District 9 director Neill Blomkamp returns to cinemas this month with his eagerly awaited follow-up, Elysium (2013). Set in 2159, in a future dystopia where the wealthy live on man-made space station Elysium and the rest of humanity inhabit a ravaged Earth, the film centres on the story of Max Continue Reading
★★★★☆ American director Darren Aronofsky has long probed minds caught in the vice-like grip of obsession; from the entropic addiction of Requiem for a Dream (2000) to the compulsive performers of The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010). His own personal preoccupation was evident from provocative debut film Pi (1998), Continue Reading
★★★★☆ At long last, the Mad Max trilogy finds a welcome home on Blu-ray via a decent transfer that retains the grain of the original film prints. This hugely popular series was able transcend its Antipodean setting to because a world-wide phenomenon, making a huge star of Mel Gibson and Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ Respected seventies auteur Brian De Palma returns from the creative wilderness (his last feature was the 2007 Iraq War drama Redacted) with Passion (2012), a remake of 2010 French thriller Love Crime. Unfortunately, despite a sense of the director going back to basics, the end results are far from Continue Reading
Starring Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, Passion (2012) sees American director Brian De Palma return to his favourite stomping ground of the overblown psychosexual thriller, a sub-genre which he made his own with such schlocky delights as Body Double, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out. The 71-year-old director spoke with Continue Reading
Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas’ fourth film, Post Tenebras Lux (2012), has been described by some as his masterpiece. It’s a bracingly intelligent and formally daring picture; a confrontational, yet moving work of subversive autobiography which is open to many interpretations. It’s a film that bridges the personal and the political, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Centring on one long, hot summer in the lives of two Bratislavan youths as they fall in and out of love, The Sun in a Net (1963) is a sensual, intimate tale of young romance and family dysfunction, set against the backdrop of an eclipse. A triumph of the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated debut is one of the best documentaries to emerge so far this year. Presenting a troubling vision of Israeli counter-terrorism, The Gatekeepers (2013) excels in its political rigour and clear-eyed pessimism. It’s a deceptively simple set up, with the men who headed Israel’s intelligence operations for Continue Reading
