DVD Review: ‘Safe’
★★★☆☆ Jason Statham (aka ‘the Stath’) returns to the action fold with Safe (2012), a mostly by-the-numbers, yet surprisingly involving and dynamic thriller from...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Jason Statham (aka ‘the Stath’) returns to the action fold with Safe (2012), a mostly by-the-numbers, yet surprisingly involving and dynamic thriller from...
★☆☆☆☆ Casually disregarding four previous non-canonical franchise outings (Band Camp, The Naked Mile et al), American Pie: Reunion (2011) returns to the characters and...
★★★★☆ As a razor-sharp satire on the American obsession with all things ‘big’, director Lauren Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles (2012) is, quite...
The Venice Film Festival is no stranger to controversy. Often, the jury collectively select a fittingly quirky, infuriating drama to cap the ten days...
★★★★★ Arguably the most eagerly anticipated select of the 69th Venice Film Festival, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012) tells the story of demobbed...
★★☆☆☆ Brian De Palma is undeniably one of the most erratic directors to have come out of the 1970s Golden Generation. Responsible for the...
★★★☆☆ Robert Redford directs and stars in The Company You Keep (2012), which premiered this week at the Venice Film Festival. Redford plays Jim...
★★☆☆☆ The London 2012 Paralympics end this weekend, bringing to a close a summer of British athletics that has seen unrivalled joy that has...