To celebrate a year of cultural exchange between the UK and Russia, London’s ever enlightening arts hub, the Academia Rossica, will be presenting a retrospective of the late Russian director Alexei Balabanov over the coming months. Balabanov sadly passed away last year at the […]
★★☆☆☆ On paper, That Awkward Moment (2014) was an appealing proposition; a rom-com told from the male perspective with talented up-and-coming actors in the lead roles. So it’s unfortunate that Tom Gormican’s debut feature, which might have offered a refreshingly astute perspective on young […]
★★★☆☆ Scott Cooper made his directorial debut with Crazy Heart (2009), a film that won Jeff Bridges an Oscar for Best Actor. For his sophomore effort Out of the Furnace (2013), Cooper once again manages to get the very best from his star-studded cast, […]
★★☆☆☆ Peter ‘Battleship‘ Berg returns to UK cinema screens this week with Lone Survivor (2013), a film which – depending on your own personal sensibilities – comes across as either a rousing testament to America’s men of valour or a teeth gritting exercise in […]
★★☆☆☆ Unless you’re a fan of the original source material on which a film adaptation is based, you’ll likely derive more pleasure from the viewing experience if you go in knowing nothing about it beforehand. This is certainly the case with Stuart Beattie’s action […]
★★★★☆ After making a distinguished filmmaking debut with the widely acclaimed The Arbor (2010) – a documentary hybrid portraying the late, Bradford-born playwright Andrea Dunbar, British director Clio Barnard returns with her sophomore feature The Selfish Giant (2013), a fictional work inspired by the […]
★★★☆☆ Roaring onto DVD and Blu-Ray this week comes Ron Howard’s Formula One racing drama Rush (2013), starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as James Hunt and Daniel Brühl as his arch-rival, Austrian driver Niki Lauda. Although bookended with a slightly broader context, the main thrust […]
Xan Cassavetes’ debut feature, Kiss of the Damned (2012) – released this week in the UK on both DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment – is a wonderfully flamboyant vampire film that manages to successfully combine genre tribute with arthouse aspirations. It’s a […]
★★★★☆ We’ve seen a fair few vampire films do the rounds recently, but none of them are quite like Kiss of the Damned (2012), Xan Cassavetes’ throwback debut. It’s a hugely enjoyable and flamboyant work that combines sleek, cool aesthetics with giddy Eurotrash sensibilities. […]
★★★☆☆ Set around the publication of the incendiary New Yorker article on the heinous deeds and belated trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann by its titular German-American political theorist, Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt (2012) is a glossy, plainly televisual depiction of one […]
★★★★☆ In 1921, the first attempt to scale Everest was launched. The expedition was exploratory in nature rather than a full–on assault, and although it failed to reach the peak, pioneering photographer and filmmaker Captain John Noel came back with footage and stills so […]
★★★★☆ Amassing a considerable amount of buzz during last year’s festival circulation and now in the running for the Best Documentary Oscar, Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer (2013) arrives on DVD this week boasting a veritable trove of plaudits and awards, particularly for […]
★★☆☆☆ True J-horror fans will probably shudder at the thought of yet another lacklustre ghost story, and sadly The Complex (2013) is just that. Hideo Nakata was a seminal figure in the rise of the modern Japanese horror film, with Dark Water and the […]
★★★☆☆ The notion of the ‘teenager’ dominates popular culture to such a degree that it’s difficult to reconcile the fact that the concept is a relatively new one. It’s the emergence of the term and, more crucially, the very idea of this isolated period […]
★★★☆☆ The Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA) is Italy’s most expensive public highway; a forty-odd mile ring road that encircles the city of Rome and provides the inspiration for Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA (2013). A surprise winner of the top Golden Lion prize at last […]
★★★☆☆ Following on from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford & Ben Affleck, Chris Pine is the latest actor to take on the mantle of the late American author Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst in Kenneth Branagh’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), a seriously safe series reboot […]
★★★★★ Sadly – though perhaps predictably – overlooked amid this year’s raft of Oscar nominations, Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) thankfully doesn’t need lashings of awards to appeal to those who have admired the work of the brothers Coen over the course of the last […]
★★★☆☆ The great ‘who would beat who in their prime’ filmic boxing debate has always been a popular discussion, an ultimate what-if scenario that almost always yields outlandish answers. One such set-up is that of Rocky vs. Raging Bull, and though the time to […]
