Film reviews and more
★★★★☆ Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke may already be well-known to cineliterate Western audiences for his 2006 film Still Life or, perhaps from his effort two years later, 24 City (2008). A pivotal part of the ‘Sixth Generation’ of Chinese filmmakers, Zhang-Ke’s […]
★★★★☆ Many a film fan may have gone through life thus far without lavishing an abundance of attention on the cinema of Czechoslovakia – or even, for that matter, being aware of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw films […]
★★★★☆ Making the effort to think of something that Seth MacFarlane (the much-loved creator of hit American adult animations Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show) and his brand of outlandish animated comedy is yet to poke fun at […]
★★★★☆ Widely considered as one of the most sophisticated comedies ever produced, Trouble in Paradise (1932) fizzes like a glass of vintage champagne – frothy and light, yet with a tangy aftertaste which lingers long after the last drop is […]
★★★☆☆ One of the most influential acts of the grunge era, second perhaps only to Kurt Cobain and his mighty Nirvana in terms of their capacity to eat up column inches, Hole were a true product of their time – […]
★★☆☆☆ Over the past decade or so, multilingual stage and screen star Kristin Scott Thomas has carved a palatable little niche for herself; appearing in intense French dramas such as 2008’s I’ve Loved You So Long. This has seen the […]
★★★★★ Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) receives a welcome Dual Format rerelease this week, bundled with two very distinct versions of the film. The first, a painstaking 20FPS restoration featuring a delicate piano score from […]
★★★★☆ Yasujirō Ozu’s Floating Weeds (1959), a remake of the director’s 1935 silent short A Story of Floating Weeds, was given a magnificent colour reworking (emphasised with this meticulous Blu-ray transfer) and allowed to flourish with its new extended 119-minute […]
★★★☆☆ From Hirokazu Kore-eda, the acclaimed director of world cinema oddities After Life (1998) and Still Walking (2008), comes Air Doll – finally released in the UK on DVD after appearing at the BFI London Film Festival back in 2009. […]
★★★☆☆ Considering its success upon its theatrical release earlier this year, it’s perhaps risky to say that The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, is in-fact a bit limp. After his parent’s […]
★★★★☆ John Walters’ 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos proved less problematic across the Atlantic than it did in the UK, and found a niche via the midnight movies circuit – a movement which also offered a cinematic afterlife to similar, […]
★★★★☆ This year has already seen the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birthday and is also, conveniently, the 20th anniversary of what must rate as one of the strangest screen adaptations of his perennial Yuletide story, A Christmas Carol. Directed by […]