Film Review: ‘Your Sister’s Sister’
★★★☆☆ Every now and then, a film comes along where you want to marry all of the main characters. Your Sister’s Sister (2011) is...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Every now and then, a film comes along where you want to marry all of the main characters. Your Sister’s Sister (2011) is...
★★★★☆ It’s been six whole years since US master director William Friedkin (best known for 1973’s The Exorcist) last brought his talents to the big...
★★★★★ A host of razor-sharp one-liners saturate this Raymond Chandler-penned film noir classic, directed by perhaps the greatest American director to have ever lived,...
★★☆☆☆ Indonesian director Edwin’s Postcards from the Zoo (2012) finds itself at the 66th Edinburgh International Festival after a muted critical response whilst in...
★★★★★ Peter Strickland returns to the Edinburgh International Film Festival with his 1970s-set meta-horror Berberian Sound Studio (2012). Marking a significant shift in both...
★★★☆☆ Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó is perhaps best-known for his Oscar-winning effort Mephisto (1981) and subsequent international productions including Sunshine (1999) and Being Julia...
★★★★★ American auteur Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945) has deservedly been given the Masters of Cinema treatment this week. Available for the first...
★★★★☆ The Reptile (1966) and Plague of the Zombies (1966), starring Ray Barrett, André Morell and Jacqueline Pearce, are the latest Hammer films to...