April 2012
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Film Review: ‘Elles’
★★★☆☆ From Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, Elles (2011) stars the self-challenging and emblematic French actress Juliette Binoche as Anne, a bourgeoisie-smothered feminist who works as a journalist for a women’s magazine. Unfortunately, this publication is the type that subconsciously vilifies and objectifies females, informing them that both material and financial gain is key to achieving…
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Film Review: ‘Marley’
★★★★☆ Despite a somewhat tumultuous production history, with Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme both attached to direct at various points, Bob Marley documentary Marley (2012) finally reaches UK screens this month with British filmmaker Kevin Macdonald at the helm. Significantly, Macdonald and Universal’s effort has the full backing of the Marley estate, allowing unprecedented access…
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Film Review: ‘Breathing’
★★★★☆ Austrian actor Karl Markovics (best known to UK audiences for his starring role in 2007 Academy Award winner The Counterfeiters) has stepped behind the camera to make his debut feature film Breathing (Atmen, 2011), and in the process has created one of this year’s most heartfelt and moving films.Roman Kogler (Thomas Schubert) is a…
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Film Review: ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’
★★☆☆☆ Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), the latest feature from Lasse Hallström, features a host of British talent including Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor and Kristin Scott Thomas. McGregor plays Dr. Alfred Jones (McGregor), a buttoned-up scientist working in the Department of Fisheries and Agriculture, unwillingly drawn into a project aimed at introducing salmon to…
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DVD Review: ‘Maniac Cop’
★★★☆☆ Many Bruce Campbell aficionados will have overlooked William Lustig’s action slasher Maniac Cop (1988). Panned upon release, it took a swan-dive at the US box office yet garnered enough popularity in the video rental market to spawn two sequels: Maniac Cop 2 (1990) and Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1993).Campbell stars as beat…
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DVD Review: ‘A Midnight Clear’ (20th Anniversary Edition)
★★★☆☆ Keith Gordon’s A Midnight Clear (1992) is an undeniably intriguing investigation into the human survival instinct, focusing upon a group of young soldiers during the Second World War and their desperate attempts to return home unscathed. Set against the French winter of 1944, a group of American Intelligence operatives locate a group of German…
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DVD Review: ‘Griff the Invisible’
★★★☆☆ Leon Ford’s Griff the Invisible (2010), a romantic superhero comedy from Australia written and directed by Leon Ford and starring TV’s True Blood heartthrob Ryan Kwanten, is harmless fun which, one feels, had a great deal of potential which it either didn’t, or couldn’t, exploit to maximum effect.Poor Griff (Kwanten) is stuck in a…
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DVD Review: ‘Cassadaga’
★★☆☆☆ Dull, nasty and almost entirely devoid of original ideas, Anthony DiBlasi’s festival-only/straight-to-DVD horror Cassadaga (2011) may well symbolise everything that is wrong with modern horror cinema. Essentially a clumsy mish-mash of supernatural horror and torture porn tropes, DiBlasi’s second feature has little-or-no idea of what it wants to be, reflected in the fact that…
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DVD Review: ‘Lust for Love’ and ‘The Tailor from Ulm’
★★★★☆ Renowned German director Edgar Reitz’s (Heimat) work is not to be taken lightly. Indeed if you are looking for light viewing then these two examples of his work (more are to be released soon) are probably not for you. If, however, you want thought provoking, exquisitely shot, award winning drama, then Lust for Love…
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DVD Review: ‘Dream House’
★☆☆☆☆ Starring Skyfall (2012) lead/007 Daniel Craig, his real-life wife Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts, director Jim Sheridan’s supposed edge-of-your-seat mystery Dream House (2011) is more likely to have audiences dying of boredom than of fright due to its lacklustre production.Will Atenton (Craig) and his wife Libby (Weisz) leave the scrum of New York City…
