Film reviews and more
★★☆☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ Buster Keaton’s silent era masterpiece The General (1926) makes a welcome return to UK screens this week thanks to a new Cohen restoration and an ongoing BFI retrospective. Pin-sharp and as luxuriously entertaining as ever, this timeless tale of […]
★★★★☆ The perspective afforded by Dogwoof’s tenth anniversary rerelease of Marc Singer’s Dark Days (2000) reveals it to be a profound film about both a city and a medium in flux. A portrait of a homeless community living in a […]
The full programme for the tenth edition of the ever expanding Glasgow Film Festival (20 February to 2 March, 2014) was revealed earlier this evening, with the unmistakable Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, selected as the Opening […]
★★☆☆☆ In 1812, the British burnt the White House to the ground – the only time since the Revolutionary War that America’s capital has ever been occupied. That is until 2013, when both Antoine Fuqua and Roland Emmerich duked it […]
★★★★☆ Ghana-born director John Akomfrah – the creative mind behind 1987’s Handsworth Songs and, more recently, The Nine Muses – made a triumphant return last year with The Stuart Hall Project (2013), a multi-layered video essay on the fluidity of […]
★★★☆☆ Hercule Poirot has been a mainstay on British television screens over the past quarter of a century thanks to David Suchet’s definitive portrayal of the portly Belgian sleuth. Courtesy of UK distributors StudioCanal, three of the great detective’s most […]