DVD Review: ‘The Panic in Needle Park’
★★★☆☆ Dramas confronting the issue of heroin abuse are a particularly difficult challenge for filmmakers. The balance between creating an image of stark, unflinching...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★★☆☆ Dramas confronting the issue of heroin abuse are a particularly difficult challenge for filmmakers. The balance between creating an image of stark, unflinching...
★★★☆☆ “A must for all chess enthusiasts” – not really a great selling slogan – permit me to rephrase. Bobby Fischer Against the World...
★★★★☆ From Takashi Miike – the twisted genius behind cult J-horrors Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001) – comes 13 Assassins (2010), a...
★★☆☆☆ Howard J. Ford’s The Dead (2010) – starring Rob Freeman and Prince David Oseia – takes the zombie film to the vast and...
★★★★★ With Kill List (2011), Ben Wheatley (director of the critically acclaimed Down Terrace [2009]) has created this year’s most horrendously violent and bizarrely...
★★☆☆☆ It’s somewhat remarkable that a film so concerned with garnering a sense of intrigue and off-the-wall quirkiness as Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg (2010)...
★★★☆☆ Gavin Wiesen’s The Art of Getting By (2011) is a coming-of-age rom-com starring Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts. The film follows George (Highmore),...
★★★☆☆ Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night (2011) follows the recent Hollywood fascination for re-imaginings with this remake of Tom Holland’s original 1985 cult favourite. Starring...