★★★☆☆ Dramas confronting the issue of heroin abuse are a particularly difficult challenge for filmmakers. The balance between creating an image of stark, unflinching reality and simply settling for cheap shock tactics is, indeed, a fine one. Jerry Schatzberg’s The […]
★★★☆☆ “A must for all chess enthusiasts” – not really a great selling slogan – permit me to rephrase. Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011) is a must for all enthusiasts of brilliant documentaries. Liz Garbus, the film’s acclaimed director, […]
★★★★☆ From Takashi Miike – the twisted genius behind cult J-horrors Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001) – comes 13 Assassins (2010), a traditionalist yet bloody take on the samurai action adventure film which was rightly nominated for the […]
★★☆☆☆ Howard J. Ford’s The Dead (2010) – starring Rob Freeman and Prince David Oseia – takes the zombie film to the vast and parched continent of Africa, treading new territory in an attempt to breathe new life into a […]
★★★★★ With Kill List (2011), Ben Wheatley (director of the critically acclaimed Down Terrace [2009]) has created this year’s most horrendously violent and bizarrely surreal film by simply amalgamating the generic conventions of a hitman thriller with the eerie iconography […]
★★☆☆☆ 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) could end up being so unremarkable.With sex and death at the heart of proceedings, the story […]
★★★☆☆ 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), a teenage misanthrope who has never done a day’s work in his life. George is bright, […]
★★★☆☆ 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 Colin Farrell as a libidinous vampire, David Tennant (best know to UK audiences as the former […]
★★★☆☆ UK director Chris Crow follows up his debut feature Devil’s Bridge (2010) with Panic Button (2011), which screened at this year’s Film4 FrightFest. When four strangers meet for the first time at an airport, they all seem very familiar […]
★★☆☆☆ Doffing its cap to the contentious mumblecore sub-genre, Girl in Motion (2011), a sweet but slight short film from writer/director/editor Phil Bowman details two weeks in the life of Amy De Bhrún’s twenty-something writer as she struggles with the […]
