Blu-ray Review: ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’
★★★★★ Voted ‘The best French film ever made’ by the prestigious French Film Academy in 1995, the brand new 4K restored version of Marcel...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★★ Voted ‘The best French film ever made’ by the prestigious French Film Academy in 1995, the brand new 4K restored version of Marcel...
★★★☆☆ Adapting the astounding life of 1960s/70s French pop sensation Claude François (aka ‘Cloclo’) for the big screen was never going to be an...
★★★★☆ London on the Move, the tenth volume in the BFI’s bestselling double-DVD British Transport Films Collection, makes for fascinating viewing. This collection of...
★★★★☆ Regarded by many as John Cassavetes’ most successful and influential film, 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence is a sensitive portrait of a...
★★★★★ The BFI follow up their release earlier this year of Volumes 1 and 2 in the classic BBC Christmas Ghost Story series with...
★★☆☆☆ From Chris Kentis and Laura Lau – the husband and wife creative force behind 2003’s taught aquatic horror Open Water – comes Silent...
★★★★★ Jason Segel, the epitome of the perennial ‘man-child’ type currently prevalent in American cinema, sums up and validates the persona as the eponymous...
★★★★☆ Lining itself up against the might of both Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight and Marc Webb’s Spider-Man reboot this summer, Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble...