DVD Review: ‘Borgia – Complete Season One’
★★★★☆ Borgia (2011) is a grand costume drama charting the torrid loves and tangled political lives of the infamous, self-promoting 15th century Italian dynasty....
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Borgia (2011) is a grand costume drama charting the torrid loves and tangled political lives of the infamous, self-promoting 15th century Italian dynasty....
★★★☆☆ Billed as a free interpretation of Goethe’s original play, Alexander Sokurov’s Faust (2011) sees the Russian auteur returning to his proclivity for challenging...
★★★★☆ Icíar Bollaín’s 2010 film-within-a-film Even the Rain is a political drama set during the Bolivian Water Wars of 2000. A labour of love,...
★★★☆☆ More an exercise in reinforcing a legend rather than unearthing its roots, Kevin Macdonald’s reggae documentary Marley (2012) is an interesting, yet ultimately...
This week, CineVue were kindly invited to provide our top five picks for films to be inaugurated into WhatCulture’s brand new British Film Registry....
★★☆☆☆ Following its inaugural outing at Cannes, Brazilian director Walter Salles’ film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s Beat novel On the Road received its UK...
In late October, Regent’s College London will once again play host to the 2012 London Screenwriters’ Festival 2012. The biggest professional screenwriting event in...
Returning once again to London’s Empire Cinema Leicester Square this year for its ghoulish 13th incarnation, Film4 FrightFest 2012 kicks off next week with...