Reviews by George Sawer
Top 10 Films of 2017
George Sawer
10.Moonlight
A killer supporting turn from Naomi Harris and strong performances from its three leads - Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders and Alex Hibbert all play main character Chiron at various ...
6 years ago
Top 10 Films of 2017
T2: Trainspotting [18]
George Sawer
Whatever your opinion of it, the heroin film of the 1990s will never be forgotten. So the makers of Trainspotting have taken on a lot in revisiting it after 20 years. Given the presence of much of ...
7 years ago
T2: Trainspotting [18]
Relatively Speaking
George Sawer
This fairly funny comedy by Alan Ayckbourn isn't going to win any prizes for breaking new ground in theatre, but it's a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Set in the 60s, the play revolves ...
8 years ago
Relatively Speaking
Blair Witch [15]
George Sawer
Warren Beatty once said about Madonna 'she doesn't want to live off camera – much less talk'. That goes triple for this so-so reboot of 1999's found-footage classic, which re-hashes the original's ...
8 years ago
Blair Witch [15]
Julieta [15]
George Sawer
New films by Spanish director Pedro Alomodovar tend to be treated with a kind of unquestioning reverence, but truth be told, many of them, particularly in recent years, could seem a little long and ...
8 years ago
Julieta [15]
Youth [15]
George Sawer
Paolo Sorrentino's sixth film is a light hearted but moving drama with echoes of This Must Be the Place and La Grande Bellezza. It's certainly a more accomplished and gripping work than his rather ...
8 years ago
Youth [15]
Black Souls [15]
George Sawer
Set high in the Aspromonte Mountains of Calabria, where few Italians – let alone tourists – ever go, Black Souls (Anime Nere in Italian) is a rock solid crime drama. Unlike recent examples of the ...
8 years ago
Black Souls [15]
Grandma [15]
George Sawer
This is a warm, sleepy slice of Southern Californian life that combines elements of Ghostworld and The Golden Girls. It's a distinct improvement on teen star Julia Garner's last film, the rather slow ...
8 years ago
Grandma [15]
Room [15]
George Sawer
Room was snapped up by Irish director Lenny Abrahamson after the novel upon which it was based, itself inspired by the Fritzl case and others like it, was read by book groups the land over. It's a ...
8 years ago
Room [15]
Tangerine [15]
George Sawer
Few people realise that the original script for Pretty Woman had Vivian and Kit as crack whores, Edward as a cold hearted sociopath, a freezing winter setting, and a real slap in the face downer of ...
8 years ago
Tangerine [15]
Films of the Year 2015
George Sawer
10 Girlhood [15]
An edgy and effective film about girl gang culture in working class France, this owes a lot to Mathieu Kassovitz's
La Haine, but shifts the story to a female perspective. It ...
8 years ago
Films of the Year 2015
Aladdin
George Sawer
The Playhouse's panto this year is a fine re-imagining of Aladdin that re-locates the ancient fable to Oxford. This being a Playhouse panto, it's naturally a skewed version of Oxford that surreally ...
8 years ago
Aladdin
Pasolini [18]
George Sawer
Abel Ferrara's latest film is a beautiful, beguiling re-construction of the last day in the life of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. It's not a biopic in any traditional sense – and those ...
8 years ago
Pasolini [18]
Steve Jobs [15]
George Sawer
This is a rather pointless biography of the late Apple co-founder and CEO. Beginning in '84 and ending in '98, the film tells you less about Jobs than you could read on his Wikipedia page and proves ...
8 years ago
Steve Jobs [15]
The Top Films of 2014
George Sawer
Labour Day, We Are The Best, Lilting, Will & Testament, Paddington, and Nightcrawler just miss the Top Ten, which goes too...
10. Maps to the Stars
A paranoid satire of Hollywood in ...
9 years ago
The Top Films of 2014
The Top Ten Films of 2013
George Sawer
10 The Selfish Giant
Two lads prematurely enter the scrap metal trade in broken Bradford in a loose telling of the Oscar Wilde story. While not as riveting or miserable as director Clio ...
10 years ago
The Top Ten Films of 2013
The Top Films of 2012
George Sawer
14. On The Road
Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst play the self-obsessed Beats in this immensely entertaining adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s acid era road novel. ...
11 years ago
The Top Films of 2012
The Top Ten Films of 2011
George Sawer
10 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2The end – we are told – of the decade spanning saga, made as watchable as the previous seven films by some extraordinary visuals, great character ...
12 years ago
The Top Ten Films of 2011
Fish Tank [15]
George Sawer
Fish Tank is impressive. This film is a clear, compassionate story of confused emotions (and street dancing) in the marshlands of Eastern England – the hinterland where London meets Essex and urban ...
15 years ago
Fish Tank [15]
The Firm [18]
George Sawer
Those who saw Nick Love’s last film – the brilliant but brutal Outlaw – would have been forgiven for stumbling out into the street feeling as though they’d just been beaten up. The Firm, ...
