Berlin 2013: Our Top 10 Programme Picks
This week sees the curtain rise on the 63rd incarnation of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival (7-17th February). The festival opens in spectacular...
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.
This week sees the curtain rise on the 63rd incarnation of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival (7-17th February). The festival opens in spectacular...
★★★★☆ Jonathan Levine, writer-director of 50/50 (2011) and The Wackness (2008), turns the zombie movie sub-genre on its head to successful, heartwarming and humorous results...
★★☆☆☆ “You are bad guy, but this does not mean you are bad guy!” That’s Zangief, of Street Fighter fame, counselling Wreck-It Ralph (John...
★★☆☆☆ With Alfred Hitchcock arguably the toast of 2012, celebrated with a year-long season at the BFI and his classic 1958 film Vertigo topping...
★★★★☆ Completing Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s eclectic trilogy in style comes No (2012), a sophisticated, surprisingly humorous exploration of the opposition media campaign that...