Film Review: ‘Despicable Me 2’
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★☆☆☆ Earlier this year, Chilean director Sebastián Silva premiered two films at the Sundance Film Festival. The first, Crystal Fairy, was a slight and...
★★☆☆☆ A German western starring the inimitable actress Nina Hoss, Gold (2013) follows up its Berlinale premiere with a showing at Edinburgh. A tale...
★★★☆☆ Confounding audiences and critics alike at the Rome Film Festival, Sofia International Film Festival and now the 67th Edinburgh Film Festival, Silent Souls...
★★★★☆ Produced towards the end of the silent era, F.W. Murnau’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) was to be the legendary...
★★★★☆ Kaneto Shindô’s Naked Island (Hadaka no shima, 1960) receives the Blu-ray treatment this week thanks to the UK’s foremost purveyors of highly acclaimed...
★★★★☆ Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan has explored a wealth of recurring motifs throughout his career thus far. These include repeated inspections of identity, performance...