★★★☆☆ Showing in the Directors’ Fortnight strand of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) follow-up Sightseers (2012) is an unexpectedly lighthearted jaunt – with serial killing of course – but a jaunt nonetheless. Taken from a script developed by its two leads Alice Lowe and Steve Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Rutger Hauer plays Satan, Doug Bradley is a priest, Shane Ritchie camps it up as a vile pimp and Tamer Hassan aims for gentrified land owner. That sentence alone should make Neil Jones’ low-budget British horror worth watching, but The Reverend (2011) is unfortunately hamstrung by a muddled screenplay, Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ It’s been a long journey from the original publication of Jack Kerouac’s beat novel On the Road in 1957 to this Walter Salles-directed big screen adaptation. Over half a century has passed, and in the meantime the cultural influence of the ‘Beat Generation’ has inspired music and film on Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ Australian director Carlo Ledesma’s latest film The Tunnel (2011) wins the gold medal for the most misleading advertising campaign so far this year, due to its promotion as a horror – ironically, the main element that is lacking. In 2007, the New South Wales government abandoned plans to alleviate Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Simon Aboud’s coming-of-age love story Comes a Bright Day (2012) stars up-and-coming UK starlets Craig Roberts and Imogen Poots as a pair of ill-matched lovers who find themselves at the centre of a jewellery store hold-up. A violent robbery may be not be the most conventional setting for a Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Following up on the success of his previous film, Precious (2009), Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy (2012) is a star-studded oddity; an overly-directed pot-boiler unable to decide how seriously it wants to take itself. Narrated by housemaid Anita (Macy Gray), The Paperboy begins with a murder in a small town Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Renowned Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki returns with Le Havre (2011), his first film in six years. A delightfully deadpan homage to 60s French cinema, Le Havre is an ingenuous satirical swipe at a nation’s conflicted view towards immigration. Set within this eponymous sleepy Normandy port, Kaurismäki’s second French feature Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Returning once again to the hot potato of sustainable, green(er) fuel, American director Chris Paine follows up his 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car with the more optimistic Revenge of the Electric Car (2011). Packed to the rafters with industry insight and a number of largely pointless celebrity Continue Reading