The slyest aspect about Lone Scherfig’s “The Riot Club” is also its most maddening one. Structurally, the whole production is a come-on, a tease, a manipulative stunt. It begins in lusciously ribald fashion as we are treated to nineteenth-century sexual shenanigans amid the upper classes at Oxford University: white wigs, splashy capes and all. A beloved hedonist is murdered after cuckolding an ... more >
ARCHIVES
THE RIOT CLUB
Where your reputation can be made or broken in one night
Max Irons, Douglas Booth and Sam Claflin
Directed by Lone Scherfig
One day
Twenty years. Two people.
Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson and Romola Garai
Directed by Lone Scherfig
We've reached the point that a significant portion of the English-speaking world--that bankrupt, riot-helmeted, penalty-kick-blowing island named England—has reduced acting to one thing: the ability to perfect the British accent. The land of Olivier has ceased caring about things like sympathy, emotion, delivery, comic timing. They are only interested in an American's ability to speak in their ... more >
One day
Directed by Lone Scherfig. With Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Patricia Clarkson and Romola Garai (August 19). ... more >
An Education
The innocence of the young
Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard and Alfred Molina
Directed by Lone Scherfig
[SPOILER WARNING] I once wrote Steven Spielberg never creates an interesting moral dilemma that a boy in a helicopter can’t fly his way out of. I feel the same way about Lone Scherfig’s An Education, a film that repeatedly Medivacs its teenage heroine out of real complication and back to the Army Field Hospital for Conventional Wisdom. The film is the American Beauty of 2009, teasing us with a ... more >