Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  The Photograph is one of those romantic dramas that you imagine is based on a book, as it flips between the 1980s and the present day (well, 2019). It has a scene in one of New York’s boroughs (Queens) in which our protagonists flee from an ongoing hurricane – Storm Tylenol (I think they should sell the naming rights to extreme weather events) or some such moniker. But the budget isn’t up to it. Later, we see the couple in a deserted street lined with fallen wheelie bins to indicate devastation. To paraphrase Guardians of the Galaxy , ‘that’s not a storm’. The film has a melancholic jazz soundtrack and as I discovered the discrete use of trumpet, piano and strings can make any scene play. The music provides prickliness – the sense of an offence that could be taken, a shift in tone – that makes you take notice, even when the drama doesn’t yield any surprises. The film isn’t based on a book. Rather it has an original screenplay by the film’s director Stella Meghie, who is one of...

  Pictured : The couple Grace ( Jennifer Lawrence ) and Jackson ( Robert Pattinson ) celebrate their child's first six months in a scene from the film, ' Die My Love ', adapted from Ariana Harwicz 's 2017 novel by co-writers Alice Birch , Enda Walsh and co-writer-director Lynne Ramsay . Still courtesy of Mubi (photo credit: Kimberley French) Ariana Harwicz’s 2017 novel, Die My Love has been Americanized and brought to the screen by producer-star Jennifer Lawrence and co-writer-director Lynne Ramsay, via co-writers Alice Birch and Enda Walsh, as well as Martin Scorsese, whose Sikelia Productions is also involved. It is a tough watch, one hundred and eighteen minutes in the company of an unstable young mother, Grace (Lawrence), a writer who places her baby, boyfriend and herself in jeopardy. You watch it in a state of constant anxiety, clenching your buttocks and feel the need to change your underwear afterwards. Harwicz’s novel is set in France. Ramsay’s film, shot b...