Film Review: A Place in the Sun
★★★★★ Remembered primarily for its passionate love story, the consensus over the years has been that 1951’s A Place in the Sun toned down the social commentary […]
Film Review: ‘Antiviral’
★★★☆☆ The son of Canada’s foremost exponent of intellectually challenging body horror cinema, the genetically blessed Brandon Cronenberg made his Cannes Film Festival bow last […]
Film Review: ‘Do Elephants Pray?’
★★★☆☆ Based on an original screenplay written by its star performer Jonnie Hurn, Do Elephants Pray? (2010) is something of a low-key British indie oddity […]
Film Review: ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’
★★☆☆☆ Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) tells the tale of a clandestine love affair between Franklin D. Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Daisy. […]
Film Review: ‘Chained’
★★★☆☆ After the difficulties of making Hisss (2010), an audacious horror filmed in both Hindi and English, erratic director Jennifer Lynch returns to the murky […]
Film Review: ‘Bullhead’
★★★☆☆ Belgium’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 2012 Academy Awards, Michaël Roskam’s Bullhead (Rundskop, 2011) finally receives a UK […]
Film Review: ‘Bullet to the Head’
★★☆☆☆ This year has already seen the return of one 1980s action star to big screens, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Stand (2012) hitting cinemas […]
Film Review: ‘The Punk Syndrome’
★★★★☆ Finnish filmmakers Jukka Kärkkäinen and Jani-Petteri Passi scored a surprise hit on the festival circuit last year with their 2012 music documentary, The Punk […]
DVD Review: ‘The Confrontation’
★★★★☆ Hungarian auteur, Miklós Jancsó, made a name for himself in the mid 1960s with a loose trilogy of monochrome meditations on the corrupting nature […]
DVD Review: ‘To Walk with Lions’
★★☆☆☆ Carl Schultz’s To Walk with Lions (1999) is one of those films which leaves you feeling bad if you’re not enthusiastic about it. Starring […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Piranha’
★★★★☆ Producer Roger Corman’s modus operandi was to take guys who wanted to be the next Godard and get them to make a 90-minute low […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘The Blue Angel’
★★★★☆ One of German cinema’s first forays into talkies and shot simultaneously in an English language version, Josef von Sternberg’s tragic romance The Blue Angel […]
DVD Review: ‘The Woodsman and the Rain’
★★★★★ Given its bucolic title and a gentle tone, evident even from its promotional images, one can’t be blamed for not knowing that Shuichi Okita’s […]
DVD Review: ‘5 Broken Cameras’
★★★★☆ Among this year’s gilded list of Oscar nominees, there are surely few peasants – but Emad Burnat is one. The amateur cameraman, who lives […]
DVD Review: ‘Everything or Nothing’
★★★☆☆ 2012 will no doubt be seen as a watershed year for 007. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, one of the most profitable […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Fear and Desire’
★★★☆☆ Making its way onto DVD and Blu-ray in a newly restored (circa 2012) form this week courtesy of Eureka’s always excellent Masters of Cinema […]
DVD Review: ‘About Elly’
★★★★☆ About Elly (2009) – the fourth film from Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi, the Oscar-winning director of A Separation (2011) – is another intense, contemporary […]
DVD Review: ‘The Queen of Versailles’
★★★★☆ Most people would probably manage to just about survive the ignominy of living in a 26,000 square foot home with seventeen (count ’em) bathrooms. […]