Film Review: ‘We Are What We Are’
★★★★☆ Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are (2013) – his follow-up to blood-soaked vampire drama Stake Land (2010) – is so convincing that it […]
Film Review: ‘Non-Stop’
★★★☆☆ Action movies are typically a young man’s genre but an older man’s game. The real tough cookies have been thickened by years of experience, […]
Film Review: ‘Funny Face’
★★★★★ Stanley Donen’s Funny Face (1957), like the industry it so wittily satirises, is beguiling, effortlessly stylish and always in vogue. This evergreen classic receives a […]
Film Review: ‘As the Palaces Burn’
★★★★☆ Metal’s reputation has tolerated the most unfounded social clichés. Hackneyed variations of ink-coated sweat-riddled aggressors lacking in any emotion other than sightless rage. However, […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Roma’
★★★★☆ A landmark work in the lexicon of 1970s art film, Federico Fellini’s highly venerated opus Roma (1972) arrives in a pristine restoration as part […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Phantom of the Paradise’
★★★★☆ Coming two years before his breakout commercial horror hit Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) finds revered seventies “movie brat” Brian De Palma in […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘The Killers’
★★★★☆ Don Siegel was one of the key directors in the undervalued period of American cinema that took place just before the New Hollywood palette […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Classe Tous Risques’
★★★★☆ History tells us that the neophyte directors who emerged in sixties France made films that challenged the established aesthetic tradition. It forgets to tell […]
DVD Review: ‘Thor: The Dark World’
★★★☆☆ Alan Taylor’s ‘Phase Two’ offering Thor: The Dark World (2013) sees Chris Hemsworth’s thunder god return in his second standalone movie, and provides much […]
DVD Review: ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’
★★★★☆ Admittedly, a “time-travelling indie comedy” may not be the most appealing concept upon first glance, but much like the characters in this charmingly offbeat […]
DVD Review: ‘Mister John’
★★★☆☆ With their feature debut, Helen (2008), British directing duo Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy toyed with notions of identity as they followed a young […]
DVD Review: ‘Lubitsch in Berlin’
★★★★☆ What did the “Lubitsch touch” look like before it was the “Lubitsch touch”? There are plenty of clues in this welcome reissue of Masters […]
DVD Review: ‘In the Name Of’
★★★☆☆ In 1994, the late Antonia Bird paired up Linus Roach and Robert Carlisle for Priest (1994), the tale of a Catholic priest torn between […]
DVD Review: ‘The Driving Force’
★★★☆☆ There’s something about the films foraged from the extensive BFI archives which makes the viewer hanker after a Britain which no longer exists. Their […]
Film Review: ‘The Godfather: Part II’
★★★★★ At a pivotal point in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful crime drama The Godfather: Part II (1974), Mafia kingpin Michael Corleone states, “If anything in […]
Film Review: ‘Stranger by the Lake’
★★★★☆ An unnerving examination of promiscuity and infatuation, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (2013) combines the ethnography of gay cinema with an exhilarating mix […]
Film Review: ‘Stalingrad’
★★☆☆☆ There’s something altogether uneasy about the depiction of war in Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad (2013). It’s nothing to do with the flag-waving patriotism nor any […]
Film Review: ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’
★★★★☆ Those cinemagoers concerned that the teenage adventures of Bella and Edward might have had a lasting negative impact on the movie vampire can rest […]