CineVue
For the latest reviews of arthouse, documentary and indie film in cinemas and on the festival circuit.
★★★☆☆ Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy began with Paradise: Love (2012), first screened just a few months ago in Cannes. Each film takes as its protagonist one of three sisters, who seem to be at a point of crisis in their lives. For Love, the first sister was on a trip Continue Reading
Over the years, the Sight & Sound poll has become one of the most respected of its kind in the world. This Autumn, the BFI Southbank will now be screening the ten films that – according to 846 critics and 358 directors – are the greatest films of all time. Continue Reading
To celebrate the long-awaited release of the complete second season of HBO’s acclaimed gangster saga Boardwalk Empire on DVD and Blu-ray this coming Monday (3 September), we’re letting TWO lucky readers make off with a series two Blu-ray box set. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Canadian director Sarah Polley’s most famous work, the Julie Christie-starring Away from Her (2007), dealt with the effects of Alzheimer’s on a relationship between husband and wife. Her latest film and Venice Film Festival offering Stories We Tell (2012) is a semi-documentary dealing with what families remember and how Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ “I woke up one morning and found myself famous,” wrote Lord Byron, one of the first celebrities in our modern sense of the word. Today, the notion of celebrity as a nightmare rather than a dream is already ingrained in our culture. Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love (2012) Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Directed by Stephen Fung, choreographed by Sammo Hung and starring a whole host of Kung Fu legends, Tai Chi 0 (2012) is a kinetic frenzy of a movie, whose giddy inventiveness will be far too much for some, but a giggle for anyone who enjoys the frenetic quality of Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Love, obsession and revenge are the themes of Kirill Serebrennikov’s beguilingly strange, yet ultimately flaccid Betrayal (Izmena, 2012). The film is a Crime and Punishment-style morality tale, told via Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Franziska Petri plays a doctor who whilst examining one of her patients (Dejan Lilic), reveals that her Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Matthias Hoene’s FrightFest opener Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) is an enjoyable, bare-faced zomventure that delivers exactly what the title promises – a fun-filled, B-movie romp with plenty of thrills, spills and jellied eels. When construction workers unwittingly unleash a horde of zombies from a tomb that has been sealed Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Whilst his former directorial partner Jaume Balagueró was off making FrightFest sleeper hit Sleep Tight (2012), Paco Plaza appears to have squandered his time with the subsequent time with [Rec] 3: Genesis (2012), the third entry in the Spanish zombie horror trilogy. Whilst Plaza thankfully ditches the done-to-death found Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Back in 1990, ‘Austrian oak’ Arnold Schwarzenegger hit our screens as the mind-muddled Douglas Quaid in Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel We Can Remember it for you Wholesale. Now, Hollywood hack Len Wiseman has undertaken the challenge of remaking the original Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Following 1992’s acclaimed Baraka, groundbreaking director Ron Fricke presents his latest feature Samsara (2011), a similarly mesmeric, non-verbal meditation about the invisible bonds shared between humanity and nature. Lacking any tangible narrative structure, Fricke has substituted conventional storytelling for a beautifully-woven tapestry of profoundly striking images that creates what Continue Reading
★★★★★ British director Peter Strickland follows up his acclaimed debut feature Katalin Varga (2009) with the eerie and aurally-disturbing Berberian Sound Studio (2012), a tale that blurs the lines of reality, set within a sleazy Italian post-production studio in the 1970s. Toby Jones plays Dorking-born protagonist Gilderoy, an English sound Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ The 69th Venice Film Festival got under-way with its first foray into 3D, diving into Kimble Rendall’s Ozploitation movie Bait (2012). The story opens with our surf-rescue hero Josh (Xavier Samuel) a little worse for wear after his engagement party. Josh’s future brother-in-law Rory (Richard Brancatisano) heads out to Continue Reading
The 69th Venice Film Festival kicks off later today (running from 29 August-8 September) with Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist – showing on the Lido and out of competition – starring Kate Hudson and Riz Ahmed in what looks to be a handsome adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel. There Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ British filmmaker Robert Heath returns to screens with Truth or Dare (2012), a low-budget horror that attempts to put a generic spin on the well-known party game of the same name. The film follows five university friends – Paul (Liam Boyle), Chris (Jack Gordon), Luke (Alexander Vlahos), Eleanor (Jennie Continue Reading