Boy Choir (PG)
Directed by Francois Girard
Eleven year old Stet (Garrett Wareing) lives in an impoverished suburb in a small Texas town. He seems pretty angry at the world and when his mother is tragically killed and his estranged father (Josh Lucas) doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, his outlook on the world is further enraged. Fortunately he has a great singing voice and his father is wealthy so he ends up in the boarding school of the American Boy Choir. Completely out of his depth with no musical training, he battles to survive and finds his biggest battle is with the impatient and demanding choir master Carvelle (Dustin Hoffman). Interestingly, Hoffman learnt the piano when he was young and actually plays the Rachmaninoff piece in one of the pivotal scenes. It is fairly predictable where the story is heading but this doesn’t lessen its emotional impact, amplified by the classical choral music.
Ex-Machina (MA)
Directed by Alex Garland
Written and directed by Alex Garland, this sci-fi film is a stylish psychological thriller. Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) is the reclusive director of a huge internet search corporation. Programmer Caleb Smith (Dormhnall Gleeson) wins a competition to visit his spectacular mountain hideaway home and laboratory that is accessible only by helicopter. Nathan has been assembling sophisticated robots with artificial intelligence – all attractive young women. Caleb’s task is to give a series of tests to Nathan’s latest creation, the beautiful Ava (Alicia Vikander), to determine her ‘humanness’. Interestingly Ava has a face, hands, feet, tits and arse, with everything connected by wires in Perspex. And the only other person in the complex is a sexy non-English speaking Asian maid Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno). It’s all quite disturbing as Caleb and Ava seem to be forming a bond and Nathan’s drunken rages become more threatening.
Bansky Does New York (M)
Directed by Chris Moukarbel
British street artist Bansky has an international following and when he decided to create 31 works of art in 31 days in New York City in October 2013, social media went mad. Each day was a treasure hunt to find the daily works from the controversial artist who still remains anonymous. Chris Moukarbel was one of those eager to find the new artworks before they were painted over, tagged or stolen. Moukarbel documents the phenomenon that is Bansky by capturing people’s reactions to the public artworks, some that are accompanied by audio commentary. It is actually the people who give the art its meaning. Banksy wasn’t involved with the film, but he was sure to be somewhere on the streets seeing how people responded to the varied installations. Believing that art belongs outside, I wonder what he thinks about the people who steal his works and sell them for huge amounts.
Trash (M)
Directed by Stephen Daltry
Rio de Janeiro’s rubbish dump is home to many people who spend their days combing through the city’s garbage in order to survive. One day, 14 year old Raphael (Rickson Tevez) finds a wallet and he shares the money with his friend Gardo (Eduardo Luis) who buys food. The wallet also holds clues to a mystery and the police are very keen to get hold of it, so Raphael gets another friend Rat (Gabriel Weinstein) to hide it in his sewer dugout. Based on Andy Mulligan’s 2010 novel, Trash is an intense thriller that races along the seedy back streets of Rio. As well as immersing the audience in the extreme poverty, the film brings to life the political corruption and sickening police brutality in a country where some people are treated as vermin. Energetic performances from the three charismatic boys recruited from the Brazilian slums fill the film with both humour and hope.
Lezly Herbert
