★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★☆☆☆ The essence of certain films are captured perfectly in their name. Take Rough Cut (2013), a pseudo-documentary about the making of a fictional horror movie (Hiker Meat) which is disappointing mainly because it seems just that – an unfinished […]
★★☆☆☆ In recent years we’ve seen British actress Sheridan Smith step away from the image she crafted for herself in the Beeb’s Two Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crisps, making headway with an impressive – not to mention […]
★★★★☆ Back from his Hawaiian Island odyssey with George Clooney and The Descendants (2011), US filmmaker Alexander Payne (Election) returns to the American heartland for Nebraska (2013), a stripped-down family drama set within the sparsely populated state. Shot in colour […]
★★★★☆ Based on the long-running Danish television series of the same name, Mikkel Nørgaard’s outrageously juvenile comedy of errors, Klown (Klovn, 2010), is nothing if not crude, vulgar and inappropriate; and it’s also the funniest film of this year. Having […]
★★★☆☆ Beat literature and its purveyors have had a long and varied relationship with the silver screen which has seen no less than three films about them in the last few years. James Franco accepted the challenge of the lead […]
★★☆☆☆ The first movie penned by Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stallone that he hasn’t acted in and featuring the possibility of Jason Statham beating up James Franco, there are lots of reasons to be excited about Gary Fleder’s Homefront (2013). Unfortunately, this […]
★★★★☆ Whether it be Bambi (1942), The Jungle Book (1967) or The Lion King (1994), almost everyone has a favourite Disney animation from their childhood that still holds up on repeat watches. A terrific combination of a heartwarming story, effervescent […]
★★★★☆ An ornate, clinical study of gay identity in a predominantly Catholic Poland, Tomasz Wasilewski’s Floating Skyscrapers (2013) pulsates with vitality and sexual repression. A belligerent statement about contemporary attitudes towards LGBT culture, this confident sophomore feature appropriates arthouse aesthetics […]
★★☆☆☆ Towering pieces of work, be they literary, theatrical or cinematic, are often subject to reincarnation in a variety of mediums, such is their enduring quality. Originally a stage play created by Harlem Renaissance figure Langston Hughes, Black Nativity (2013) […]
★★★★☆ Directing duo Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado came bursting onto the genre scene with their debut feature and 2011 FrightFest favourite Rabies (2010). Ostensibly a teen slasher, it subverted conventions to craft a dexterous, satirical portrait of the social […]
★★☆☆☆ Opening to a glorious, sun-dappled French townscape before setting the tone of things to come with a clumsy, crossword led allusion to Joanna Hogg’s vaguely comparable upper middle-class drama Archipelago (2011), debut director Virginia Gilbert’s existential exploration of expat […]
★★★★★ The first three action-packed escapades of everyone’s favourite teacher turned archaeologist are now available as separate entities on Blu-ray (mercifully, the fourth instalment is absent). Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the first in the series from Hollywood’s own […]
