DVD Review: ‘The Story of Yonosuke’
★★★★☆ Following specialist distributor Third Windows’ past championing of Shûichi Okita’s The Woodsman and the Rain (2011), the director’s next equally impressive film The...
Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★★★★☆ Following specialist distributor Third Windows’ past championing of Shûichi Okita’s The Woodsman and the Rain (2011), the director’s next equally impressive film The...
★★★★☆ Tradition and duty are the themes of Fill the Void (2012), a tightly observed family drama and Rama Burshtein’s debut feature. Set in...
★★★★☆ Released on Blu-ray this week to capitalise on the success of his Palme d’Or-winning Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), Abdellatif Kechiche’s Couscous...
★★★★☆ Cinematic fanaticism has been tackled in factual form before, perhaps most notably in Xan Cassavetes’ Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (a title which...
★★★☆☆ Jean-Claude Brisseau has been a mainstay of French cinema since the early eighties, despite some legal troubles in 2005 in which life mirrored...
★★★★☆ To coincide with the release of Mark Cousins’ A Story of Children and Film (2013), Filmhouse Edinburgh are rolling out The Cinema of...
★★★★☆ With The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013), their follow-up to 2009’s Amer, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani kick down the doors...
★★★★☆ Marking the 30th anniversary of its UK debut, StudioCanal rereleases the highly influential The King and the Mockingbird (1980) in a fully restored...