★★★★☆ The American Academy recently awarded genre-hopping director Ang Lee the Best Director prize for Life of Pi (2012), and it was well-deserved; Yann Martel’s prize-winning novel, long-thought unfilmable, has been brought to life superbly in a visual masterpiece that won’t soon be outdone. The tale begins with an avid Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ With second film The Oranges (2011), Julian Farino is still a far way off securing any form of distinctive directorial style, his latest a simplistic story of small-town outrage. Nina Ostroff (Leighton Meester) returns home and is quickly introduced to the Walling family’s eligible son Toby (Adam Brody), but Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The third feature from French director Gilles Legrand, You Will Be My Son (Tu seras mon fils, 2011) sees the inimitable Niels Arestrup take the role of Paul de Marseul, a successful winemaker in Saint-Emilion, Bordeaux. With ample support from co-stars Lorànt Deutsch and Nicolas Bridet as his respective Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Spooky, cavernous castles; rolling, all-engulfing perma-mist; a deranged, deformed aristocrat impaling all the serfs to ease his crippling ennui…Giallo master Mario Bava’s camp schlockfest has more classic Gothic tropes than you can shake a Brontë sister at. Here given a beautiful restoration for Blu-ray and DVD by Arrow Video, Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ It was perhaps foolish to think that Bait (2012) might recall the raw menace of Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) or Joe Dante’s B-movie classic Piranha (1978). But Kimble Rendall’s toothless horror is nothing of anything really: an underwater travesty which takes itself far too seriously and comes nowhere close Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Having, for one reason or another, missed out on the opportunity of a UK theatrical run, British writer-director Candida Brady’s 2012 human waste exposé Trashed makes its way onto DVD this week courtesy of the piece’s producers, Blenheim Films. With the star power of Academy Award-winning narrator and host Continue Reading
This month sees the rerelease of both Mario Bava’s Baron Blood (1972) and George A. Romero’s Knightriders (1981) on DVD and Blu-ray, courtesy of cult film specialists Arrow Video. Giants of the horror genre, Bava and Romero remain renowned filmmakers, with Arrow giving fans and the uninitiated alike to sample some Continue Reading
Peccadillo Pictures’ Boys on Film: Youth in Trouble features a range of eclectic, innovative and genre-bending short films from across the globe. Within these eight award-winning shorts a friendship is tested in an ex-Nazi holiday camp, love and freedom wage war in an Australian boys prison and Brokeback Mountain exposes Continue Reading
Last December, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee brought novelist Yann Martel’s international bestseller Life of Pi to the big screen with magnificent results. Lee’s film tells the magical tale of a young Indian boy adrift on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger. Using flashbacks and fantasy sequences, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Premièring towards the end of last year’s Cannes Film Festival when the majority of critics had long left the sun and splendour of the Croisette, indie filmmaker Jeff Nichols’ highly anticipated Mud (2012), his follow-up to 2011’s Take Shelter, somehow fell off the cinematic map on both sides of Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Newly positioned as one of this year’s most anticipated American documentaries following rave reviews at Sundance, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish (2013) makes its way to the festival’s London incarnation this week ahead of a late July theatrical release. Cowperthwaite’s slight naïveté as only a second-time feature director (having deputised back Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ With The Lords of Salem (2012), musician-turned-director Rob Zombie demonstrates uncharacteristic restraint with a patchy but infrequently inspired picture. After his two entries in the Halloween franchise were drastically re-edited by the Weinsteins, his latest endeavour is the first feature he’s made with total creative control – proving both Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Considering the subject matter of The ABCs of Death (2012), the new compilation horror from producers Ant Timpson and Tim League, it was always going to be – to some degree, at least – controversial. With segments by directors such as Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film) and Yoshihiro Nishimura Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Winner of the Palme d’Or prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, American photographer and filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg’s seldom-seen odd couple dramedy Scarecrow receives a welcome publicity boost this week thanks to a limited Park Circus theatrical rerelease. Starring Hollywood heavyweights Gene Hackman and Al Pacino – around the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Featuring prime cuts from the BFI’s extensive National Archive and a typically soul-stirring soundtrack from acclaimed Brighton collective British Sea Power, director Penny Woolcock’s lyrical visual collage From the Sea to the Land Beyond (2012) gets a live screening at Sundance London this week, having already wowed audiences at Continue Reading
