Film Review: ‘The Conjuring’
★★★★☆ Following last year’s The Cabin in The Woods, traditional horrors have started to seem seriously out of date. Thankfully, with Saw director James Wan’s […]
Film Review: ‘The Smurfs 2’
★★☆☆☆ Released in the late summer of 2011, Raja Gosnell’s The Smurfs made an astonishing (and not to be snivelled at) $560 million at the […]
Film Review: ‘The Heat’
★★☆☆☆ Whatever happened to the 90-minute Hollywood studio comedy? Was it damned to obscurity by the bromantic Judd Apatow’s unwavering faith in his actors’ abilities […]
Film Review: ‘Only God Forgives’
★★★★☆ Mere minutes into Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives (2013), it becomes evident that the critical derision which greeted it at Cannes was wholly […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Runaway Train’
★★★★☆ Andrei Konchalovsky is one of cinema’s true enigmas. Loosely descended from Tolstoy and born into tsarist nobility in 1937, he has the genetic make-up […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Enter the Dragon’
★★★★★ If Bruce Lee hadn’t passed away a week before the US release of Enter the Dragon (1973), Robert Clouse’s martial arts masterpiece may well […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Le Pont du Nord’
★★★★☆ The English translation of French maestro Jacques Rivette’s debut feature Paris nous appartient (1962) is “Paris belongs to us”. It could also have easily […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘The Birth of a Nation’
★★★★★ It would be something of an understatement to label D.W. Griffith’s American Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), as controversial. The […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Possession’
★★★★☆ “She created a monster as her secret lover!” screamed the poster for Possession (1981), a truly indefinable 80s horror hybrid, brainchild of the hugely undervalued […]
DVD Review: ‘Welcome to the Punch’
★★★☆☆ After helming the ultra low budget and critically praised urban thriller Shifty (2008), BAFTA nominated director Eran Creevy returns with Welcome to the Punch […]
DVD Review: ‘The Paperboy’
★★★☆☆ Based on American author Peter Dexter’s 1995 pulp novel of the same name, Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy (2012) found itself derided and lauded in […]
DVD Review: ‘A Late Quartet’
★★★★☆ Yaron Zilberman’s feature debut A Late Quartet (2012), starring Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, follows the fortunes of an acclaimed New […]
DVD Review: ‘Side Effects’
★★★★☆ Steven Soderbergh has made something of a habit over the past few years of threatening his departure from the cinematic arena. A fiercely independent […]
DVD Review: ‘The Host’
★★☆☆☆ Twilight Saga scribe Stephenie Meyer saw another of her teen-friendly novels adapted for the big screen this year with the release of The Host […]
Film Review: ‘The Wolverine’
★★★☆☆ Whilst Wolverine remains one of Marvel’s most popular characters, his latest big screen appearance is low on hype. Maybe because it’s released in the […]
Film Review: ‘Blackfish’
★★★★☆ If gaining an understanding of the motivation behind the distressing acts committed in 2009’s The Cove wasn’t enough to put audiences off a trip […]
Film Review: ‘Frances Ha’
★★★★☆ Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012) sees the US director and indie queen Greta Gerwig team up once again after their successful collaboration on 2010’s […]
DVD Review: ‘Reality’
★★★★☆ The Taviani brothers explored a Shakespeare production performed by a group of prison inmates earlier in the year with Caesar Must Die (2012). Matteo […]