15 years ago
The Firm [18]
The Top 10 and Top 15 Films of 2008
George Sawer
15 ChangelingYet another entry in the Clint Eastwood canon of stoic American films about ordinary decent citizens caught up in unfortunate situations. This one is an improvement on the rather under ...
15 years ago
The Top 10 and Top 15 Films of 2008
Happy-Go-Lucky
George Sawer
Happy-Go-Lucky is one of Mike Leigh’s most inspiring films. It makes one want to be nice and do good, and it vindicates those who already are and do, recognising that the world is dotted with ...
16 years ago
Happy-Go-Lucky
Ghosts [15]
George Sawer
Nick Broomfield’s stunning docu-drama told the moving, riveting story of the cockle pickers who perished at Morecambe Bay in 2004. Easily Broomfield’s best work to date, and all the more ...
16 years ago
Ghosts [15]
The Top 10 Films of 2007
George Sawer
George Sawer's personal top 10 10. Inland Empire David Lynch’s long awaited Mulholland Drive follow-up which, like that film, offers the story of an actress whose life spirals into the surreal and ...
16 years ago
The Top 10 Films of 2007
Factory Girl [15]
George Sawer
Like its sibling movie I Shot Andy Warhol (released 11 years earlier) this film passed by almost unnoticed, which was a great shame as this moving, evocative story of another victim of Warhol’s ...
16 years ago
Factory Girl [15]
The Golden Compass [12A]
George Sawer
Ah Nicole, lovely Nicole. Who would have thought in 1983 that the co-star of a small Australian film about BMX enthusiasts (BMX Bandits) would one day grow up into the goddess that we now see before ...
16 years ago
The Golden Compass [12A]
Eastern Promises [18]
George Sawer
David Cronenberg’s post 90s films have tended less towards introspective horror sci-fi and more towards thoughtful character study, and of these mostly successful attempts at a change of direction, ...
16 years ago
Eastern Promises [18]
Basic Instinct 2 [18]
George Sawer
Returning to her Basic Instinct roots after a fourteen-year absence, Sharon Stone proves she’s still got what it takes to play Catherine Tramell - the notorious femme fatale that she made so famous ...
17 years ago
Basic Instinct 2 [18]
Little Fish [15]
George Sawer
Little Fish Released in the UK last July, and going by almost unnoticed, was this excellent Australian film that saw Cate Blanchett returning to her national roots in the kind of gritty, ‘woman of ...
17 years ago
Little Fish [15]
Outlaw [18]
George Sawer
After the relatively sunny The Business (2005), young Brit director Nick Love takes a full-on plunge into unremitting bleakness with this deeply unpleasant but brilliant drama. Gene (Dyer) is a young ...
17 years ago
Outlaw [18]
The Top 10(ish) Films of 2006
George Sawer
How to review the cinematic year of 2006? Perhaps it’s best described as a year of small events, some of which were great …
Let’s start with January. Things kicked off well with Ang Lee’s ...
17 years ago
The Top 10(ish) Films of 2006
Breaking & Entering [15]
George Sawer
A good looking drama about fraught relationships in 21st century North London, Breaking and Entering is fascinating and solid in its first half, but collapses into interminably awful in its ...
17 years ago
Breaking & Entering [15]
The History Boys [15]
George Sawer
Working together for the first time in twelve years (their last collaboration was 1994’s The Madness of King George), director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett have re-united to produce ...
18 years ago
The History Boys [15]
Echo Park L.A. [15]
George Sawer
Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, Starring Emily Rios, Jesse Garcia
A small film with big ideas, Echo Park LA is the kind of movie that sceptics write off as the stuff of bad soap ...
18 years ago
Echo Park L.A. [15]
The Devil Wears Prada [PG]
George Sawer
If Wall Street was a character-driven morality tale about selling your soul to the city (New York, not London), then The Devil Wears Prada could be described as its 21st century equivalent.
Not ...
18 years ago
The Devil Wears Prada [PG]
Children Of Men [15]
George Sawer
Children of Men is such a dark and dingy film, and rings so worryingly true with life in early 21st century England, that those who see it may be forgiven for spending at least half an hour ...
18 years ago
Children Of Men [15]
Driving Lessons [15]
George Sawer
An unfortunate misfire, this film starts well, flounders in the middle and finally descends into out and out clunky.
Jeremy Brock (writer, Mrs Brown, Charlotte Gray) apparently based this story on ...
18 years ago
Driving Lessons [15]
The Da Vinci Code [12A]
George Sawer
I saw The Da Vinci Code the night before its nationwide UK release, and woke up the next morning to find it had been awarded a series of critical slammings. I couldn’t believe the movie had been ...
18 years ago
The Da Vinci Code [12A]
