Film Review: ‘The Imposter’
★★★★★ All great documentaries start with a fascinating subject, and Bart Layton’s The Imposter (2012) has one of the most bizarre and compelling you...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★★ All great documentaries start with a fascinating subject, and Bart Layton’s The Imposter (2012) has one of the most bizarre and compelling you...
★☆☆☆☆ Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy (2011) is an adaptation of the acclaimed Scottish writer’s novel The Undefeated, the third in a trilogy. Perhaps director Rob...
★★★★★ During the 1970s, no Christmas television was complete without the BBC’s famous series A Ghost Story for Christmas. All twelve tales of uncanny...
★★★★☆ “A cross between paradise and paradise” is how President Mohamed Nasheed describes his country which sits precariously at the mercy of the Indian...
★★☆☆☆ Based on the Gothic novel by Matthew G. Lewis, German director Dominik Moll’s fourth feature The Monk (2011) delves deep into the world...
★★★☆☆ Romanian director Florin Serban’s If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle (2010), based on the play of the same name by Andreea Valean,...
★★★★☆ Following a surprise appearance at last year’s BFI London Film Festival and a warm (if slightly muted) reception upon its UK cinematic release,...
★★☆☆☆ You need only cast your mind back as far as Paweł Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth (2011) to find a French/Polish collaboration...