★★★★☆ Hungarian auteur, Miklós Jancsó, made a name for himself in the mid 1960s with a loose trilogy of monochrome meditations on the corrupting nature of power. Even in these early pictures, his controlled visuals were noteworthy but in Second Run-released The Confrontation (Fényes szelek, 1969), the tone was set Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 Richard Harris, Honor Blackman and Geraldine Chapman, it is – like the story it sets out to tell – an admirable attempt at stirring and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 budget exploitation film, so they could learn their craft and become more disciplined filmmakers. From Martin Scorsese to Francis Ford Coppola, the talents involved in Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 (Der Blaue Engel, 1930) receives a worthy Dual Format rerelease this week courtesy of the Masters of Cinema series. Featuring a breakthrough performance from a Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 latest effort is, in fact, a zombie movie – and a terrific one at that. The Woodsman and the Rain (2011) may not ‘technically’ be Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Among this year’s gilded list of Oscar nominees, there are surely few peasants – but Emad Burnat is one. The amateur cameraman, who lives largely off the land of his modest Palestinian village, now shares a Best Documentary nomination with Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi for 5 Broken Cameras (2011), Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 2012 will no doubt be seen as a watershed year for 007. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, one of the most profitable and iconic franchises in film history released an entry directed by a respected Oscar-winner, starring proper actors – including another Oscar-winner as the villain – Continue Reading
