Film reviews and more
★★★★★ 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. […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 label, Stanley Kubrick’s little-seen 1953 debut feature Fear and Desire offers a bizarre and intriguing […]
★★★★☆ About Elly (2009) – the fourth film from Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi, the Oscar-winning director of A Separation (2011) – is another intense, contemporary tragedy about the ambiguities of truth and the consequences of being honest. Farhadi, to the […]
★★★★☆ 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. The fact that the infamous Siegel family were “busting out of the seams” in theirs […]
★★☆☆☆ Director Ira Sachs follow 2005’s Forty Shades of Blue and 2007’s Married Life with Keep the Lights On (2012), a tale of a deeply fractured relationship between two gay men in New York, played out over the course of […]
★★★★☆ Winner of the Silver Bear prize at last year’s Berlinale and directed by acclaimed German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Yella, Beats Being Dead), Barbara (2012) is a stark yet engrossing drama told against the icy backdrop of the East/West German […]
★★★★☆ Bemusing and astonishing audiences in equal measure since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year, French auteur Leos Carax’s cineliterate oddity Holy Motors (2012) has gone on to receive near universal critical acclaim – thanks primarily to […]
★★☆☆☆ The anthology movie has been a staple of the horror genre for several decades, with its origins creeping back even further to the days of expressionist Germany. Embracing that very same tradition, whilst simultaneously looking to rejuvenate it for […]
★★☆☆☆ Mark Tonderai’s House at the End of the Street (2012) tries to be something it isn’t – namely scary. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot and Elisabeth Shue, this would-be chiller starts atmospherically before becoming nothing more than a sub-standard, teenager-in-peril thriller. […]
★★★☆☆ Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012) is a high concept adventure that imbues classic sci-fi elements with an understanding of smart storytelling. However, despite his ambitious and stylish amalgamation of themes, Johnson’s third film is as occasionally impressive as it is […]