Film Review: ‘Foxfire’
★★☆☆☆ Having bagged the prestigious Palme d’Or prize for his last film, 2008’s vérité high school drama The Class, award-winning French director Laurent Cantet...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★☆☆☆ Having bagged the prestigious Palme d’Or prize for his last film, 2008’s vérité high school drama The Class, award-winning French director Laurent Cantet...
★★★☆☆ Pascal Bonitzer’s domestic dramedy Looking for Hortense (2012), starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Isabelle Carré, has a topical slant that lifts...
★★☆☆☆ The suitably named Thor Freudenthal helms Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), the sequel to the semi-popular 2010 fantasy adventure Percy Jackson and...
★★☆☆☆ Heard on radios and seen in books since the 1930s, a masked lawman and his faithful Native American sidekick galloped into hearts and...
★★★★☆ British comedian Steve Coogan’s beloved Norwich-based media whore Alan Partridge has bounced back numerous times over his 21-year career, first appearing on Radio...
★★★★☆ A multi-award winning 101 minutes of dialogue-less travelogue about three Neanderthal tribesmen sent on a mission to find and steal fire from another...
★★★☆☆ The title of Mexican arthouse director Carlos Reygadas’ fourth feature, 2012’s Post Tenebras Lux, means ‘light after darkness’ in Latin – and unwittingly,...
★★★★☆ The Brothers Grimm’s pitch black fairytale Snow White is transformed by the Flamenco rhythms of 1920s Spain in director Pablo Berger’s sumptuous and...