Latest 7 magazine

This documentary on Nobel Laureate and dedicatee of this year’s Brighton Festival looked at the woman behind the media image. Aung San Suu Kyi was presented as “a modern day Joan of Arc of Burma”, lauded by husband, sons and various friends.

The film, funded and produced by television companies across the world, made a merit of its main shortcoming: the lack of recent, good-quality footage of the Burmese opposition leader meant that each photo or clip was the more treasured and powerful.

A personal portrait, the film lacked a real insight into the politics of Burma, but compensated with immense emotional power.

Duke of York’s Cinema, 7 May
Rating:
Jim Milnes

There’s this bird, right? Dead pretty, a macaw if you like, lives in small-town Minnesota and has a voice sounds more than a bit like The Social Network’s big man Jesse Eisenberg. Meets another bird, just as pretty but… different. Another macaw – this one’s called Jewel, the other one was called Blu – and this new bird sounds uncannily like The Devil Wears Prada and Rachel’s Getting Married star Anne Hathaway. I know. What is it with animated birds sounding like film stars?
Read the rest of this article »

Whip It! (12A)

Dir: Drew Barrymore
Bringing punk roller derby together with 21st century feminism – go Drew Barrymore! Actually, the star of this is Juno’s Ellen Page, Drew’s only the director and acting support. Ellen plays Bliss, a young girl from a backwater town. Her mother wishes success for her, it’s just that her idea of success is winning the local beauty pageant. Not quite Bliss’s. So when she sneaks off
to the big city with her best mate and stumbles across a world of celebrated individuality at the roller derby, it’s not long before she’s trying out for a spot herself in raggle taggle underdog team the Hurl Scouts. Renaming herself
Babe Ruthless Bliss soon finds herself up against rivals like Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) and falling for a boy in a band (Landon Pigg – real name!), making life all the more complicated still. Adventures in the big city. Coo.
Showing at Odeon

Wall-E (U)

Director: Andrew Stanton

Pixar blitz the opposition in this animated masterpiece. The story follows itty-bitty robot Wall-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) who discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE.

With a host of superbly imagined characters and a lead character who utters no more than three words throughout, this is classic Pixar tomfoolery. Chuck in a whole bucket of cuddles, a refreshing dose of surreal humour, a touching environmental message and a race across space and you have pure, unadulterated cinematic pleasure.
5/5

Showing at Cineworld and Worthing
Read the rest of this article »