Film reviews and more
★★★☆☆ When Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb back in 1922, a sensation swept the entire European continent, resulting in a great deal of public fascination towards all things Ancient Egyptian. It would be tempting to compare this discovery to […]
★★★★☆ Edinburgh’s loss, it appears, is London’s gain with the festival ensnaring Scott Graham’s superb Shell (2012), a beautifully rendered, incredibly haunting example of gritty British cinema concocted by a refreshing fusion of intelligence and artistic refinement. Set within the […]
★★☆☆☆ I, Anna (2012) director Barnaby Southcombe, son of actress Charlotte Rampling (who takes the lead role as a femme fatale in this, his feature debut), attempts to adapt Elsa Lewin’s novel of the same name in what is a […]
★★★☆☆ From American director Ira Sachs (best known for previous efforts Married Life and Forty Shades of Blue) comes Keep the Lights On (2012), a sensitive, meandering drama set amongst the bohemian cafés and art galleries of New York City. […]
★★★★☆ Well-known in her native Germany, Martina Gedeck is perhaps best recalled for her role in Oscar-winning Stasi drama The Lives of Others (2006). However, with a sprinkling of luck this may soon change, as recent New Wave Films acquisition […]
★★★☆☆ Whilst the fruits of last year’s Arab Spring are currently being sampled in a number of Middle Eastern former-dictatorships, Israel and Palestine remain locked in an unedifying stand-off over ownership of the contentious Gaza Strip. Self-proclaimed Palestinian ‘peasant’ – […]
★★★★☆ In recent years, Tim Burton’s cinematic output has been more than a little disappointing. Revisiting his own source material with 2012 stop-motion animation Frankenweenie 3D (based on a 1984 short he made whilst working for Disney), he manages a […]
★★★★☆ Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D (2011) is proof once more, that Hark is a true revisionist of Hong Kong genre cinema. Following closely from his last and equally impressive film Detective Dee (2010), Hark breathes much […]
★★★☆☆ After being well-received in the US earlier this year, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012) finally gets its UK release this week. Not for nothing has the animated franchise grossed over a billion dollars, and the latest energetic instalment […]
★★★★★ A runaway hit on the 2012 festival circuit (with acclaim coming at both Sundance and Cannes), Benh Zeitlin’s vibrant and imaginative eco-fantasy Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) is not only one of the most impressive directorial debuts seen […]