★★★★☆ Following last year’s The Cabin in The Woods, traditional horrors have started to seem seriously out of date.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 The Conjuring (2013), a return to the traditional tropes are as fresh as ever in what is an unnerving, albeit kitsch horror of remarkable finesse. Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 worldwide box office, despite a lukewarm critical response. So, in that respect, The Smurfs 2 (2013) seemed inevitable. And, without doubt, a mere two years Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 to riff themselves through any situation? The Heat (2013) is yet another comedy so bewitched by its stars’ improvisational skills that it feels curiously overloaded Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 misplaced. While it inevitably opens itself up to accusations of pretentiousness, it’s a picture that redefines the visual possibilities of exploitation film. The deliberate portentousness Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 of a genius, and once displayed all the signs, but to look back upon his filmography is like staring at a jigsaw with all the Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 have been regarded as nothing more than a taste of things to come. As it is, Enter the Dragon was the only opportunity we got Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 been the title of his 1981 oddball offering Le Pont du Nord. Coveted by cinephiles for years, this Masters of Cinema rerelease is most welcome. Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 film became infamous due to its overt racism and negative stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans, coupled with the rampant glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, causing Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “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 Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski. This is a tagline that not only short-sells the film’s deeply felt psychosexual themes, but also drips with sensationalist desperation on Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ After helming the ultra low budget and critically praised urban thriller Shifty (2008), BAFTA nominated director Eran Creevy returns with Welcome to the Punch (2013), an explosive action film that sees Creevy depicting London in altogether more sleek and slick parameters than his directorial predecessor. Armed with a bigger Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 almost equal measure after screening in competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Blending gaudy, stylised visuals with a pungent tale of love, racial prejudice Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 York string quartet who find its future threatened by petty rivalries and inner discord. When Peter (Walken) the cellist and founder of ‘The Fugue Quartet’, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Steven Soderbergh has made something of a habit over the past few years of threatening his departure from the cinematic arena. A fiercely independent filmmaker who has found getting his visions onto the screen more and more difficult, this year he had announced as his retirement from the medium. Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 (2013). Helmed by Andrew Niccol – no stranger to glossy sci-fi following Gattaca and In Time – the film features yet another conflicted female protagonist, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 same year as superhero juggernauts Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel, or perhaps the critically-savaged X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) is still weighing on people’s Continue Reading