★★☆☆☆ In a modern world increasingly dependent on technology, you’d think a remake of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (2014) wouldn’t necessitate the same near-future landscape of its predecessor. Surely in an age where drone warfare is legally waged, ubiquitous advertising is […]
★★★★☆ Following on from the success of the Oscar-winning A Separation (2011), Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi returns with the equally raw The Past (2013). Continuing his study of realistic circumstances that threaten to disrupt intricately constructed familial ties, The Past […]
★★☆☆☆ Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney clambers back into the director’s chair for the fifth time with Second World War comedy caper, The Monuments Men (2014). Heading up yet another ensemble cast, including Cate Blanchett, The Artist’s Jean Dujardin, John Goodman […]
★★☆☆☆ Based on an original idea from leading actor Nick Frost and written by British sitcom stalwart Jon Brown, James Griffiths’ feature filmmaking debut Cuban Fury (2014) sees Frost transcending his Cornetto Trilogy compadres and going solo in a British […]
★★★☆☆ In a world where abstract emotions like fear and terror have been distorted to mobilise society against an invisible foe, pirates have become the latest bogeymen of Western cinema. In Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting’s Last Hijack (2014), we’re […]
★★★★☆ Whilst drumming up support for his new Broadway musical, FELA!, producer Stephen Hendel described Nigerian Afrobeat exponent Fela Kuti as “without question one of the great composers and musicians and activists of the second half of the 20th century.” […]
★★★★★ Illustrating the provocative and combative concepts of Martinique-born Afro-French psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial text The Wretched of the Earth, Göran Hugo Olsson’s Concerning Violence (2014) aims to explore Africa’s subjugated past in hope of understanding the continent’s […]
★★★☆☆ Martin Scorsese and editor turned co-director David Tedeschi pay homage to a 20th century American institution in The New York Review of Books: A 50 Year Argument (2014). Their third documentary together following 2005’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan […]
