unlikely villain in Felicity Jones in this intimate, genre-busting chamber piece.
★★★★☆
In Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda, an enterprising Saudi schoolgirl enters her school’s Koran recitation competition to raise money to buy a forbidden bicycle.
★★★★☆
A very Spanish retelling of the Snow White fairytale, Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is an enchanting, spellbinding homage to the silent age.
★★★★☆
Putting the stories of nine venerable gay men and women under the spotlight, Sébastien Lifshitz’s Les Invisibles pays homage to love, self-fulfilment and revolution.
★★★★☆
Through teen scams, Native American song and an ownerless cradle, Ruben Östlund’s Play offers a long hard look at social discomfort at play.
★★★☆☆
Adapting Sébastien Japrisot’s novel for the 21st century, Iain Softley’s Trap For Cinderella is a cautionary tale of lust, vengeance and greed.
★★★☆☆
A Norse saga for the modern day, Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep stages a play on survival and mythmaking against the backdrop of Iceland’s dramatic landscape.
★★★★☆
Removing the fog of war, Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story Of WikiLeaks exposes the truth behind whistleblowers and hackers on the digital stage.
★★★★☆
An exploration of self beyond the lives of others, Julian Pölsler’s The Wall puts femininity and humanity on show in a glass cage.
★★★☆☆
The second film in Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy, Paradise Faith is a caustic tale of sex, religion and race, on holiday at home in Austria.
★★★☆☆
In a film inspired by actual events, a group of fame-obsessed teenagers use the internet to track celebrities’ whereabouts in order to rob their homes.