★★★★☆ Marc Silver’s award-winning documentary Who is Dayani Cristal? (2013), co-produced by and starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, explores the identity and tragic fate of one economic migrant after he attempts to forge a life for himself in the United States. Every year, thousands of Mexicans, Central and South Continue Reading
★★★★★ Simplicity is often the conduit to a perverse complexity that grows more enigmatic the longer the gaze of the enchanted is maintained. Even in its present state of butchered grandeur, The Lady from Shanghai (1947) – back in UK cinemas this week – is a joy to behold. Like Continue Reading
★★★★☆ From the same director who brought us such eclectic offerings as George Washington (2000) and stoner comedy Pineapple Express (2008), David Gordon Green’s rural noir Joe (2013) – based on Larry Brown’s grit-lit novel – stars Nicolas Cage as Joe Ransom, a man who, in the words of Johnny Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ With the likes of Disney Pixar and DreamWorks Animation already riding high on a wave of critical acclaim, box office success and Academy Awards, European animation houses are starting to emerge with increasingly strong output. The House of Magic (2013), the latest 3D animated adventure from Belgium’s nWave Pictures, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ There’s a legend on the South American Galapagos Islands that the famous tortoises that inhabit their shores have the power to stare into the souls of men. These enormous reptiles are said to judge each new arrival on their archipelago, and curse those that alight there with nefarious intent. Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Earth to Echo (2014), director Dave Green’s feature debut, admirably attempts to recreate the classic family adventure films of the eighties, but instead delivers an uneven mishap that comes up short on heart, soul and – in particular – originality. Forced to leave their neighbourhood because of a new Continue Reading
★★★★☆ After more than ten years and forty films at the Nikkatsu company through the 1950s and 60s, cult Japanese director Seijun Suzuki was fired – allegedly for making “incomprehensible” cinema. Known for visual panache, staccato editing and a particular dreamlike quality that eschewed narrative logic, he was hardly working Continue Reading