DVD Review: ‘Deadball’ and ‘Yakuza Weapon’
★☆☆☆☆ The newly-released Deadball (2011) and Yakuza Weapon (2011), the twin gorefests from directors Yûdai Yamaguchi and Tak Sakaguchi, starring Tak Sakaguchi, Mari Hoshino...
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.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★☆☆☆☆ The newly-released Deadball (2011) and Yakuza Weapon (2011), the twin gorefests from directors Yûdai Yamaguchi and Tak Sakaguchi, starring Tak Sakaguchi, Mari Hoshino...
★★★☆☆ Newly-released on DVD and Blu-ray this week comes Transit (2012), a fast-paced action film from Colombian film director Antonio Negret. Bursting into action...
★★★★☆ First-time writers and directors Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe unite to make the bold and darkly funny Black Pond (2011), an inherently British...
★★★★☆ From its initial form as British writer Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book, War Horse (2011) has since been adapted for the stage and now...
This year’s 65th Cannes Film Festival boasts an unusually strong American presence within its competition strand, including Jeff Nichols’ highly anticipated new film Mud...
If A Dangerous Method (2011) had been made by Stephen Frears, no one would have battered an eyelid, but coming from Canadian body horror...
★★★☆☆ Soundtracked by pop punk and littered with puerile joke after joke, geeky Jim (Jason Biggs) and the gang return this week in long-delayed...
Austrian auteur Michael Haneke returns to French language cinema this year with his new film Amour (Love, 2012), which will premiere in competition at the...