EIFF 2013: ‘Sanctuary’ (‘Faro’) review
★★★☆☆ Examining the powerful bond shared between a father and daughter, Fredrik Edfeldt’s Sanctuary (Faro, 2013) is a nostalgic, innocent and handsomely presented drama...
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.
★★★☆☆ Examining the powerful bond shared between a father and daughter, Fredrik Edfeldt’s Sanctuary (Faro, 2013) is a nostalgic, innocent and handsomely presented drama...
★★★☆☆ The gravitational pull of cults served as the premise for director Zal Batmanglij’s previous collaboration with writer/actress Brit Marling, 2011’s Sound of My...
★★★☆☆ This (remarkably) is the way the world ends – not with a cataclysmic blast, but with an especially juvenile dick joke from a...
★★★☆☆ Despicable Me (2010) was the first offering from Universal Pictures off-shoot Illumination Entertainment, and it’s financial success proved that Pixar and Dreamworks can...
★★★★★ American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer’s Berlinale hit The Act of Killing (2012) – in cinemas this week from Dogwoof – challenges the very limitations...