2012
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Film Review: ‘End of Watch’
★★★☆☆ Writer and director David Ayer is best known for his hard-hitting cop dramas, responsible for both the critically divisive Street Kings (2008) and the more successful Training Day (2001). With his latest effort, End of Watch (2012), Ayer manages to bring a freshness to the buddy cop movie which, at its best, thrills and…
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BFI Uncut Season: ‘Temple of Doom’ uncut review
★★★☆☆ Back in 1984, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’ iconic whip cracking hero returned once again in the pursuit of fame and fortune in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the prequel to the hugely successful Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). No sooner had the director called cut, the censors – both in…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Flight of the Navigator’
★★★★☆ Grease (1977) cult director Randal Kleiser’s time-travelling tale of one boy and his sentient spaceship was a VHS favourite back in the day, and its Blu-ray rerelease is bound to cause a raft of post-30 movie fans to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic over a childhood gem. Featuring a distinctly recognisable soundtrack courtesy of…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Short Circuit’
★★☆☆☆ Short Circuit (1986) is a film which anyone old enough to remember first time round, will look back on with nostalgia as a defining sci-fi movie of the 1980s. However viewed now, the family comedy starring Ally Sheedy, Police Academy’s Steve Guttenberg and Fisher Stevens, is likely to leave you distinctly underwhelmed. Struck by…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘The Castle of Cagliostro’
★★★★☆ All the old Hayao Miyazaki magic can pleasingly be found in the Studio Ghibli director’s 1979 debut feature film. Well, almost all of it, because The Castle of Cagliostro is that rare thing in the animator’s canon: a film without that quintessential female protagonist. Our lead here is Lupin – Arsene Lupin III, to…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (60th Anniversary)
★★★★★ Featuring a host of sparkling musical numbers and several iconic set pieces, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s 1952 masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain is undoubtedly one of the finest musicals to have come out of Hollywood. Earning both critical and popular acclaim in numerous polls and lists, it’s a film that has the ability…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘The Man in the White Suit’
★★★★☆ In 1951, Ealing Studios headed north with The Man in the White Suit, the story of a scientist, Sidney Stratton (played by Ealing stalwart Alec Guinness), who invents a super-resistant fibre that could revolutionise the textile industry and clothe the world for eternity. We meet our young hero as he slopes around the lab…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘It Always Rains on Sunday’
★★★★☆ Coinciding with the Ealing: Light and Dark season, It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) – given a pristine digital restoration by the National Archive – stands as a remarkable example of the films Ealing made that were somewhat overshadowed by their more popular, overtly comedic titles. Directed by Robert Hamer (who went on to helm…
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Special Feature: Ken Loach wins big at Scottish Baftas
The Scottish Baftas took place at Glasgow’s upmarket Radisson Blu Hotel last night where host Edith Bowman, an assortment of Scottish film and television personalities and five hundred guests were on hand to honour and celebrate the very best of film, TV and games over the past twelve months. After a red carpet that was…
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DVD Review: ‘Return to Burma’
★★★☆☆ Midi Z’s debut film Return to Burma (2011) offers an unflinching insight into an under-reported part of the world. This semi-autobiographical tale, sombre in tone yet earnest in intention, focuses on a returning Burmese emigrant, whose country, despite political reform and a programme of liberalisation, remains hopeless and stagnant. Wang Xinghong returns to Myanmar…