DVD Review: ‘Breathing’
★★★★☆ Austrian screen actor Karl Markovics (best-known for his turn as Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s 2007 Academy Award-winning The Counterfeiters) marks himself...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Austrian screen actor Karl Markovics (best-known for his turn as Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s 2007 Academy Award-winning The Counterfeiters) marks himself...
★★★☆☆ This month sees the rerelease of Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson (1997) on both DVD and Blu-ray. Famous for her generation and gender-swapping...
★★★★☆ Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s debut feature Corpo Celeste (2011) is a gently confident story of a young girl, attempting to survive her adolescence...
★★★☆☆ French director Mia Hansen-Løve has managed to collate substantial critical goodwill over the course of her short career, thanks in part to the...
★★★★☆ Cinephiles’ commitment to austere, ‘slow cinema’ faces a new challenge with the release on DVD of Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (2011), told...
★★★★☆ Aardman is back doing what it does best with the tremendously fun and silly The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (2012), a...
★★★★☆ With the recent economic climate resulting in the current cinematic release schedule becoming saturated with affordable, yet no-less poignant documentaries it comes as...
★★★★☆ The 2012 StudioCanal Collection brings together some of cinema’s most iconic films, both past and present. The latest classics to make their way...