Film reviews and more
★★★★★ Forget Coppola’s The Godfather, Disney Pixar’s Toy Story and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films. Forget even the original Star Wars series. Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy is the cinematic triptych par excellence. Released for the first time on separate […]
★★★★☆ If the medium of film is to be considered a legitimate art form then this memorable BBC period piece from 1979 is probably as close as you can get to a living painting on screen. Schalcken the Painter, a […]
★★★☆☆ Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) is a monster of a movie in all senses of the word. The latest instalment in what looks like fast becoming the next big franchise series delivers action and noise aplenty, but perhaps […]
★★★★☆ In what could be described as an annus mirabilis for documentaries, Leviathan (2012) stands out as a monstrous marvel; something to inspire terror, confusion and awe. Taking the relatively unpromising subject of industrial fishing of the North American coast […]
★★☆☆☆ In 2010, British director Matthew Vaughn brought to the big screen Mark Millar’s ultra-violent and provocative comic book Kick-Ass. Filled with bad language, lashings of blood and a knowing take on the superhero genre, it was generally well-received, not […]
★★★★☆ In 1980, Al Pacino starred in The Exorcist director William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising. The film focused on undercover cop Steve Burns (Pacino) who is sent onto the streets as a decoy for a serial killer who has dismembered several […]
★★★★☆ The Oscar success of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2011) and the critical acclamation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his first European film, The Past (2013), has paved the way for a revaluation of the Iranian director’s earlier […]
★★★☆☆ The latest animated feature from DreamWorks may, if the title is anything to go by, sound a little rough around the edges. However, The Croods (2013) – co-written and directed by Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders, and featuring […]
★★★★☆ From award-winning British director Lucy Walker comes her fifth full feature, the Sundance hit The Crash Reel (2013). A no-holds-barred look at the world of snowboarding and the tragic accidents that go hand-in-hand with such a dangerous profession, Walker’s […]
★★★☆☆ Mark Wahlberg reunites with Contraband (2012) director Baltasar Kormákur for 2 Guns (2013), a comedy-actioner based on the graphic novel of the same name. Denzel Washington plays the ying to Wahlberg’s yang and James Marsden, Paula Patton and Bill […]
★★★☆☆ Filmmaker Marten Persiel was never especially interested, as a youngster in West Berlin, in what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. Later in life however, he learnt that there was a thriving skateboarding subculture that existed in East […]
★★★☆☆ Just as Miranda Priestly admonishes her assistant Andy at the end of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), it seems that everybody does indeed want “to be like us”. However, if you can’t afford the lifestyle of a fashion mag […]