Film Review: ‘A Promise’
★☆☆☆☆ It’s been almost two decades since idiosyncratic French filmmaker Patrice Leconte delivered a near-masterpiece in the form of 1996’s Ridicule, an opulent and hugely […]
Film Review: ‘The Nut Job’
★★★☆☆ Making a successful feature length cartoon is a hard nut to crack. For every animated hit, a dozen sink without trace, relegated to being […]
Film Review: ‘Mood Indigo’
★★☆☆☆ French director Michel Gondry is well-known for his eccentricities and wild imagination. However, with his latest quirksome endeavour, Mood Indigo (2013), the director falls […]
Film Review: ‘Hide Your Smiling Faces’
★★★☆☆ Partially funded by Kickstarter, Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013) arrives in selected UK cinemas this week having picked up a number […]
Film Review: ‘Delight’
★★☆☆☆ The second entry in a proposed trilogy from British independent director Gareth Jones (2009’s Desire being the inaugural chapter), Delight (2014) isn’t short on […]
Film Review: ‘The Deer Hunter’
★★★★★ Structures within the time frame of empirical perspectives have a tendency to unknowingly look in the wrong direction. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978) […]
Film Review: ‘Blackwood’
★★☆☆☆ The haunted house has become such a recurring trope in horror literature and cinema that it’s now a bona fide sub-genre in its own […]
DVD Review: ‘We Are the Best!’
★★★★☆ Coco Moodysson’s autobiographical 2008 graphic novel Never Goodnight related the delight and difficultly of forming a punk band, aged 13, in 1982. Along with […]
DVD Review: ‘Venus in Fur’
★★★☆☆ For Roman Polanski’s latest, the now octogenarian director has adapted David Ives play Venus in Fur, which is itself based on the 1870 novel […]
DVD Review: ‘Unforgiven’
★★☆☆☆ Released to widespread critical and audience acclaim back in 1992, Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning revenge tale Unforgiven is fondly remembered as a valiant last stand […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Too Late Blues’
★★★☆☆ John Cassavetes was the blue-collard labourer of American arthouse. Like the atonal timbre of jazz that tested musical conventions, the director excelled when left […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Rapture’
★★★★☆ Another forgotten gem given new life on DVD and Blu-ray here in the UK, John Guillermin’s Rapture (1965) is a beautifully-made and challenging oddity. […]
DVD Review: ‘Northwest’
★★★☆☆ The second crime thriller to come from director Michael Noer (whose previous film, 2010’s R: Hit First, Hit Hardest, was a collaboration between himself […]
DVD Review: ‘Noah’
★★★★☆ Let it be howled from the mountain tops that with his extraordinary Noah (2014), director Darren Aronofsky has crafted a bold, phantasmagorical interpretation of […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Jules et Jim’ & ‘Shoot the Pianist’
★★★★★ French critic and auteur François Truffaut’s tone and style have been both successfully and unsuccessfully mined by numerous directors over the years, including the […]
VOD Review: ‘Happy Christmas’
★★★☆☆ Fresh off the back of last year’s Drinking Buddies (2013), mumblecore forefather Joe Swanberg returns with Happy Christmas (2014), another modestly budgeted drama which […]
DVD Review: ‘Behind the Camera’
★★★☆☆ E J-Yong’s Behind the Camera (2013) is a doc-style film that offers an intriguing question; can an absent filmmaker direct a cast and crew […]
DVD Review: ’20 Feet from Stardom’
★★★★☆ “Rape, murder. It’s just a shot away.” Merry Clayton’s vocal projection pierce through at Gimme Shelter’s most unsettling moment. Jagger presses on with playing […]