DVD Review: ‘The White Dove’ & ‘Josef Kilián’
★★★☆☆ Something of an odd double-bill release for the excellent Second Run: two early films from heavyweight precursors of the Czech New Wave, which...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Something of an odd double-bill release for the excellent Second Run: two early films from heavyweight precursors of the Czech New Wave, which...
★★☆☆☆ Originally released in 1972, Frank Simon’s Weekend of a Champion offers a revealing glimpse of glamorous Monaco whilst charting the peculiar friendship shared...
★★★☆☆ British director Iain Softley is something of a curio, having made films as diverse as Henry James adaptation The Wings of the Dove...
★★★★☆ Owing to that peculiar staple of high-concept mainstream filmmaking – whereby similar plots and thematic strands are occasionally worked into multiple, dissimilar products...
★★★☆☆ The first of two films from South Korean director Hong Sang-soo screened at this year’s London Film Festival and released on DVD this...
★★★★☆ The second Nosferatu rerelease in as many weeks (F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic rose from its eternal slumber once again last Friday), cult...
★★★☆☆ With Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 (2013) trumping Jon Favreau’s previous efforts whilst doing a brisk trade at the box office, expectations were...
★★★★☆ This week sees Destin Daniel Cretton adapt his own award-winning short to craft his sophomore feature film, Short Term 12 (2013). A sun-kissed...