DVD Review: ‘The Living Wake’
★☆☆☆☆ On occasion, a film sneaks out on release which really leaves you wondering why it even exists. Sol Tryon’s The Last Wake (2007)...
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.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★☆☆☆☆ On occasion, a film sneaks out on release which really leaves you wondering why it even exists. Sol Tryon’s The Last Wake (2007)...
★☆☆☆☆ With a ‘celebrity’ lineup comprising of such TV icons as Joe Pasquale, Russell Grant, Tony Blackburn and – of course – Keith ‘Cheggers’...
★★★★★ The American writer Chuck Klosterman once wrote how that are things which were over-rated (e.g. Adele), things that were under-rated (e.g. Cat Power)...
★★★★★ The most original documentary of 2011 comes to DVD replete with a selection of teasingly short but hugely moving extra features that extend...
★★☆☆☆ It’s hard to categorise a piece like The Erotic Films of Peter De Rome (1973), released by the BFI for the first time...
★★☆☆☆ Roger Sargent’s documentation of 2010’s The Libertines reunion, There Are No Innocent Bystanders (2011) – following years of hostility and contempt between the...
★★★★☆ With queer cinema experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years, the 2012 release of Encounters: Four groundbreaking classics of gay cinema –...
★★★★☆ Director Na Hong-jin’s 2009 debut The Chaser, along with the works of Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook and Kim Ji-woon helped thrust the South...