GFF 2016 Review - Couple In A Hole (2015)

DVD Review - Short Term 12

Genre:
Drama
Distributor:
Verve Pictures
Rating:15
DVD/BD Release Date:
10th March 2014 (UK)
Director:
Destin Cretton
Cast:
Brie Larson, Frantz Turner, John Gallagher Jr.
Buy:Short Term 12 [DVD] / Short Term 12 [Blu-ray]
Win Short Term 12 on Blu-ray: enter here
Short Term 12, for the most part, is an emotionally devastating drama that sensitively observes the lives of the residents and staff at a foster-care facility for at-risk kids. With an unsentimental eye, the director, Destin Cretton, creates scene after scene of believable situations that leave an indelible mark. Take, for example, the scene in which Jayden, the newest kid at the facility, throws the most harrowing of tantrums after her father doesn’t show up to take her home for the weekend, or the sequence in which she reads a fable she wrote about an octopus and a shark to her care worker Grace, revealing her abusive upbringing through an heartbreaking allegory.

The trouble is that as memorable as scenes like the ones I’ve described are, Cretton’s film is too often formulaic and predictable to be fully convincing. The rightfully lauded scenes of unsentimental observation are therefore occasionally undermined by the conventionality of the narrative, allowing for some sentimentality to creep in and overwhelm parts of the story. This is most apparent in the paralleling of Jayden’s traumatic story with the childhood of Grace, the films main protagonist. By creating similarities between the two characters’ upbringings, Jayden’s story becomes marginalised and is seen more as a contrivance to further Grace’s story arc.

The film is bookended by scenes in which Grace and her co-workers are sitting outside their titular workplace sharing informative anecdotes that neatly wrap up the story. This, coupled with the recurring motif of Grace arriving at work each morning driving her bicycle into the same static shot of the foster-care facility, leaves us with the notion that the cycle of care they provide is continuous and that for institutes like Short Term 12 there will always be at-risk kids in need of guidance. This is a rather poignant and fitting note for the film to end on. Though the film often frustrates, it is hard not to be moved by its story.

★★★☆☆

Shane James

Win Kelly + Victor On DVD

The surprise critical British independent film Kelly + Victor will be released this Monday, 13th January on DVD and Bluray. We have teamed up with Verve Pictures and have 3 copies of the film on DVD up for grabs.

Kelly+Victor is a haunting, candid depiction of a young couple embarking on a passionate and transgressive love affair, from the acclaimed novel by Niall Griffiths. The film is set against the backdrop of a highly cinematic Liverpool, to a searing soundtrack featuring music by a host of acclaimed artists including the Mercury Music Prize-nominated artists King Creosote & Jon Hopkins and Wild Beasts as well as the gifted guitar work of Bill Ryder-Jones (ex-The Coral).
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When Kelly (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) meets Victor (Julian Morris) on the dance floor of a Liverpool nightclub, the attraction is instant. After wandering through the night they find themselves at her flat, making love with a passion and urgency that neither had experienced before. Both Kelly and Victor are struggling to get by as best they can, while the people around them are choosing illegal lifestyles; she is escaping a brutish former lover, while he is being dragged into a world of drugs. It’s when they make love that their darker instincts take over.

Directed by Kieran Evans, Kelly+Victor is a devastating story of obsessive love anchored by two complex but tender performances.To win Kelly + Victor please answer the following question...

Q.What BAFTA was Kelly + Victor nominated for Along with Shell Earlier this week for ?

Deadline is 2nd February 2014 (23:59pm),If you haven’t done already Like us and stay with us at our Facebook page (if you are already liking us just share this post on twitter and facebook). Must be 18 or older to enter.

1.The competition is not opened to employees, family, friends of The Peoples Movies, Cinehouse, Verve Pictures  employees who have the right to alter, change or offer alternative prize without any notice.2.All The Peoples Movies entries must be done via contact form. deadline Sunday(23:59pm) 12 years or older to enter 3.Failure to include any information required to enter could result in your entry been void.  4.automated entries are not allowed and will be disqualified, which could result you been banned, DO NOT INCLUDE telephone numbers as for security reason your entry will be deleted.5.If you are friend or like us at facebook for every competition you enter you get double entry, but you must stay friend/like us all the time,or future entries maybe considered one entry if you are liking us share the post on facebook and re-tweet the post.6.The Peoples Movies, Cinehouse takes no responsibility for delayed, lost, stolen prizes 7.Prizes may take from days to a few months for delivery which is out of our control so please do not complain 8.The winning entries will be picked at random and contacted by email for postal details and will be announced via facebook, sometimes we are unable to confirm winners. Uk & Irish entries only.

UK Competitions and Prize Draws at UKwins
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Verve Picture Bringing Home (Yurt) 'Home' June on DVD

Verve Pictures have announced  the UK DVD Release of  HOME (Yurt), winner of  The Golden Wings Digital Digiturk Distribution Award at the recent London Turkish Film Festival.

The first feature to be written and directed by actor Muzaffer Özdemir, best known for his roles in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's THE SMALL TOWN, CLOUDS OF MAY and DISTANT, for which he won the Cannes Best Actor Award, HOME (Yurt) is a beautifully composed meditation on memories and a changing world. Doğan, a pessimistic and neurotic architect, longing for his homeland, revisits the countryside of his childhood for the first time in many years. His search for the familiar, however, is an elusive one and in this modern technological age he quickly discovers that time which once stood still is now fleeting, and that the tranquillity of familiar landscapes is fading.

Poetic and resonant, HOME (Yurt) is a serene depiction of one man's journey to find his own sense of peace amidst the conflict between nature and the ever intrusive modern age.

Home(Yurt) stars

Pre-order/Buy:Home (Yurt) On DVD 

Cannes Festival Winning Post Tenebras Lux A Home July UK Release

Drakes Avenue Pictures and The Independent Cinema Office and are pleased to announce that Carlos Reygadas’ (Battle in Heaven, Silent Light) Post Tenebras Lux will be released in UK on DVD and on Blu Ray for the first time from 22 July.

Reygadas picked up Best Director in Cannes last year for Post Tenebras Lux, perhaps his most personal and complex work to-date. A gorgeous, allusive mood piece examining marriage, poverty, class and gender, the film also looks at our place in nature and how evil lives with us in the most intimate and ordinary of places.

Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) is a wealthy industrialist who has chosen to live with his wife and two children away from the trappings of wealth and the city. Yet isolation in this superficially idyllic rural landscape seems to have brought little peace to his world. Juan’s marriage to Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) is suffering under the strain of sexual ennui, the banal rigors of bringing up young children and living in a community where he is clearly an outsider.

Its central theme, signposted in an audacious manner very early on, is Juan’s struggle to morally navigate the welter of everyday decisions we are all forced to make in life. The morality of family life is further complicated by Juan’s post-colonial Mexican ethnicity and position as an employer and elite landowner in a country with an increasingly divergent wealth divide.

Largely non-linear in its structure, preferring instead to show a series of striking images from the past, present and possible futures, Post Tenebras Lux repays repeat viewings allowing its myriad ideas to slowly rise to the fore. What lingers long after viewing are not only the more striking images, but also the subtler aspects of family life, the tender fragility of childhood and marriage, and the beautifully haunting representations of nature.



Post Tenebras Lux will be released on DVD and Blu Ray in UK&Ireland on 22 July starring Adolfo Jiménez Castro.

Pre-Order/Buy:Post Tenebras Lux On DVD / Blu-ray