★★☆☆☆ 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 the norm and 24-hour news coverage plentiful, there couldn’t be Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 appears to be an apt embodiment of Farhadi’s career thus Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 and Bill Murray, Clooney plays Frank Stokes, an art historian Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 comedy that attempts to meet belly laughs with the zesty Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 offered the opportunity to explore behind the headlines and experience Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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.” It sounds like a bold claim on first consideration, but Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 current geopolitical condition. An abrasively worded thinkpiece, Olsson’s follow-up to Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 and George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), the Continue Reading