Larry Oliver Film Reviews

Pictured : Ruth Goldman ( Kathleen Chalfant ) adjusts to life in an assisted living facility in writer-director Sarah Friedland's film, ' Familiar Touch '. Still courtesy of Venice Film Festival. In the UK there is legislation going through Parliament to allow for assisted dying, to be utilised when quality of life is diminished through ill health. As you watch Familiar Touch , writer-director Sarah Friedland ’s depiction of an elderly woman, Ruth Goldman ( Kathleen Chalfant , magnetic) transferred to an assisted living facility – don’t call it a community because people don’t really mix – you think, surely the scope for assisted dying should be wider. At what point should life no longer be prolonged? Surely, when it is no longer your own, when you exercise no agency, when you are administered to rather than consciously exercise choice. On her first morning in the facility, Ruth asks, ‘may I see the menu?’ ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ she is told. But it really should. The...

Pictured : Jaded journalist Arthur ( Benjamin Biolay ) reacquaints himself with refugee advocate Mathilde ( Camille Cottin , right) who introduces him to Afghan refugee Daoud ( Amrullah Safi , centre) in the French comedy drama,  Quelques Jours Pas Plus ( Just a Couple of Days ), co-written and directed by Julie Navarro . Still courtesy of BAC Films (France) Just a Couple of Days ( Quelques Jours Pas Plus ), the feature debut of casting director turned actual director, Julie Navarro , is an appealing comedy-drama about a music-loving journalist, Arthur ( Benjamin Biolay ) and a lawyer turned activist, Mathilde ( Camille Cottin ) who circle one another in a will-they-won’t-they relationship orbiting Daoud ( Amrullah Safi ), an Afghan refugee whom Arthur agrees to accommodate for the ‘couple of days’ of the title. Navarro, who co-wrote the script with Marc Salbert , on whose research the film is based, gives us a series of cliches that nevertheless prove an agreeable gateway to ma...

Pictured : Mom ( Amy Adams ) makes some canine friends in the black comedy, ' Nightbitch ', adapted from Rachel Yoder 's novel by writer-director Marielle Heller . Still courtesy of London Film Festival (UK) / Searchlight Pictures (UK, US) Director Marielle Heller cannot be accused of making the same movie twice. Nightbitch , which she adapted from the novel by Rachel Yoder , features Amy Adams as an unnamed stay-at-home mother of a two-year-old boy – let us call her Mom - who we watch mentally collapse. It is as different from Can You Ever Forgive Me as it is from A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood . Nightbitch is highly-stylised, containing thoughts that are never spoken – Mom telling other women what she really thinks about the sacrifice she has made while her personality is systematically obliterated. It also features Mom attracting dogs and then imagining that she is one herself. The comedy is rooted in real experience. Appreciative guffaws of recognition fille...

  Pictured : Playing the disability card, actress-turned-stage mother Ronnie Collins ( Jackie Van Beek ) in a scene from the Australian comedy, ' Audrey ', written by Lou Sanz and directed by Natalie Bailey . Still courtesy of London Film Festival (UK) / Rialto Film Distribution (Australia) Former actress Ronnie Collins ( Jackie Van Beek ) is a force of nurture. Embracing smotherhood, the parent of the title character in the Queensland-set comedy, Audrey , wants her eighteen-year-old daughter to equal her achievement. Audrey ( Josephine Blazier ) would rather go to Nepal with her boyfriend, Max ( Fraser Anderso n) to build houses and surf, taking advantage of everything her ‘white privilege has to offer’. She doesn’t appreciate that mum has enrolled her in an acting class given by a legendary stage director, Lucinda ( Gael Ballantyne ) who stunned everyone with ‘her all male version of the Vagina Monologues’. Meanwhile, Ronnie’s younger daughter, Norah ( Hannah Diviney ), wh...

  Pictured : 'Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.' Alex of Nine Tassles ( Aneurin Barnard ) proves that chivalry is something to be scared of in writer-director-star Alice Lowe 's time hopping anti-new-romantic comedy. ' Timestalker '. Still courtesy of Vertigo Releasing (UK) Most British actresses who take a punt at directing generally stop after a single attempt. Rebecca Hall, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jessica Hynes, Dolly Wells and Romola Garai all exemplify ‘one and done’. Kudos to Alice Lowe who scores ‘two and cool’, with Timestalker , the amusing, long-in-gestation follow-up to her 2016 debut, Prevenge . Both films are comedies that stretch a single idea to breaking point. Once again, she takes the leading role, this time of Agnes, a 17 th Century lovelorn woman who falls for a performer, Alex ( Aneurin Barnard ) who is about to be put to death – her friends turn up for the gore. As he faces the rack, Alex’s mask is removed. Agnes is besotted, approa...