Embrace of the Serpent (12A)
Directed by Ciro Guerra
5/5
VERY few films leave you wanting to see them again.
But, truthful and poetic and more than meriting its many international awards, Embrace of the Serpent will reward you every time you see it.
Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra’s unique, Academy Award-nominated examination of the cruelties of colonialism and the equally nefarious activities of commercialism and religion in Colombia, is stunning film-making.
Inspired by the journals of real-life German explorers Theodor Koch-Gruenberg and Richard Evans Schultes, it centres on an Amazonian shaman.
He’s the last of his tribe who befriends the two scientists and guides them along the Amazon for more than four decades as they seek the sacred psychedelic yakuna plant which the seriously ill Koch-Gruenberg (Jan Bijvoet) needs to save his life.
Guerra’s brilliant narrative creates a matchless vision of a tragically lost world, realised by vivid Amazonia locations and, notably, atmospheric monochrome cinematography that sets the film in an exceptional world of its own.
The shaman, beautifully played by Nilbio Torres as a young man and than by Antonio Bolivar Salvador, is an intriguing character in a unique story. It is in the river-journey tradition of Apocalypse Now and Aguirre: Wrath of God and, for my money, it is far more haunting and potent.
Review by Alan Frank

Bang Gang: A Modern
Love Story (18)
Directed by Eva Husson
2/5
WITH the internet brimming with free porn, commercial pictures featuring graphic sex scenes need rather more than nudity and simulated copulation to gain genuine relevance.
Screened at the London Film Festival, French writer-director Eva Husson’s debut centres on pretty teen George (Marilyn Lima) falling for fellow teenager Alex (Finnegan Oldfield) who’s home alone while his divorced mother is away.
So far, so familiar to anyone who’s seen coming-of-age films from anywhere in the world.
But where Husson veers from traditional hormone-driven teen romances is in having George creating the eponymous multiplayer sex game that results in teenagers forced to face the harsh reality of sexually transmitted diseases and abortion.
Clearly Husson has something to say. What a pity, then, that she does so in such a banal and unconvincing feature.
Ultimately, as one character comments about Algiers: “It’s so profoundly mediocre.” So’s this.
Review by Alan Frank

Miracles From Heaven (12A)
Directed by Patricia Riggen
3/5
AS FAITH-BASED dramas go, this is one of the least preachy and most finely performed I’ve seen although, unsurprisingly, it pushes all the religious and emotional buttons.
It’s based on the true story of Annabel Beam (Kylie Rogers) who had been suffering with a rare incurable digestive disorder after, aged nine, she falls 30ft down the inside of a tree and miraculously emerges unharmed and completely cured.
The film mainly concentrates on her mother Christy’s fight to have her daughter properly diagnosed and treated as well as exploring her loss of faith.
Jennifer Garner gives an outstanding and heartbreaking performance as Christy while Rogers is phenomenal as Annabel.
Adapted from Christy Beam’s book, the drama loses ground towards the end as it plunges into predictable spiritual and religious territory, particularly when Anna reveals how she met Jesus after the fall. He told her she would be well.
Whatever else, Beam is a medical miracle and any parent, religious or not, will be able to relate to this heart-wrenching drama.
Review by Maria Duarte