DVD Review: ‘Warm Bodies’
★★★☆☆ Perhaps it bodes well for awkward young men around the world if an undead Nicholas Hoult is able to form a relationship with...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Perhaps it bodes well for awkward young men around the world if an undead Nicholas Hoult is able to form a relationship with...
★★★★☆ Following up 2011’s Palme d’Or-winning The Tree of Life was always going to be a tough gig for American auteur Terrence Malick, but...
★★☆☆☆ With renowned Spanish fantasy-horror maestro Guillermo del Toro – the visionary director behind Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth – on producing...
★★★★☆ Sofie Gråbøl makes a welcome return to the small screen with the UK DVD release of Accused (Anklaget, 2005), a dark, psychological drama...
★★☆☆☆ Expectations were high that the Zack Snyder-directed, Christopher Nolan-produced Man of Steel (2013) would finally erase the memory of Bryan Singer’s poor and...
★★★☆☆ Lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa is the only African recipient, other than Nelson Mandela, of the prestigious Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize. For over...
★★☆☆☆ Starring Jennifer Connelly, Greg Kinnear, Lilly Collins and Logan Lerman, Stuck in Love (2012) is a romantic comedy about a dysfunctional family of...
★★★☆☆ The inaugural part of Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy (with all three films receiving staggered releases in the coming months), Paradise: Love...