DVD Review: ‘Drug War’
★★★★☆ Prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To’s Drug War (2012) has sadly become yet another notable work from a respected auteur to go unceremoniously...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To’s Drug War (2012) has sadly become yet another notable work from a respected auteur to go unceremoniously...
★★★☆☆ Mikael Marcimain’s Call Girl (2012) arrives on DVD this week following a fruitful festival run, the highlight of which was bagging the FIPRESCI...
★★★★★ The third in arguably cinema’s most romantic trilogies, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy this year reprised their roles as Jesse and Celine, an...
★★☆☆☆ We all, if being honest, envy to some degree the lifestyles of Hollywood’s rich and famous. For most however, lusting after their wealth...
★★☆☆☆ Documentarian David Bond is the worried father of two young children. Like many kids raised in the city, his kids spend most of...
★★★★☆ Through the sultry twangs of a bluegrass slide-guitar, two lovers Elise (Veerle Baetens) and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) strike up a relationship that will...
★★★★☆ British social realism gets a welcome shot in the arm this week with the release of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight hit (and LFF select)...
★★★☆☆ Whilst never quite reaching the compelling heights of recent rockumentary offerings Beware of Mr. Baker, Crossfire Hurricane or Searching for Sugar Man, Greg...